SIG-Simulation Chair/Co-Chair Nominations 2022/05/02-2022/05/16 -- Elections 2022/05/16-2022/05/23

[hultonha]

SIG Simulation chair/co-chair elections for 2022

With the creation of sig-simulation we need official elections for chair/co-chair roles. @hultonha is acting as an interim chair right now to help setup the SIG. (See proposed guidance for more context about the election process).

The chair/co-chair roles

The chair and co-chair serve equivalent roles in the governance of the SIG and are only differentiated by title in that the highest vote-getter is the chair and the second-highest is the co-chair. The chair and co-chair are expected to govern together in an effective way and split their responsibilities to make sure that the SIG operates smoothly and has the availability of a chairperson at any time.

Unless distinctly required, the term "chairperson" refers to either/both of the chair and co-chair. If a chair or co-chair is required to perform a specific responsibility for the SIG they will always be addressed by their official role title.

In particular, if both chairpersons would be unavailable during a period of time, the chair is considered to be an on-call position during this period. As the higher vote-getter they theoretically represent more of the community and should perform in that capacity under extenuating circumstances. This means that if there is an emergency requiring immediate action from the SIG, the chair will be called to perform a responsibility.

Responsibilities

• Schedule and proctor regular SIG meetings on a cadence to be determined by the SIG.
• Serve as a source of authority (and ideally wisdom) with regards to O3DE SIG area of discipline. Chairpersons are the ultimate arbiters of many standards, processes, and practices.
• Participate in the SIG Discord channel and on the GitHub Discussion forums.
• Serve as a representative of the broader O3DE community to all other SIGs, partners, the governing board, and the Linux Foundation.
• Represent the SIG to O3DE partners, the governing board, and the Linux Foundation.
• Coordinate with partners and the Linux Foundation regarding official community events.
• Represent (or select/elect representatives) to maintain relationships with all other SIGs as well as the marketing committee.
• Serve as an arbiter in SIG-related disputes.
• Coordinate releases with SIG Release.
• Assist contributors in finding resources and setting up official project or task infrastructure monitored/conducted by the SIG.
• Long-term planning and strategy for the course of the SIG area of discipline for O3DE.
• Maintain a release roadmap for the O3DE SIG area of discipline.

Additionally, at this stage of the project, the SIG chairpersons are expected to act in the Maintainer role for review and merge purposes only, due to the lack of infrastructure and available reviewer/maintainer pool.

... And potentially more. Again, this is an early stage of the project and chair responsibilities have been determined more or less ad-hoc as new requirements and situations arise. In particular the community half of this SIG has been very lacking due to no infrastructural support, and a chairperson will ideally bring some of these skills.

Nomination

Nomination may either be by a community member or self-nomination. A nominee may withdraw from the election at any time for any reason until the election starts on 2022/05/16.

Nomination requirements

For this election, nominees are required to have at minimum two merged submissions to http://github.com/o3de/o3de (must be accepted by 2022/05/02). This is to justify any temporary promotion to Maintainer as required by this term as chairperson. Submissions may be in-flight as of the nomination deadline (2022/05/16 12:00 UTC+1), but the nominee must meet the 2-merge requirement by the end of the election or they will be removed from the results.

Any elected chairperson who does not currently meet the Maintainer status will be required to work with contributors from the SIG to produce an appropriate number of accepted submissions by May 2nd 2022 or they will be removed and another election will be held.

Note: The above stipulation has been relaxed after discussing with the TSC to allow a more varied pool of candidates to be nominated.

The only other nomination requirement is that the nominee agrees to be able to perform their required duties and has the availability to do so, taking into account the fact that another chairperson will always be available as a point of contact.

How to nominate

Nominations will be accepted for 2 weeks from 2022/05/02 12:00 UTC+1 to 2022/05/16 12:00 UTC+1.

Nominate somebody (including yourself) by responding to this issue with:

• A statement that the nominee should be nominated for a chair position in the specific SIG holding its election. Nominees are required to provide a statement that they understand the responsibilities and requirements of the role, and promise to faithfully fulfill them and follow all contributor requirements for O3DE.
• The name under which the nominee should be addressed. Nominees are allowed to contact the election proctor to have this name changed.
• The GitHub username of the nominee (self-nominations need not include this; it's on your post.)
• Nominee's Discord username (sorry, but you must be an active Discord user if you are a chairperson.)

Election process

The election will be conducted for one week from 2022/05/16 12:00 UTC+1 and 2022/05/23 12:00 UTC+1 and held through an online poll. Votes will be anonymous and anyone invested in the direction of O3DE and the SIG holding the election may vote. If you choose to vote, we ask that you be familiar with the nominees.

If there is a current interim chair, they will announce the results in the Discord SIG channel as well as the SIG O3DE mailing list no later than 2022/05/23 12:00 UTC+1. If there is no interim chair, the executive director will announce the results utilizing the same communication channels. At that time if there is a dispute over the result or concern over vote tampering, voting information will be made public to the extent that it can be exported from the polling system and the SIG will conduct an independent audit under the guidance of a higher governing body in the foundation.

The elected chairpersons will begin serving their term on 2022/06/01 at 12:00 UTC+1. Tentatively SIG chairs will be elected on a yearly basis. If you have concerns about wanting to replace chairs earlier, please discuss in the request for feedback on Governance.

[greerdv]

I would like to nominate @hultonha as chair.

[hultonha]

I would like to nominate @greerdv as chair.

Also to give a little more background about myself (thank you for the nomination @greerdv) I am the manager of the Physics and Character teams on the Game Engine and Developer Services team at AWS. I have worked closely with the Physics team for many years as a software engineer (though mainly focusing on Viewport/White Box) and am excited to work with both teams to help bring great features to O3DE and grow sig-simulation.

I've been acting as interim-chair so far and have created our sig feature matrix here with the help of the Physics and Character team and was involved with @greerdv and many others in writing the sig-simulation charter.

[moraaar]

I would like to nominate @hultonha and @greerdv for chair and co-chair. Both will do great at either roles.

[thefranke]

I'd like to nominate @lgleim (Lars Gleim) for chair of #sig-simulation, and @epsilon-delta (Bo Gao) for co-chair respectively. Both of them are part of our growing O3DE developer group at Huawei.

Background info

@lgleim is a Senior Research Engineer at the Huawei Munich Research Center where he develops Digital Twin and Simulation technology for robotic applications in manufacturing. In his role, he established Huawei's efforts to develop a robotics simulator based on O3DE. Previously, Lars did his PhD studies in Computer Science at RWTH Aachen University where he captured industrial processes & related data in Knowledge Graphs using concepts from Semantic Data Management & Digital Twin technologies. He successfully lead collaborations with industrial & academic partners in mechanical engineering and enjoys interdisciplinary collaboration. As chair of O3DE SIG Simulation, he would further apply his network and insights into industrial processes, requirements and the "OT mindset" to drive the strategic positioning of O3DE as an open platform for the industrial Metaverse and 3D Digital Twin simulation.

@epsilon-delta is the principle engineer of Huawei Central Media Technology Institute, responsible for CG-oriented physical simulation algorithm development, including rigid body, cloth, hair, fluid, soft body simulation and so on. Bo has more than 10 years of experience in algorithm development and specializes in using mathematical methods to solve problems. He got his masters degree in Applied Mathematics, School of Mathematics and Statistics at Lanzhou University in 2011. Before joining Huawei, used to work for Samsung and others.

[thefranke]

Updated the candidate for co-chair.

[hultonha]

@spotzz has kindly volunteered to be the impartial election official to oversee the election when it starts next week.

I've also updated this issue to reflect the new guidance on who can be nominated. Thanks!

[spotz]

Hey all I need confirmation of acceptance from the following nominated people:

@greerdv @lgleim @epsilon-delta

I'll also post in the Discord channel

[greerdv]

I accept the nomination.

Some background about me: I am a senior engineer on the Game Engine and Developer Services team at AWS. I specialize in physics simulation with a particular interest in character physics, but am also interested in many other aspects of simulation. In 2015, I completed an Engineering Doctorate in physics-based character locomotion with the Centre for Digital Entertainment, based with the partner company NaturalMotion. After that, I worked at a start-up using computer vision and image processing techniques to automate analysis of medical imaging data, before joining Amazon a little over 5 years ago. In the last few years I have also developed a strong interest in machine learning and its possible applications in the simulation domain.

[epsilon-delta]

@thefranke, thank you very much for your nomination. Dear all, I accept the nomination.

[lgleim]

I accept the nomination. Thanks @thefranke!

[spotz]

Thanks everyone for accepting your nominations. Voting is now open until next Monday at - https://framadate.org/hmxsjvS7y1Z4gAiu. I will close the poll at 12:00 CST on 5/23. Please only vote for 1 person!

[hultonha]

Thanks very much @spotz! 👍

[aFinchy]

Hi All,

The election poll is now closed for the SIG-Simulation chair and co-chair seats.

The person with the most votes and therefore the new Chair is @lgleim . The person with the second most votes and therefore the new Co-Chair is @epsilon-delta .

Congratulations!

@lgleim & @epsilon-delta Can you please provide me with your Discord handle so I can attach the proper roles and obtain some other information?

[hultonha]

Closing this issue now the election has concluded. Thanks all for participating! 🙂