Open Stack

On 10/03/2016 12:46 PM, Edward Leafe wrote:
<snip>
> We are fortunate in that all of the candidates are exceptionally well-qualified, and those elected have put in excellent service while on the TC. But one thing I'm afraid of is that we tend to get into a situation where groupthink [0] is very likely. There are many excellent candidates running in every election, but it is rare for someone who hasn't been a PTL of a large project, and thus very visible, has been selected. Is this really the best approach?
> 
> I wrote a blog post about implicit bias [1], and in that post used the example of blind auditions for musical orchestras radically changing the selection results. Before the introduction of blind auditions, men overwhelmingly comprised orchestras, but once the people judging the auditions had no clue as to whether the musician was male or female, women began to be selected much more in proportion to their numbers in the audition pools. So I'd like to propose something for the next election: have candidates self-nominate as in the past, but instead of writing a big candidacy letter, just state their interest in serving. After the nominations close, the election officials will assign each candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated with which number. The nomination period can be much, much shorter, and then followed by a week of campaigning (the part that's really missing in the current process). Candidates will post their thoughts and positions, and respond to questions from people, and this is how the voters will know who best represents what they want to see in their TC.

The comparison to orchestra auditions was brought up a couple of cycles
ago as well. But I think it's a bad comparison.

In the listed example the job being asked of people was performing their
instrument, and it turns out that lots of things not having to do with
performing their instrument were biasing the results. It was possible to
remove the irrelevant parts.

What is the job being asked of a TC member? To put the best interests of
OpenStack at heart. To be effective in working with a diverse set of
folks in our community to get things done. To find areas of friction and
remove them. To help set an overall direction for the project that the
community accepts and moves forward with.

Writing a good candidacy email isn't really a good representation of
those abilities. It's the measure of writing a good candidacy email, in
english.

I hope that when voters vote in the election they are taking the
reputations of the individuals into account. That they look at the work
they did across all of OpenStack, the hundreds / thousands of individual
actions in the community that the person made. How they got to consensus
on items. What efforts they were able to get folks to rally around and
move forward. Where they get stuck, and how they dig out of being stuck.
When they ask for help. When they admit they are out of their element.
How they help new folks in our community. How they work with long timers.

That aggregate reputation is much more indicative of their
successfulness as a member of the TC to help OpenStack than the
candidate email. It's easy to dismiss it as a popularity contest, but I
don't think it is. This is about evaluating the plausible promise that
individuals put forward. Not just the ideas they have, but how likely
they are to be able to bring them to fruition.

	-Sean

-- 
Sean Dague
http://dague.net