This is the forum thread for posting candidatures for the 2023 election.
As mentioned in the blog post announcing the 2023 Open edX Elections, the community is called to elect 3 members of the new core decision-making body of the Open edX project – the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). The 3 elected representatives will seat at the TOC, along with the 3 members from tCRIL and the 3 members from 2U.
The election process is described in the TOC Community Election Charter which has been recently enacted by the TOC, after community review.
Become a candidate
If you would like to apply as a candidate for the election, please post a reply using the template posted below, in the first reply on this thread. Copy & paste it to your own reply to the current thread, replacing the contents of each section with your own answers:
Also make sure to read the TOC Charter and the TOC Community Election Charter.
You don’t need to match all the criterias to post your candidature, but you need to be able to fill any gaps by September 30th for it to be considered for the 2023 elections. Posting your candidature early will give more time to review and work out issues - close to the deadline there might not be enough time, and could lead to missing the cutoff date.
Non-technical candidates
Functions of the TOC board and of core contributors aren’t only technical. Any core contributor would qualify, including non-technical roles: there are roles related to product and project management, marketing, documentation, UX/UI, etc. The goal of the program is to recognize any sustained contribution that is useful to the community, technical or not.
Applying without core contributor status
Note that in order to qualify for becoming a TOC member, if you aren’t already a core contributor, you will need to go pass the core contributor review process, which takes about 2 weeks. In order to complete the review on time, you will need to submit your candidature for core contributor by September 12th – please reach out now without waiting though, to help prepare you.
Specialities
The 3 elected community representatives have the mission to represent the community as a whole, but with each a specific focus (operators & core community, instructors, learners). Candidates are assigned to each specific focus by the voters – in other words, all candidates apply for all seats, then the voters pick the specialty of the representatives they elect.
Nominations & endorsements
Anyone can suggest a nomination, but to ensure a “do-ocracy”, each candidate needs to be posted or endorsed by at least one core contributor or maintainer who isn’t the nominee.
If you are a core contributor or maintainer, you either nominate a candidate, including yourself, or endorse a candidate already nominated by doing one of the following:
- Clicking the “heart” button of the post(s) containing the nomination(s) you endorse
- Replying to someone else’s nomination in the current thread, mentioning who you endorse
Schedule
- September 1: Nominations & voting registration opens
- September 12: Deadline for applying as a core contributor
- September 30: Nominations & voting registration closes
- October 7: Voting opens, ballots are sent to eligible voters, nominated candidates are announced with a link to their program
- October 25: Voting closes
- November : Announcement of the results
- January 1: Terms begin
Learn more & contribute
To learn more about the election organization, see the detailed planning & schedule. If you would like to contribute to the organization of the elections, reach out to oscm@tcril.org
Help reaching out to eligible voters!
We also need the whole community’s help to let all eligible voters know that they can vote. Since we are an open source project, our community is spread over many individual Open edX sites. Many instructors and TAs will not be following the news here – so if you know any, or have any way to get the news of the election registration published where users of Open edX will see it, please help!
Blog posts on Open edX related sites or educational news sites are of particular relevance. Reach out to oscm@tcril.org.
Questions & comments
If you have any questions or comments, please post them on this thread, to keep the current thread focused on the candidatures & nominations themselves.