[OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion

DeWitt Clinton dewitt at google.com
Tue Nov 4 21:02:31 UTC 2008


I like the sentiment of this, Drummond.

However, (and this also addresses Dick's question), I do have two remaining
reservations regarding adding corporate seats before the community election:

The first is that in order to preserve a community majority (which we
absolutely must do) we would need to self-appoint community
representatives.  That feels ... wrong.    But maybe I'm being oversensitive
here.

The second reservation is that I feel we should have a plan in place for the
full five new corporate board members (and backup choices), rather than
cherry picking one a time.  The goal would be to create a diverse balance
between vendors, consumers, international, domestic, etc, which is hard to
do with a coherent strategy in place.

-DeWitt


On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Drummond Reed
<drummond.reed at cordance.net>wrote:

>  I am totally in favor of any nomination process for community board
> members that will reach the maximum audience and produce the maximum
> participation. I don't know what the specifics are on the nomination process
> as supported by the new election tools that Mike referred to – if they can
> do the full job, that's great.
>
>
>
> RE holding an election, I strongly agree that we should announce an
> election as one of the principal drivers for a membership drive. I see no
> reason not to decide on this at next Monday's board meeting, announce it at
> IIW, and schedule the election for no more than 30 days out after IIW. We
> could announce that the election will be complete by mid-December and the
> new board will be seated starting Jan. 1 2009. Fresh slate for a new year.
>
>
>
> Also IMHO of this should slow down acceptance of new corporate board
> members – we should take action on that ASAP.
>
>
>
> =Drummond
>
>
>   ------------------------------
>
> *From:* board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net] *On
> Behalf Of *DeWitt Clinton
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 04, 2008 11:46 AM
>
> *To:* board at openid.net
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion
>
>
>
> To be clear, I'm very comfortable adding new corporate members.  I voted
> with the consensus on that one.
>
> -DeWitt
>
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Dick Hardt <dick.hardt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I understand the logic of not self-selecting community board seats -- and
> saying we are going to have an election in a few weeks likely will drive
> membership given the recent OpenID awareness.
>
>
>
> I don't understand why you are uncomfortable adding new corporate board
> members. Would you elaborate?
>
>
>
> -- Dick
>
>
>
> On 4-Nov-08, at 12:21 PM, DeWitt Clinton wrote:
>
>
>
>  I remain uncomfortable adding any new board members, corporate or
> otherwise, until we hold the election.
>
> Admittedly, back around Feb/March this year I was vocal about wanting us to
> have a larger membership base before holding elections.  A membership drive
> was one way to do that.  Another was my suggestion to drop membership fees.
>
> But now I'm reversing my earlier position.  (Had I known the election would
> be pushed all the way into 2009 waiting for a membership drive, then I
> wouldn't have taken that position to begin with.)
>
> So I recommend we just go ahead and hold the election now.  Worst case, we
> have a board that represents a smaller membership than we'd like.  I'd still
> prefer that over self-selecting new community board members.
>
> -DeWitt
>
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:52 AM, Dick Hardt <dick.hardt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It will be a while before we can have a real election.
>
>
>
> We agreed we would finish our messaging so that we could then market to the
> membership so that it is clear the value of membership. Then we can have
> nominations, then we can vote.
>
>
>
> We are still a little ways from having the messaging done. A marketing
> drive and nomination process likely will take a couple weeks each at least.
> We are minimum a couple months from having an election unfortunately.
>
>
>
> -- Dick
>
>
>
> On 4-Nov-08, at 11:09 AM, DeWitt Clinton wrote:
>
>
>
>  Rather than do it this way, why don't we simply start an open nomination
> process (i.e., not nominations made by the board) and schedule a real
> community election, as voted in by the members?
>
> -DeWitt
>
>  On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:04 AM, Drummond Reed <
> drummond.reed at cordance.net> wrote:
>
> +1 to Snorri's nomination – his work speaks for itself.
>
>
>
> =Drummond
>
>
>   ------------------------------
>
> *From:* board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net] *On
> Behalf Of *David Recordon
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 04, 2008 9:42 AM
> *To:* board at openid.net
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion
>
>
>
> If we're in nomination mode, then I'd also like to nominate Snorri to join
> as a community board member (if he is willing to accept that nomination).
>  Snorri has done amazing community work internationally which should be
> directly supported by the Foundation.
>
>
>
> On Nov 4, 2008, at 11:38 AM, Drummond Reed wrote:
>
>
>
> +1 to all Brian's points here. I want to clarify again that my objection
> last week was not to moving forward on this – I am very supportive of adding
> additional corporate board members immediately -- it was only to the
> difficulty of closing what turned out to be a contentious issue via an email
> vote.
>
>
>
> I am all for holding a vote this week if we want to call a meeting. Worst
> case we could hold the vote at the BOD meeting next Monday afternoon at IIW.
> (Have we set an exact time/location for that meeting? Will there be dial-in
> so all board members can participate if they are not at IIW in person?)
>
>
>
> Also, in terms of community board members, I would like to nominate Brian
> Kissel to join as a community board member (if he is willing to accept that
> nomination). I'd move for that vote to be held at the same time so he could
> join the board at the same time as the new corporate board members.
>
>
>
> =Drummond
>
>
>    ------------------------------
>
> *From:* board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net<board-bounces at openid.net>
> ] *On Behalf Of *Brian Kissel
> *Sent:* Monday, November 03, 2008 4:47 PM
> *To:* board at openid.net
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion
>
>
>
> +1 with Dick on additional corporate members.  I've had conversations with
> BBC (Zac Bjelogrlic, Dirk-willem Van.gulik ) and PayPal (Andrew Nash) and
> know that both organizations would both like to join.  I don't know who else
> in on the list of possible new members, but if we have up to 5 corporate
> spots to fill and these two firms are willing to make a commitment of time
> and dollars, I think we should not delay.
>
>
>
> BBC has already shown their leadership by hosting the Content Provider
> Advisory Committee meeting in NYC several weeks ago.  They've also OpenID
> enabled RadioPop and are looking at additional properties to roll out.
> They've offered to work with NPR (who was also at the NYC session) to see if
> we can get BBC, NPR, PBS, and CBC to collaborate on OpenID enablement
> initiatives.  And in any case, we need some large representative RPs on the
> BOD.  As I've said before, I think media companies are a next logical
> adopter of OpenID, so would welcome BBC's membership.
>
>
>
> PayPal would also be great because they have a lot of experience in
> managing phishing and general security infrastructure and represent the
> perspective of merchants and payment infrastructure providers, which we need
> represented on the BOD if we want to continue to expand the applicability
> and value of OpenID beyond user generated content access.
>
>
>
> I don't know if these are the companies we're thinking about voting on near
> term, but if so, I would strongly endorse their membership.  I also agree
> with Dick that getting the funding commitment from these two companies in
> uncertain financial times is critical and will actually help with hiring the
> new ED and coming up with a reasonable budget for the various initiatives
> we'll want to undertake in 2009.  For those that didn't see Nat Sakimura's
> announcement about OpenID Japan<http://openid.net/2008/11/03/openid-japan-launches-with-32-member-companies/>,
> they are making great progress and we need to have equally compelling
> aspirations.
>
>
>
> With respect to community membership, JanRain would certainly welcome the
> opportunity to contribute as a BOD member, but we'll continue to participate
> via my membership on the Marketing and Customer Research Committee
> regardless.
>
>
> We are working with Research Media to get the OpenID membership polling
> solution working this week and the BOD election system working next week.
> Regardless of that, I don't think we should wait on the BOD vote the two
> additional corporate members.
>
>
>
> There is a lot of good buzz going on right now with the Microsoft and
> Google announcements.  If we could also announce these two new corporate BOD
> members at IIW, that we can continue to build on that momentum.
>
>
>
> So, IMHO, we should do the vote on the 2 additional corporate sponsors
> right now (assuming they are still willing) and finalize them this week.  If
> we want to wait on community members, that's fine with me.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Brian
>
> *==============*
>
> *Brian Kissel*
>
> *Cell: 503.866.4424*
>
> *Fax: 503.296.5502*
>
>
>
> *From:* board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net<board-bounces at openid.net>
> ] *On Behalf Of *Dick Hardt
> *Sent:* Monday, November 03, 2008 3:54 PM
> *To:* board at openid.net
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion
>
>
>
> I don't see any advantage to the coupling of hiring an ED and bringing on
> new board members. Any ED is going to look at the risk of getting paid.
> Bringing in money before hand is a good sign. In the current economic
> climate, making a donation to a Foundation is going to come under increased
> scrutiny.
>
>
>
> The bylaws allow the board to appoint temporary community board members as
> need be -- something we would want to do in case someone needs to resign for
> some reason.
>
>
>
> Only bringing on corporate members one at elections does not serve us well.
> We have a product, which is membership, and we should remove barriers to
> selling it rather then raising it -- and requiring the timing to coincide
> with an election does not serve anyone well -- except those that want to
> make board membership exclusive.
>
>
>
> We have been working on having elections since last March.
>
>
>
> As noted in my financial report, not bringing these corporate members on
> board was a bad financial decision.
>
>
>
> -- Dick
>
>
>
> On 24-Oct-08, at 6:49 PM, DeWitt Clinton wrote:
>
>
>
> Sort of.  I think we should have finished the discussion about how to
> proceed with a full five new corporate board members, timed that around the
> hiring of the new ED, and ideally scheduled all of it around the election of
> new community members.  With those three pieces in place we then could make
> a coordinated engagement on all three.  Four pieces, in fact, as we can
> count the CRC in there as well.
>
> I share your frustration, Dick, and I agree that sometimes a vote makes a
> good forcing function.  It's taken far too long to get where we are, and I
> happen to concur that those were fine nominees.  And I especially welcome
> Brian's continued leadership in any case.
>
> Hopefully this is the kick in the pants we need to close in expediently on
> the missing pieces.  And then I'd welcome seeing this come up for a vote
> again in the near future.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -DeWitt
>
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Dick Hardt <dick.hardt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Do you have a suggestion on how this should have been done differently by
> me?
>
>
>
> I made the motion on the board call and agreed to withdraw it until after
> the membership committee report was published, and then we could do the vote
> over email. Agreed that the vote should have been started on the public list
> -- but we are here now.
>
>
>
> Do you have a new motion to bring the nominees on the board that you would
> support that we could act upon?
>
>
>
> -- Dick
>
>
>
>
>
> On 24-Oct-08, at 5:17 PM, DeWitt Clinton wrote:
>
>
>
> This is not a vote against any of the nominees, but procedurally and
> organizationally we can do better than this.  Hence to the motion as it
> stands at this time:
>
> -1
>
> -DeWitt
>
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Raj Mata <rajmata at yahoo-inc.com> wrote:
>
> -1.
>
> Agree with Gary.
>
> Raj
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net] On
>
> Behalf Of Krall, Gary
> Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:42 PM
> To: board at openid.net
>
> Subject: Re: [OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion
>
> -1.
>
> As we are actively in the process of recruiting for a Executive Director
> which my understanding is should complete shortly coupled; with the
> manner in which this vote has been requested/handled is a clear
> indication to me that adding any additional members at this time would
> not be prudent.
>
> Gary.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net]On
> Behalf Of Dick Hardt
> Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 9:48 AM
> To: board at openid.net
> Subject: [OpenID board] URGENT: New Board members motion
> Importance: High
>
>
> (this motion was originally posted on the board-private list to
> protect the confidentiality of the potential corporate board members
> -- reposting to public list to provide transparency to community)
>
> Background:
>
> There are two corporations that have expressed interest in joining the
> OpenID Foundation for the last six months. The board approved adding 5
> new corporate board seats, to be balanced with community seats so that
> the community seats have a majority.
> Brian Kissel has been active on the marketing committee and the
> customer research committee. He organized a gathering of content
> providers in NY that led to the OpoenID UX summit last Monday.
> The primary source of funding for the Foundation is corporate board
> seats. In order to fund a new Executive Director and OpenID adoption
> initiatives, we need more funding. The patience of the two
> corporations is running thin as they have been waiting for far to long
> for a decision from the board.
>
> The motion: Add the two corporate board seats and add Brian Kissel as
> the community seat. Brian's seat (like all other community board
> seats) would be up for re-election when we hold an election.
>
> All board members need to vote or abstain for the motion to be
> considered.
>
> Votes to date:
>
> +1 Dick Hardt (made motion)
> +1 Martin Atkins (seconded motion)
> -1 David Recordon
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