Hi,
As Goran announced - http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-October/095378.h... - the SqF board thinks it would be a good idea to have an election team outside the board to take care of everything around succession.
It doesn't need to be a large team, and there's not a lot of work involved - but it is a very responsible task, and the Election Team must jump into action whenever necessary, so we don't leave empty seats on the board for too long. And, of course, you must be prepared to defend whatever you come up with, procedure-wise, to the Squeak Community - that could be a bit of a daunting task ;-).
Anyway, this is not a Formal Board Communique, but rather a reminder by yours truly that we think this Election Team thing is a good idea, and that if anyone volunteers to be part of it, we'd like to hear it (here on the list, preferrably, but otherwise mail to board@discuss.squeakfoundation.org - please don't contact any of us through private mail, we want to keep an archive of everything in this place).
Regards,
Cees
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Repeating Goran's write-up for reference:
Representational model --------------------------- Now when we merge we also think it is important to take a first, small careful step towards a more representative/democratic model for SqF. Note that the model below is NOT anywhere near a perfect model - but instead of getting caught in an endless debate we chose something simple and careful that we could quickly agree on. So please keep that in mind. :)
The model is this:
- We want to create an Election Team with a Team leader that is NOT in the SqF board.
- Whenever someone of us current 7 board members decides to step down *and* the board wants to get a replacement, it is the job of the election Team, in *whichever* way it finds suitable, to come up with a replacement. This means that the first job of the Election Team is probably to establish some kind of voting procedure (or whatever) ready for use.
- Whenever the board wants to recruit someone specific (or non specific) thus growing the board, we do it "through" the Election Team.
- The Election Team also has the task to come up with a better future model than the above. Any such new election model it presents needs to be approved by a united board though.
A few notes on the above:
- We leave it to squeak-dev to discuss and find a suitable Election Team leader. We will only try to help if noone steps forward willing to pick up the ball. So consider the ball rolling. :)
- We deliberately did not include an option for the board to refuse the replacement presented by the Election Team. We will trust the Election Team to do a good job and to communicate with the board during its process.
- The full procedure to find a replacement is entirely delegated to the Election Team. If the team chooses to use public voting or throwing a dice :) - it is up to the Team.
- When we want to recruit a specific person we will go through the election Team and simply give them our name and motivation. Then they use their process, whatever that might be. In theory they could end up rejecting that person or whatever.
- Whichever new future model the Election Team produces, we still currently reserve the power to reject it. Yes, a bit on the cautious side, but as we said, the above model is not perfect. ;)
- The fact that the model still leaves no options for the community to *initiate* any changes in the board (any initiative still comes from inside) should motivate the Election Team and the community to come up with a better model to replace this one :).