Nominate a new chairperson for CommComm

[nebrius]

As I mentioned to the other CommComm members privately, and as I detailed in a blog post, I am stepping down as chairperson of CommComm. I fully intend to stay on until a new chairperson has been elected, and I have had a chance to onboard them.

If you are interested in running for this position, please state your interest here. I will be on vacation and without Internet starting Thursday August 24th through Tuesday September 5th.

I would like to propose a nomination deadline of September 8th, following by an election starting Monday September 11th, to be concluded before the September 14th CommComm meeting where we can officially begin the onboarding process for the new chairperson.

It's been an honor working with you all, and I wish you all the best going forward.

[nebrius]

Oh, and if anyone has any questions about the position, please feel free to ask me either here or privately over Twitter DM/email.

[rachelnicole]

Thanks for all the work you've done Bryan, you've been a great help!!!!

I also would like to nominate myself for the position of chairperson of CommComm.

I care v deeply about the community, as it was originally what brought me to wanting to be interested in investing my time in Node to begin with. For the past few years I've been focusing on working on open source projects especially geared towards new users, and have also taken over for @ashleygwilliams as the organizer of Node Together. I really believe that the community is more than just the core contributors, and want to be able to help out more people who are involved, whether that be educators, documentation writers, community organizers, etc. :)

[bnb]

You've done a ton of work for the CommComm in such a short time, Bryan - thank you for all of it. 🙏

I'd also like to nominate myself for the position of chairperson.

Node.js is really how I've gotten started in tech, and it's deeply important to me. From the work I've been able to put in to the Evangelism WG over the last few years, enabling people to come to Node.js and become a part of the community. There is so much ground that Node.js has to cover in terms of community, accessibility, and inclusivity - both small changes, and huge efforts.

There's a lot in the future for Node.js, still - the upcoming Node.js certification, grassroots community efforts like NodeTogether, and the work that can and needs to be done around expanding the openness and community side of the project.

I deeply care about Node.js, and am committed to helping The Community grow as a whole to be an open, safe, and welcoming environment.

[flickz]

Thanks for all the work you've done Bryan. Good look with future endeavor.

[avinassh]

@nebrius Are there are any requirements for this position? Like

• Age
• Contributions to Node
• Previous experience being in similar roles

[RichardLitt]

Deleted at the request of @nebrius.

[benjamingr]

@rachelnicole hey, we don't really know each other too well.

Would you mind explaining what your work at CommComm has involved so far?

I'm ashamed to say, but the only issue I've seen so far was about the CoC. This is probably because in our local community we don't use twitter a lot (stack overflow chat and meetup mostly) so we miss a lot of the public facing activity members of CommComm have.

Things like NodeTogether look really cool! (I was not familiar) I'm looking specifically for what you've done in CommComm here. I realize I don't have a vote here - I'm just curious as a community member.

[rachelnicole]

@benjamingr just like everyone else on the Community Committee, I attend our meetings and participate in discussions that @nebrius had brought to attention for the agenda that week. I also was at the collaborators summit in Berlin.

I don't know if you're wanting any tangential information outside of that, but I've spoken at every Node Interactive that's taken place about various projects (and a lot of other confs, but thats most relevant), prev two Node Summit's on panels about community and I'm deeply invested in bringing new people to Node (totally new programmers, and those from other langs) through interesting projects as an alternative to just talking about enterprise applications.

Right now I'm a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. Previous to that I was a Software Engineer at IBM Watson, and Adobe Behance. I switched from Engineering to Evangelism because I was doing so much with Node and communities in my spare time, that it seemed like the natural progression of things.

I hope that's helpful!

[benjamingr]

@rachelnicole that's very helpful, thank you for taking the time to explain.

[williamkapke]

@nebrius proposed some reasonable deadlines- but we've fallen behind on them. Oops!

• Nominations ended a few days ago.
• Elections were requested to start yesterday.

It looks like we have 2 nominations: @rachelnicole and @bnb

@hackygolucky Hopefully we can look to you to set up the voting ASAP? Not sure how long it would take you, but I suggest we keep voting open for a min of 4 days (the duration @nebrius requested). Let's be specific about the end date and time though.

As this was a resignation, the elected member will serve for the remainder of @nebrius's term.

[hackygolucky]

Question! do members voting want their vote to be transparent? We haven't technically had to have an election before and I wanted to see

1. should members selection be visible?
2. should the election be public vs. something else scoped to the members, such as the commcomm email list?

Once, i know this, I'll set up the vote with a close date and time 4 days after open.

[rachelnicole]

I'm fine with it being public.

[jennwrites]

I'm fine with it being public as well, and was hoping it would be resolved by the end of this week :(

[bnb]

I'm fine with it being public as well.

@hackygolucky For additional context, with regard to 2: do you mean the ability to vote or the ability to see who voted? Pretty sure the latter, but want to make sure I understand the wording correctly 🤔

Given the concern @renrutnnej voiced, I'd be +1 for closing the vote on Friday or Monday.

[williamkapke]

I would like to set the precedent that all votes for elections use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot.

[bnb]

@williamkapke Would love to hear specific reasoning behind that. I have no problem with it being open, but if there is a legitimate reason to use a secret ballot process in the CommComm and other Org groups I am +1.

If there are members who do not feel comfortable voting publicly - or would be +1 for votes to be private - I believe we should respect their wish and have a private vote.

[MylesBorins]

If there are members who do not feel comfortable with a public vote and would like to anonymously voice that concern I would like to make myself available to proxy that. Personally I am +1 on transparency for this

[williamkapke]

@bnb There are several reasons in the wikipedia article I linked. More contextually, some TSC members in the past expressed their discomfort to doing it in the open for those same reasons.

Personally, if it isn't private, I am forced to abstain.

Moreover, why are folks here so interested in knowing each individual choice? This vocal desire to know exactly who your committee mates favored is already feeling threatening.

[gr2m]

I’m okay with making my vote public, too

[rachelnicole]

@williamkapke For me I think either of us would be fine as chair of the committee so I'm not going to take it personally if someone doesn't vote for me? I don't see how it's threatening at all?

[jennwrites]

@williamkapke I'm not comfortable with your assumption of why I'm okay with my vote being public.

I don't care who other people vote for, in the same way that I don't care who knows how I voted.

I do care about moving the process along, and resolving the issue.

I don't understand where any of this thread is vaguely threatening in the slightest.

[refack]

I'm with @williamkapke. While a public vote seems like a more "brave/honest" path, the process of choosing such a process has selection bias. People who don't feel comfortable with voting in a public manner, will likely abstain from voicing their opinion on the openness of the process. In this case IMHO the process should err on the side of caution vs openness.

Plus there is already one member who stated they'll abstain from a public vote:

[hackygolucky]

Okey dokey. I think it's a good point to remember that when folks are sharing their opinions here, they are just that. The individual's opinion. It is one vote(if you are a CommComm member). Yours can be different, and votes are a regular part of process when consensus doesn't occur(and that's common with our work!). We can ask questions to understand their argument. We should not make assumptions. Feelings are valid, even if you do not share them. Please be respectful of that.

So, we have objections to the idea of election voting in public. We can vote on this, if y'all would like, and move forward from there.

Otherwise, my revised recommendation as a compromise: I'm a fan of transparency, but we can have transparency in vote count without exposing an individual's selection for Chair. The venue for vote, regardless, I don't think needs to happen publicly. The process and result, however, should be published. Does this sound good? If we can agree to this revised compromise, we won't need to vote.

[rachelnicole]

@hackygolucky I'd rather not vote on how we vote so I'm fine with that.

[bnb]

@hackygolucky +1.

[jennwrites]

@hackygolucky +1

[bnb]

Removing agenda tag and closing, as the election is closed and we've landed on our new co-chairs 😁