October 28, 2009, 1:42 pm
Yes, it’s that time of year again. Rain is falling, another Fedora release is about to conquer the known world, and volunteers everywhere are busy preparing their ideal Fedora Mission Statements to captivate the electorate. Fedora’s Winter Election is upon us.
The first order of business is to find an Election Coordinator. For the last 2 election cycles I have volunteered for this role, with the able assistance of John Rose (inode0), and Thorsten Leemhuis (thl) and others. This cycle, I would like someone besides myself from the Fedora community to volunteer as Election Coordinator. Raise your hand, don’t be shy! If you have been harboring a secret (or public) list of all my mistakes, here’s your chance to set things right!
As Election Coordinator, you will have the opportunity to:
- propose, get buy-in, and finalize the schedule
- schedule forums (traditionally IRC and with FUDCon Toronto, Live)
- seek forum moderators
- if desired, gather questions from the electorate, distribute to the candidates, gather and post their answers.
- coordinate with Infrastructure to be sure the elections app is ready.
Second, a schedule will need to be set. At the Board meeting this week, we agreed that it would be nice to hold in-person forums at FUDCon Toronto, December 5-7, for those who can attend. Our election rules require us to complete the election within 30 days of the Fedora 12 release, so must end by December 17. Per Nigel Jones, author of
our voting system, most of the votes cast were within the first 2-3 days, so running it Dec 8-17 would be sufficient.
Before these, we typically hold nominations for 2 weeks, and a week for IRC Town Halls to be scheduled. Thorsten also requested after the last election that we have a few days between end of nominations and beginning of the town halls, to allow time for candidates to be given a set of questions, and sufficent time to answer.
Third, we need to be sure of all the committees who are holding an election. The committee chairs can assist here. I believe that the Board, FESCo, and Ambassadors are electing members, and that the Fedora 13 naming election will happen too. Are there any I missed?
Feedback on prior elections, ideas for how to improve this cycle, and volunteers for Election Coordinator all welcome on the fedora-advisory-board list.
