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 p ro > 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)? > The current candidacy essay would now be posted in the campaign period, > rather than at the time of nomination, and should exclude the sort of > biographical information that is currently the most important piece for many > people. Keeping anonymity will be difficult, and will preclude the use of > email for posting positions and responses, since email identifies the sender. > So perhaps candidates could forward their posts to the election officials, > who will post them for the candidates, identifying them by number only. The > voting form will only list the candidate numbers, so the end result will be > people casting votes for the candidates whose platform most matches what they > want to see in the TC, and who have best answered any questions raised by > others. > > My feeling is that the result would be very different than the current > process. My question, then, is whether that would be a good thing? It would > require more work from the candidates and especially the election officials, > so we should make sure that the goal is worth it. Do we want everyone to have > an equal chance to serve on the TC, or should those who have earned name > recognition by their excellent work in other parts of OpenStack continue to > have an advantage? > > [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink > [1] http://blog.leafe.com/bias/ > > -- Ed Leafe > > > > > > > __________________________________________________________________________ > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev > __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
