Table of Contents

Date

04 Apr 2017

Attendees

Actions items from previous meetings

• Former user (Deleted): come back to Former user (Deleted) with feedback on third point of proposed revisions to Desktop Wrapper WG charter
• Former user (Deleted): work with Maurizio Pillitu on a gap analysis of what would be required to CII certify / badge the symphony-java-client
  • Present that gap analysis at a future ESCo meeting
• Gabriele Columbro: write up some points on trust in transparent communities, with a particular focus on why identity, archival / auditability, and addressability are important for the voting system
• Former user (Deleted): work with Peter Monks on a proposed refinement to the project lifecycle.
  • MVP: ensure that each project currently in the portfolio unambiguously fits into a single state
• Former user (Deleted): setup ESCo advisors with ESCo Bot, once the code has stabilised to an appropriate point
• Former user (Deleted): enhance ESCo Bot with email integration, specifically for official vote recording, and to support Former user (Deleted)
• Maurizio Pillitu: create CONTRIB for legal requirements "hello world" example project

Agenda

Meeting notes

• Quorum is achieved
• Staggered elections:
  • Aaron: Lawrence previously circulated a proposal to stagger elections of ESCo leads, basically in order to prevent there being a run off between existing members.  Board leads are expected to represent the board, and it would be harmful for factions of the board to support candidates against each other.  I took that conversation offline with Lawrence to take into account lining up the ESCo elections with board & member schedules to consolidate action events so that we're demanding as little attention of the board & members as we can.  This is the current ESCo election schedule:
    • 
  • This stacks up a lot of elections against each other - it doesn't stagger board and ESCo leads against each other, and that's the problem we're trying to solve.  Note that Silver and At-large ESCo leads haven't been elected yet as the minimum thresholds haven't been reached.  After some brainstorming on this, the proposed staggering structure that Lawrence and I struck upon is this:
    • 
  • The member lead elections would occur at the member's meeting, staggering ESCo advisor elections in Q3 and Q4 of even / odd years to avoid running advisor elections against a lead or another advisor election.  One purpose of this is to spread these out so people aren't running against each other, and another goal is to line things up with existing events so we're not taxing people's attention too much.  The board leads are up for re-election this year (May - John & Lawrence), and the Membership & Governance Committee has been briefed on ESCo's proposal to keep the composition the same (re-elect existing members).  What we're proposing to get to the new schedule is:
    • 
  • Lawrence: if you were to compare this to the original proposal, the main difference is that one of these board leads would be elected into a 2.5 year term rather than a 2 year term (the previous maximum) - this is a one-off situation.  The reason for this bigger spread is that these elections are now spread across different years.  Looking at the options we have, this leads to a better staggering pattern long term, with a one-off problem (one 2.5 year term).  I'm convinced this is the best of the options available to us, but want to make sure there's some understanding about this one-time extension of the term limit.  It's a price we only have to pay once.
  • Aaron: the reason for the difference is that the original proposal had board leads elected in the same year, different quarters.  This proposal staggers them across different years, and we think this is a better long term staggering.
  • Laurence: and doing the member lead elections at the member's meeting is a better outcome too.
  • Aaron: so that's the only part of this proposal that needs to be acted on now.  It's arguably the only part that can be acted on unilaterally by the ESCo (who set their own term limits) - it's our position that the ESCo can decide to stagger things this way (perhaps presenting to the board for their blessing).  Because there's no member lead to be elected for another year (those terms started last May), we don't have to do anything about staggering the member leads until next year.  We're going to wait and make that staggering proposal at a later board meeting.  The only proposal we want to take to the board is the proposal to stagger the board lead elections according to this transition plan.  Next year when both member leads are set to be re-elected we'd have one of them elected to a 2 year term (as normal - the even year member).  The other one (randomly selected) would either have a 3 year term, or alternatively (and we can work it out as we go) a 1 year term for the one-off transition period.  For ESCo advisors, nothing is needed right away:
    • 
  • Note that there are no term limits set for advisors right now, but if everyone is in agreement that 2 year is appropriate, one of the terms would be shortened slightly.  Questions?
  • James: working in banking it's weird seeing anyone thinking we'd be in the same job in 2 years.  
  • Aaron: these seats are held by individuals, not companies, so none of this requires anyone to stay in the same job.
  • Lawrence: and I'm an example of that.
  • Aaron: Lawrence and I also talked about not taxing our members unnecessarily, and also ESCo advisors longer term - they're non-voting seats and we had a little bit of trouble getting members to engage in the process - perhaps because there's less concretely at stake.  We talked about how to deal with that in the future, now that we have the voting staggered.  One possibility is to make all advisor positions appointed by the ESCo itself, with the members lever being voting for the leads.  This is all long term thinking that doesn't need any action right now.  Also, as an accident of history, the Gold Directors are elected in January and May of odd years, so they're staggered very inconveniently - this is too much for the gold members to deal with in the span of 5 months.  Ultimately we'll have a similar staggering proposal for the Gold Directors.  But again we don't have to deal with that this year.  But taking all this together, we're trying to solve multiple problems:
    • Avoid run-offs between candidates
    • Keep the number of elections to a minimum
    • Line everything up with the current board & member meeting schedule
  • Aaron: can we have a vote on whether to adopt this as the ESCo's view to be communicated to the board as an "advise and consent" measure?
    • Lawrence:
      • VOTE: to adopt the board lead staggering proposal that was just presented by Aaron:
      • James Turck: +1
      • John Stecher: +1
      • Lawrence Miller: +1
      • Michael Harmon: +1
      • Frank Tarsillo: 0, due to non-attendance
      • Nicholas Kolba: +1 (advisory vote)
      • RESULT: The motion passed.
      • Aaron to work on next steps.
• Frank joined, Mike left
• DB / interoperability update:
  • Lawrence: Mike and I had a call with DB yesterday, and will speak further the week of the Foundation board meeting.  Positive progress from last discussion - we're looking forward to having fingers into the code pretty soon, then a productive discussion at the Foundation board meeting.  We understand it's been socialised pretty broadly with other members, which is a positive step.  That's not happening via the working groups, but at least the engagement is happening - they're out there talking to other people.
• AOB:
  
  • Frank: I'm going to contribute the voting bot - I'll create a CONTRIB request shortly.  I've been distracted by SJC work, but looking to publish that ASAP so people can see that work.  The email to chat integration is still in progress.
  • Frank: Peter you and I need to sync up on the lifecycle stuff.
  • Peter: I've created agenda placeholders through the end of the month - I know Frank, Aaron and Mau have all been active in adding to the agendas and I'd encourage all of you to do the same.  If there aren't any items I'll try to find some based on what I'm seeing in the Foundation, but that's obviously a limited view.  It's your agenda - don't be shy about adding to it!
  • Peter: Aaron and I will be sharing Working Group and Project metrics respectively later this week, ahead of the April 19th BoD meeting.  Gab has asked us to just report on calendar Q1, so we won't need a second round of updates closer to the April 19th BoD meeting (as we've done in the past).  Question: who from ESCo will be constructing the narrative and presenting Foundation health to the BoD?  ...  <no answer> I'll follow up offline on the mailing list.
  • Peter: hackathon coming up this Thursday - I'll send out a summary / recap for ESCo after the event. 

Action items

• Aaron Williamson: identify and execute on next steps for board lead election staggering proposal
• Peter Monks: add DB / interop placeholder to April 25th ESCo call
• Frank Tarsillo: create CONTRIB JIRA for ESCo voting bot
• Peter Monks: ask ESCo to identify the member who will be constructing the Foundation health slides and presenting them to the board at the April 19th board meeting