search

typelevel / governance

Typelevel governance
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
8 stars 1 forks source link

[Suggestion] Treat The Current Steering Committee as an Interim Steering Committee #27

Open emilypi opened 2 years ago

emilypi commented 2 years ago

It's great to see Typelevel working to improve its internal transparency!

This part was interesting in particular:

Finally, we recognize that the Steering Committee does not currently represent the diversity of the Typelevel community. We expect to appoint many new faces and see the retirement of many longstanding members over the next year.

Transparency and Diversity are honorable goals to strive for. In light of this, I have a suggestion that has worked well in the past, to both increase the transparency of the decision making process, as well as improve trust in future decisions by the steering committee: treat the current committee as an interim committee only empowered with electing a new committee that represents the values Typelevel supports. This suggestion accomplishes two things:

  1. The current committee consists entirely of (mostly white) males, and would allow them to take a step back in favor of electing members that represent the diversity TL is striving for.

  2. It would allow for a fresh start, with decisions about how to incorporate being made by a diversity of technical peers, as opposed to policies being thrust upon them that are potentially problematic.

This worked well for us when the Haskell Foundation incorporated itself in late 2021. Your thoughts appreciated.

rossabaker commented 2 years ago

Thanks, @emilypi. I looked closely at the Haskell Foundation early in this process and even proposed it as a model early in this process. I thought that bootstrapping process got a lot right, and I'm glad to hear it's working well for you.

As the blog post notes, "we expect to appoint many new faces and see the retirement of many longstanding members over the next year." I would like a refresh of the Committee to be its first significant act. I see the Haskell Foundation's first board includes both interim members (longtime community leaders) and several new leaders. I think a similar pairing of institutional memory with more diverse perspectives and fresh energy is exactly what we need here, too.

rossabaker commented 2 years ago

Were the Haskell Foundation's initial nominations all self submitted? (More like an application?)

I think it's vital to have a a process to consider candidates who might not have occurred to us. And, while transparency is a goal, I don't want to subject unwilling nominees to a public GitHub emojocracy. I think a nominations@typelevel.org input would be a splendid idea.

emilypi commented 2 years ago

Yes, they were self-submitted.

I think a similar pairing of institutional memory with more diverse perspectives and fresh energy is exactly what we need here, too.

In order to avoid the problem of institutionalized memory embedding itself too deeply, we also had the interim members who would reappear also reapply so that no one went through a backdoor process to become involved. As long as there are people in the wings with historical knowledge, accessing that memory doesn't need to be embedded in the committee itself. Advisors who are not fully empowered are useful!

I think a nominations@typelevel.org input would be a splendid idea.

Glad to hear!