Category: Elections

Daniel Vainsecher, leader of the Elections team, has announced the timeline and process for the 2007 elections of the Squeak Foundation Board:

Starting today [Sunday, 28th January], and for the next 2 weeks (until 18th February ’07), candidates for the Squeak board are invited to announce themselves on this mailing list.
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In particular, when applying, candidates are encouraged to mention their background, general reasons for running, and particular plans if they get elected. Other candidates and all squeakers are invited to pose additional questions.
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For 2 weeks starting from the 18th, prospective voters are asked to make sure they are registered. Remember that the basic criterion for voting is having a Squeak People account that is validated at least to the Apprentice level. This is also a good time to talk to other Squeaker communities and get them involved.
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The voters list will be finalized on the 3rd of March, and the CIVS election started. The election will run for 3 days, and the results announced on March 7th, 2007.

The News Team will closely follow the whole elections process.

It’s that time again! Time to pick our SqueakFoundation Leaders. Can you believe a year has gone by already. There have been some significant achievements in the last year. The most notable change is the progress that has been made to change our license. The community has been working hard to identify the authors of Squeak. With the help of Alan Kay talking to Steve Jobs we finally have an open source license to start from. Viewpoints has an OS version and hopefully soon, so will we.

The foundation itself was off to a very rocky start. It appeared to many that the board was not functioning properly. There was very little communication from the board. No indication of what issues were being considered or what progress was being made. Things seemed to change once, what must have been, arguments on the board bubbled over onto Squeak-dev. After that point it appeared that Craig began to organize an agenda, and a report back to the community. This concept which many had suggested and I’m sure was eventually supported by the entire board was a major advancement. I would strongly urge whoever is running the next board to continue with this framework.

As Daniel has pointed out I was disappointed with last years elections. It seems to me that there is a lot that needs to be done to help this community. There were a number of goals set out in the original board that were not addressed either during the election or afterwards. Much of what should be done is still left to do.

What I’d like to propose is that we build up a list of questions that we will submit to every candidate. Those questions and responses will be published on the Weekly Squeak. This way we can infer a policy statement from those that are running.

The other major drawback that I saw from the last election is that the positions taken by the candidates were not supported or rejected by the highly respected members of our community. There was no debate about who should lead, who supports who, and why. For many in this community it would be very beneficial for some leaders to step up and support candidates, foundation goals and positions.

The community in general is polite and nobody wants to support one friend over another friend. That is understandable, but by not taking a stand one way or the other we leave a vacuum. Debate and supporting your candidates is very important to this community. We should have a vigorous but civil debate, for only that level of participation will make this community stronger.

Your comments are welcome, your participation is crucial, the direction of our community is in your hands. Please participate in the discussion and please VOTE!