[OpenID board] Membership (or lack thereof) and Board Elections

David Recordon drecordon at sixapart.com
Fri Feb 29 06:39:23 UTC 2008


Stemming from other conversations...I'd have to agree that so far  
we've really done very little to push for membership in the OpenID  
Foundation.  Today the benefits are around electing the Foundation's  
board and approving specification working groups, though they're not  
articulated anywhere nor have we actually built the applications to  
make these benefits a reality!

I also think that the local chapters of the OpenID Foundation will (or  
at least should) weigh somehow on community board elections.  The  
community board should be balanced to represent OpenID communities  
around the World and finding a way to have local chapters help achieve  
this feels imperative.

I want to start out by saying that I completely agree that we need to  
hold elections for the community board seats so that they are  
officially elected by the community!  That said, I am truly worried  
that the OpenID Foundation's membership is not actually in a position  
to do that yet.  Rather, it seems that as we still are not focusing on  
building the membership base, even if we hold elections in April/May  
(Mike's policy document was awesome btw) *the outcome still won't  
represent the community*.  In fact, we might be in a worse position  
where 20 members elect the board members for one or two years which is  
then seen as being representative of the community.  While it can be  
argued that even 20 members electing the community board is better  
than 0 members electing it, I'd much rather see us in a situation  
where even if it is another six months down the road we have 500  
members electing the board!

Right now, the OpenID ecosystem is moving and growing faster than the  
Foundation or its board!  I would strongly advocate that we focus our  
energy today on making the Foundation match the growing community (as  
we did yesterday in Japan) before locking down the board for another  
two years; nearly the entire lifespan of OpenID itself.

My $0.02,
--David




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