Nomination Directions

Thanks for considering Board leadership!  We are now accepting nominations for the board.  If you have an interest in helping the governance of Plone, and particularly the energy and time to pitch in, the Plone Foundation could use the help!  If you think, "Nahh, I'm not part of the core development team" then please think again: the Plone Foundation Board meetings don't involve writing software. In fact, you don't even have to be a member of the Plone Foundation to be a board member!

Nomination Process

  1. Log in on plone.org and go here:
       http://plone.org/foundation/meetings/membership/2008/nominations
  2. Add a page there with your name in the title.
  3. For the body, discuss:
    -- Who you are
    -- Why you're interested
    -- What you think you can add to the Plone Foundation
    -- Most importantly    , the name(s) of one or more PF members that "second" your nomination
  4. Once ready, click "submit" in the workflow drop-down menu to get a reviewer to look at your nomination.
  5. Nominations will be accepted until Monday, October 6, 10pm US East Coast Time, UTC-4.


About Board Membership

Based on an earlier note by Joel Burton.

Several people have asked "do I have time to do this?" or "what does a board member have to do?"

The Foundation's mission is to "promote and protect Plone". Realistically, that has meant:

  • protecting the trademark, and having a process to apply to use it
  • protecting the IP, and "dealing with the lawyers" :)
  • hiring the release manager and guiding the expectations about Plone releases
  • writing and distributing press releases on new versions of Plone
  • working with various committees
  • handling "other stuff in the community" as needed. For example, helping craft policy on plone.org about commercial listings, etc.

While there's lots of work that happens online, much of the critical business of the board is conducted during phone meeting every two weeks -- typically, board meetings last about an hour  though occasionally they can run over to handle time-critical issues.  Please consider whether this fits your schedule, since missing more than an occasional meeting severely limits the ability of the board to reach quorum and conduct business. 

In addition, there is a relatively low-traffic board mailing list (private), where we discuss things in addition to the meetings.

The qualifications are to have a useful, thoughtful viewpoint on Plone and its audience, a desire to help lead the project, and the ability to make the above time commitments.

Often, people tell me "I'd love to help more, but I'm not a developer." We, of course, always can use more programmers in the Plone world, but we also really need other talents, too, especially on the Board. If you're the kind of person who sells Plone, builds Plone sites, skins Plone, or just has a business that uses or revolves around Plone, you'll have real talents we can use.

I encourage everyone to consider whether you have interest in Board leadership. You DO NOT need to be a foundation member to serve on the board (in fact, board leadership is an excellent way to _become_ a foundation member). All you need is to get an existing foundation member to second your nomination.

We're especially interested in broadening the diversity of our leadership, with regards to gender, ethnicity, and geography.