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

Andy Powell andy.powell at eduserv.org.uk
Sun Mar 2 08:57:14 UTC 2008


David,
if there's anything we can do to help move things along from a UK (or
even UK educational) perspective don't hestitate to get in touch.

I don't have any concrete suggestions to offer at this stage, and
appreciate that our sphere of influence is very small in the global
scheme of things, but if there is anything that we could usefully do,
e.g. sponsorship for meetings in the UK or whatever, I'd be happy to
consider it.

Best,

Andy
--
Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
http://efoundations.typepad.com/
andy.powell at eduserv.org.uk
+44 (0)1225 474319 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: board-bounces at openid.net 
> [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf Of David Recordon
> Sent: 29 February 2008 06:39
> To: board at openid.net
> Subject: [OpenID board] Membership (or lack thereof) and 
> Board Elections
> 
> 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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