2006 Steering Committee Election
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The election has already happened. Results can be found at 2006 Steering Committee Results.
Contents |
Introduction
The OpenAjax Alliance will elect its initial Steering Committee during the week of October 2-6.
The first six companies to sign the Members Agreement (IBM, Mozilla, Eclipse, Laszlo, Zend and Zimbra), acting as an Interim Steering Committee, have defined the following process in order to achieve a fair and efficient election.
Definitions
Member - A company or organization that has signed the Members Agreement and had its application for membership accepted. (Note: When the first six companies signed the Members Agreement initially, they became Members upon signing. All other companies become Members at the latter of: (a) signing the Members Agreement and (b) approval by the existing Members (or the Steering Committee, once it is formed).)
Members Each Have One Vote
Per the terms of the Members Agreement, each Member has a single vote. (Note: each "vote" consists of a list of candidates that the Member would prefer to see on the Steering Committee in ranked order of preference.)
Because most Members have multiple people who participate in Alliance activities, each Member must identify a primary contact person for their activities in OpenAjax Alliance (see Members Agreement Instructions). The primary contact person, or a surrogate designated by the primary contact person via official email to [1], does the voting on behalf of each given Member.
This Election: Two-Year and One-Year Seats
For this election only, four of the seats on the Steering Committee are for a 2-year term, whereas the other three seats are for a 1-year term. In subsequent elections, all seats will be for a 2-year term.
This approach allows for ongoing staggered election, where each year roughly half of the Steering Committee is up for re-election.
As a consequence, this election requires a process for deciding which members of the Steering Committee have 1-year terms and which have 2-year terms. In order to simplify the election process, the 4 top vote-getters will have 2-year terms and the next 3 top vote-getters will have 1-year terms.
Nominations for the Steering Committee
Each Member may nominate themselves as a candidate for the Steering Committee. The process for nominating yourself is by adding an entry to the wiki page for nominations: 2006 Steering Committee Nominations. The top of that wiki page provides instructions how to nominate your company.
Voting deadlines
All voting will be done via email. Here is the schedule:
- Friday September 29 at midnight (US-Pacific time) - Nominations are closed. Any votes for nominees that were added to the wiki page after that date/time will not be counted.
- (On or before) Tuesday October 3 at midnight (US-Pacific time)
- An original signed Members Agreement must have been delivered to Jon Ferraiolo at the address shown on Members Agreement Instructions. (Or hand-delivered if you can find Jon in person.) If the agreement is not delivered by October 3, then you cannot vote.
- All votes must have been successfully transmitted (via email) by this date/time.
- Wednesday October 4 - The Interim Steering Committee will tabulate the votes.
- Thursday October 5 - At the start of the face-to-face meeting, the new Steering Committee will be announced.
How to vote
Voting is done via email. Send your votes to [2] (a restricted, private email group that is archived). Voting instructions and a voting template can be found at: 2006 Steering Committee Nominations.
How votes will be counted and winners selected
Votes will be counted and winners selected using the Single Transferable Voting (STV) approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote), the same vote counting method used by Eclipse Foundation. STV is designed to handle multiple winner elections in a manner that promotes proportional representation. We will use the same open source software from Voting Solutions as used by Eclipse Foundation to count the ballots and determine the winners.
The top 4 winners get 2-year terms. The other 3 get 1-year terms.
Any ties (which are highly unlikely given the process) are decided by a random approach (such as a coin toss) supervised by at least 4 members of the IRC (or their designated proxies, but at least 4 people have to supervise).
Note that we will reject votes and nominees from any organizations that have not submitted appropriate signed Members Agreements by the relevent election deadlines.
Voting Confidentiality
Under the assumption that some Members will want to cast their votes on a confidential basis, the Interim Steering Committee will keep the votes confidential (but of course will announce the election results).
If any Member cares to dispute the results of the election, then the Steering Committee will make a judgment call about allowing that Member to have visibility to the email archive that contains the votes.
