[openstack-dev] [elections][tc]Thoughts on the TC election process

Doug Hellmann doug at doughellmann.com
Mon Oct 3 17:57:06 UTC 2016


Excerpts from Hayes, Graham's message of 2016-10-03 17:35:44 +0000:
> On 03/10/2016 17:49, Edward Leafe wrote:
> > So the period of self-nominations for the Technical Committee seats has ended, and the voting has begun. I've been a very close observer of this process for several cycles, and I have some ideas I'd like to share. Full disclosure: I am a current candidate for the TC, and have been a candidate several times in the past, all of which were unsuccessful.
> >
> > When deciding to run, candidates write a long, thoughtful essay on their reasons for wanting to serve on the TC, and those essays are typically the last you hear from them until the election. It has been rare for anyone to ask follow-up questions, or to challenge the candidates to explain their positions more definitively. I have spoken with many people at the Summits, which always closely followed the TC election (warning: unscientific samples ahead!), and what their selection process mostly boils down to is: they pick the names they are most familiar with. Many people don't read those long candidacy posts, and nearly all couldn't remember a single point that any of the candidates had put forth.
> >
> > 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 pro
> >  cess). 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.
> 
> On the topic of implicit bias - I am open to correction on this, but I
> do not think we have had a TC member who was not heavily involved in
> either Cross Project teams, or one of the projects that spun out of
> Nova in the early years.
> 
> Now, is this bias, or a side effect of people on smaller projects not
> necessarily having dedicated upstream time.
> 
> Is this something we are worried about (or should be worried about)?

That's a good question. Leadership sustainability one of the reasons
I hope that the new PTG structure, with separate days for cross-project
meetings, will result in more folks with more time for cross-project
work that will give them the sort of perspective, and interest, to
make them good TC members.

Doug



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