[Foundation-l] Call for ideas for candidates for expert seats (of the WMF Board)

Mon Aug 25 07:34:01 UTC 2008

(Note that I am not writing this in the name of the Nominating
Committee, but personally.)

We (NomCom) don't have a lot of time to finish the first phase of the
job: to make some kind of the short list (maybe ~20 names) for
contacting potential Board members. The deadline is September 15th.
So, whatever idea you have for the names, please let us know ASAP. You
may send names to some of us (see our names at [1]).

I am asking you here because...

- All of us are well introduced in persons who are globally known. You
may propose some of such persons, of course; but, it is not so (badly)
needed, while it may be useful: we may forget someone.

- I was thinking about persons from Serbia. There are not a lot of
such persons which I may propose (between 0 and 5 at the most,
depending of my criteria: am I too restrictive or not). I may propose
maybe 5 more persons from former Yugoslavia and this is it. Note,
also, that 6 persons are not able to cover the whole world. Countries
of our origin and residence are: US, China, Germany, UK, Belgium and
Serbia. The rest of the world is not covered by in depth knowledge of
the society and prominent persons. So, please, think about persons
from your country/region and send to some of us proposal with a couple
of sentences of explanation why do you think that that person is the
right to be a member of the WMF Board.

During the IRC meeting we made a scratch for the selection criteria
[2]. It may be useful to you, too, in finding the right names.

In short: if you think that you are able to propose the right person,
this is the right time to do it.

Also, this is the first process which involves two community members
for the NomCom. The next year the same process will be repeated. So,
it would be good that communities [and Wikimedians personally, too]
start to think about proposing Board members to the next NomCom *now*
and to be prepared for the next year.

Note that we are treating names of the candidates as confidential
(unlike the criteria). Because of that the best idea is not to use a
public list (in this case: foundation-l) for suggesting the names.
(But, I think that we should think how to make process more open; but,
again, this time we don't have a lot of time and I hope that the next
year process would be much more open and transparent. After we finish
with work on proposals, I think that transparency foundations of the
NomCom should be our next important task.)

[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee
[2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria