December 2010 Fedora Election Plan

[inode0]

The first thing we need is a fixed schedule for the elections. Since
the Board historically has either created this schedule or approved it
I think it might be good in the future for the Board to just create
this schedule and publish it in advance of upcoming elections so the
Board isn't waiting for someone else to volunteer to do it.

Here is a proposed schedule for your approval and publication with or
without modifications. Just to get the ball rolling since we are now
getting really short on time to get it done within 30 days of the
release.

October 23-31 Nominations Open/Collect Questions for Questionnaire*
November 1 Publish Questionnaire*
November 1-10 Organize/Schedule Town Halls
November 2-8 Candidates Respond to Questionnaires*
November 10 Publish Questionnaire Responses*
November 13-19 Town Halls
November 20-28 Voting Period
* depends on someone volunteering to do the work, otherwise there
won't be questionnaires

The questionnaires I think entirely should depend on someone
volunteering to process them. We need to ask the community for a
volunteer and if we don't get one drop them from the schedule.

We should also request a volunteer to organize/schedule the town
halls. I'm available to help them with information about how we've
done that in the past. There are really two parts to this task. Once
candidates in the three elections are known scheduling of the town
halls can begin. This is normally a difficult task. Getting 5-10 busy
people together multiple times in one week is just hard. Given past
history I would recommend doing only one town hall for each election
but possibly lengthening it a bit to maybe 90 minutes. We normally
seem to have 20-30 people attend town halls live and when there have
been two per election that group of 20-30 people has largely been the
same group at both town halls. Once the town halls have been scheduled
then moderators for each need to be arranged. This is normally a very
easy task as I've normally had more volunteers to be moderators than
I've had slots to fill.

What to do if no one volunteers to organize/schedule the town halls?
My suggestion is that if that happens then each governance body should
do this scheduling however it sees fit for the town hall(s) for its
candidates.

John