Appointment of Board Members.

[inode0]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Currently the Fedora board is made of 9 members with 4 of them being
>> appointed. What are the benefits of this arrangement, and is there a
>> path where the Board could move to being completely elected?
>
> Appointments allow for the selection of
> individuals/leaders/experts/liasons in areas which are anticipated to
> be emerging/critical/focal/overlooked in the upcoming year or to
> otherwise balance out the composition of the Board to broaden the
> board's onboard experience pool.

Curious no one on the board suggested this as a benefit during the
meeting but I can certainly accept it as one.

> In my experience, the appointments are effectively done by Board
> consensus based on FPL proposals. If of the _elected_ members of the
> board gave push back about a specific appointment that was proposed by
> the FPL, I would expect it to result in some review and most likely
> another choice.
>
> I think there is value continuing that practise, and perhaps
> formalizing the role the sitting Board members play in accepting the
> FPL proposals for appointments. But there is certainly room to reduce
> the number of appointed seats down from four to three or two. I would
> keep two appointed seats around.

While the reasons I gave during the meeting, things that I and others
view as negative impacts from the current arrangement, have been
omitted from the discussion here I do want to say that I'm not against
4 appointed seats in the abstract. The issues I identified flow more
from the concentration of appointment power than from the appointments
themselves. While I doubt they would want to, if FESCo and FAmSCo each
appointed someone they felt would bring value to board and the FPL
appointed the other two that would go a long way toward alleviating
the problems as well. (I'm not suggesting this, just making a point.)

> But instead of moving some appointed seats to elected seats.. what if
> you just chop off one or two seats completely and drop the Board down
> to 7 official members plus the FPL. I'm really not sure our elections
> process can really handle more elected seats. I'd much rather see an
> elections process that can sustain up to at least twice the number
> candidates than their are seats. Adding more seats does not mean we
> get more high quality candidates standing up for election.

This had a lot of initial appeal to me when I first read it but the
downside is that it would remove opportunities for newer folks to
participate. There does seem to be a fair number of one and done board
members (folks joining the board only to leave after a single term).
My impression from the ones who have spoken in public about their
reasons is that being on the board is a fair amount of work and
involves a fair amount of frustration. I'm curious if they would offer
an opinion on whether they think the board would function better if it
had fewer people?

John