With the call for nominations for Group 2 elections opening on Saturday the 19th of January 2019, I would like to encourage those who would be interested in being nominated to come forward and state their manifestos publicly before the nomination round begins.

I would like to clarify that by saying this, I mean the person who wishes to be nominated, not people who wish to nominate another person (see motion #2018/098).

The reason I ask this is that the most often heard statement from volunteers across the community during nominations is “I don’t know who wants to be nominated”.  By encouraging those with an interest in taking up a Department Coordinator or Officer role to come forward before the nomination process will help to put an end to this and let the community know who is willing to consider a role before they cast their nominations.

This is in no way intended to stop people nominating people who have not come forward before the nomination round.  Anyone is free to nominate anyone, for any role. With that said, as mentioned above, the declarations of interest should only come directly from the person wishing to be nominated. This will avoid undue pressure being applied to someone who is either only considering taking up a role or who have never even thought of it.

Sitting on the board of Open Source Matters is a responsibility and one that should not be taken lightly.  Officer roles have even more responsibility than Department Coordinator roles and in the case of President and Treasurer come with a Fiscal Responsibility attached.  I strongly urge those who are thinking of coming forward to take this into account and those thinking of nominating someone to talk to their potential nominee before doing so for the same reason.

Last year saw an Officer drop out outside the Election Cycle, this caused the organisation to go into a loop of elections which caused fatigue across the whole community.  Sometimes things change, commitments come out of nowhere and people find that they are unable to commit the time they had when they took the position, this is fine and we have a leave of absence policy in place for these times. Those accepting nomination should be sure that they can, to the best of their knowledge, commit to the minimum expected term on the board of 6 months plus the 12 weeks transition period either side (6 before, 6 after, although as long as handover is completed the 6 weeks after could be shortened if need be). This will ensure we only have 2 rounds of elections per year and can free ourselves up to do more instead of voting more.