Election nomination feedback: time commitments

[Justin W. Flory]

Hi Ben! I hope you're doing well. :)

I wanted to suggest adding expected time commitments for each elected
body of Fedora; however, I wasn't sure where to deliver this feedback on
the election process and would appreciate your guidance on where to
share this suggestion publicly.

In the past week, I tried to nominate four people (not employed by Red
Hat) for either a Council or Mindshare Committee seat. Each person I
reached out to was unsure of what is expected of them in the role (i.e.
specific responsibilities) and how much time commitment is expected to
be an active and engaged member of the elected group. I lacked current
domain knowledge from how each group operates and what is a reasonable
expectation of time commitment. Because this was unclear, each person
declined the nomination.

I read Brian's blog post, "Contributors are Empowered When They Know the
Process", and I felt this is one area where contributors are missing the
"domain knowledge" of what elected bodies in Fedora do:

https://community.redhat.com/blog/2019/05/contributors-are-empowered-when-th...

There is some documentation for each elected body, but I think we could
do better to engage more people from more places. This seems to affect
FESCo less than Council and Mindshare. FESCo currently has seven
nominations, Council has two, and Mindshare has three. It could be
interesting to dig deeper if FESCo does anything differently.

I also think doing this well helps diversity and inclusion because it
enables more people to enter Fedora leadership positions who may not
traditionally be represented in those groups. Like Brian's blog post
mentions, when people understand how things work and what policies
exist, it makes it easier for them to take the big leap. Fedora
engineering and mindshare efforts benefit when there are more ideas from
diverse backgrounds / use cases at the table.

I wasn't sure where to direct this feedback and I would prefer to make
it public for others to weigh in on too. Let me know if there is a
specific Pagure repo I should file an issue against or if there is
somewhere else I can share this feedback.

Thanks for your time!

[Ben Cotton]

Hi Justin,

This is a great idea. You're right that the time commitments and
responsibilities aren't exactly made clear. My suggestion would be to
open a ticket with each of the groups requesting that they provide
suitable language for inclusion on the relevant nomination page.
Alternatively, the could put it in their docs and I can link to that
section from the nomination pages.

[Amita Sharma]

Hey,

Thanks Justin for bringing up this fair point and thanks Ben for your
response.

I think it will be nice and more visible if for this time, we do a magazine
post too for the clear responsibilities and time commitments along with
inclusion point made clear for the roles for which election nominations are
open.

Putting that in doc will help in long term.

Regards,
Amita

On Wed, May 22, 2019, 10:50 PM Ben Cotton  wrote:
> Hi Justin,
>
> This is a great idea. You're right that the time commitments and
> responsibilities aren't exactly made clear. My suggestion would be to
> open a ticket with each of the groups requesting that they provide
> suitable language for inclusion on the relevant nomination page.
> Alternatively, the could put it in their docs and I can link to that
> section from the nomination pages.
>
> --
> Ben Cotton
> He / Him / His
> Fedora Program Manager
> Red Hat
> TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis