2024 Community TOC Election - Candidate Nominations

[ehuthmacher (Eden Huthmacher)]

The community is called to elect three members of the new core advisory body for the Open edX project – the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) – between now and September 29th, 2023. The three elected community representatives will work alongside the existing Axim Collaborative and 2U TOC members.

Note: in order to qualify for becoming a TOC member nominee, you must be an Open edX Core Contributor. If you are not a core contributor yet, you will need to pass the core contributor review process, which takes about two weeks. In order to complete the review on time, you will need to submit your candidature for the Core Contributor Program by September 15th, 2023.

The election process is described in detail in the TOC Community Election Charter.

Become a Candidate

If you would like to apply as a candidate for the 2024 Community TOC election, please post a reply in this thread using the candidate nominee template below:

## Full name

First & last name

## Picture

Headshot image

## Title (1-5 words)

If you had to give a title for your plans as a TOC board member, what would it be?

## Goals for the 2024 term (<40 words)

Focus on the program or projects you intend to work on during your term as a TOC member, for growing and improving the Open edX platform.

### Details

Further description of your goals for your term as a TOC member, for growing and improving the Open edX platform, and of your planned projects. You can also include links or images to any relevant link or resource, including presentation or video material.

## Relevant Experience

Describe any experience and/or skills that are relevant to the role of TOC member. It can be past contributions to the project or other open source or educational projects, but it can also be anything that will help you achieve the above goals.

## Time Commitment

Roughly, how much time do you plan to dedicate to your role as TOC member, to help achieve these goals (rough monthly estimate)?

For Non-technical candidates

The role of the TOC is not exclusively technical. Any core contributor is eligible for election, including non-technical core contributors working as product and project managers, marketing experts, documentation writers, and UX/UI practitioners, etc.

Specialities

The three elected community representatives should focus their mission on representing the community as a whole, and will be classified within the following categories:

• Operator & Core Community Representative - elected by the project’s Core Contributors and Maintainers
• Instructor Representative - elected by all individuals producing or running an active course on the Open edX platform
• User/Learner Representative - elected by everyone using the Open edX platform in any capacity

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

Community TOC Election Schedule:

• August 29th, 2023: Nominations & voting registration opens
• September 15th, 2023: Deadline for applying as a core contributor
• September 29th, 2023: Nominations & voting registration closes
• October 9th, 2023: Voting opens, ballots are sent to eligible voters, nominated candidates are announced with a link to their program
• October 30th, 2023: Voting closes
• November 13th: Announcement of the results
• January 1st, 2024: Terms begin

Help Us Reach Out to Eligible Voters!

We need the entire community’s help to let all eligible voters know that they can vote. If you know any instructors, users, and/or learners of the Open edX platform, please help spread the word of the 2024 TOC election!

Questions & Comments

If you have questions and/or comments regarding this process, please email me at ehuthmacher@axim.org, so that we can reserve this thread for nominations only.

We look forward to your participation!

[Nicole_Kessler]

## Full name

Stefania Trabucchi

## Picture

## Title (1-5 words)

We have to continue to work inexorably on the next Open edX generation as the best learner experience platform (LXP)

## Goals summary for the 2024 term (<40 words)

A great learner experiences platform (LXP) incl. VR and AR should be an available solution for all, educational institutions as well as corporate, HR department, Start-up, hospital or government etc. The market is diversified, and flexible solutions are mare and more requested.

The learning experience we have to achieve in 2024 is a software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for course recommendations, adaptive learning paths and strong collaboration tools to create communities and improve engagement. My vision is to provide learning opportunities that go beyond the traditional learning management system.

Last but not Least: Open edX looks old-fashioned? Yes, we need soon the next generation LXP with a new facelift. Together with my team, we have worked on a fresh and modern UI using the MFEs which we would like to present soon. Stay tuned!

### Details

Software projects required a series of smaller goals over a long period than just one Big Bang. The Open edX Software needs a new vision that focuses first on the most important paradigm shifts. We have too many construction sites, we run from release to release without looking at the market segments and market needs. Even Moodle and many other LMSs will overrun us if we don’t look at the essentials together. We have the time now, we have to start very soon.

## Relevant experience

• Open source community driven approach since 2002
• Good level of scrum mastery
• Open edX verified service partner (started in 2015) with deep knowledge in the Open edX processes (hope so!)
• Member of the Open edX Partner Program
• Design thinking approach to lead teams to redefine problems and create innovative solutions
• Core contributor for Marketing and Translation Group since 2017
• A lot of hobbies and interests (too much indeed!). We discuss it over a good glass of wine (I like white)
• I did not study computer science, I graduated from a humanities faculty. Of course if I had to go back maybe I would choose it… I like to put my hands in the code, but I leave that to those who are definitely more competent than me.
• I like inclusion, transparency, democracy, respect for and from people

## Time commitment

My personal time commitment for 2024 is 5% of my overall working time: My normal work time is 50 hours per week, I can commit to 2,5 hours a week ~12h per month.

[antoviaque (Xavier Antoviaque (OpenCraft) - opencraft.com/help)]

Thanks for being a candidate @abstract-technology! I’ll also post mine below - though we don’t yet have many candidatures; if you reading this are thinking of posting yours, you should! To have a proper democratic process, we need more candidates.

Full name

Xavier Antoviaque

Picture

Title

Pushing for Open Source Best Practices

Goals summary for the 2024 term

As an elected TOC member in 2023, I have proposed or co-sponsored proposals to adopt the following open source best practices, which the TOC approved:

Transparency:

• Publish an edited summary of the discussions and agreements taken at the regular TOC meetings
• Have the TOC hold Town Hall discussions with the community members in attendance of the conference

Empowering the community in the governance:

• Opening the TOC elections to all, by allowing all users of Open edX to vote on the third TOC board community seat (other two: instructors & core contributor), and applying changes from community feedback from 2022
• Establishing a way for community members to request questions, decisions or recurse on the Open edX project from the TOC - OEP-63 (still under review)

I will keep pushing for transparency and community-based governance.

We also need to:

• Improve PR & product reviews, and more empowerment of the core contributors in unblocking them
• Increase collaboration on common projects, and more core contributors & maintainers time contributed
• Better communication and involvement of operators, educators and learners

Details

1. Community ownership

We have done a lot of progress as a project and community over the past 2-3 years. We aren’t quite there yet though, so we need to keep progressing towards a more collaborative governance, and complete the transformation resulting from the shift of the project leadership from edX/2U to Axim.

The project can adopt more open source best practices, allowing more involvement of the larger community. We also need to make sure we empower community members with enough ability to make decisions, for example around reviews, to avoid blocking upstream work and contributions.

2. “Open first” approach

Default more often to transparency for all discussions, agreements and documents affecting the official project.

Many documents and discussions in the project are public – but many are still kept private. As Karl Vogel puts it in “Producing Open Source Software”:

“Even after you’ve taken the project public, you and the other founders will often find yourselves wanting to settle difficult questions by private communications among an inner circle. (…)

Don’t do it.

As slow and cumbersome as public discussion can be, it’s almost always preferable in the long run. Making important decisions in private is like spraying contributor repellant on your project. No serious contributor would stick around for long in an environment where a secret council makes all the big decisions behind closed doors. Furthermore, public discussion has beneficial side effects that will last beyond whatever ephemeral technical question was at issue. (…)”

We are also doing progress on this, with most of the working groups and the TOC now publishing notes and video recordings of all meetings, and some of the private conversations moving to the open.

3. More collaboration within the community

…rather than isolated solitary projects that duplicate each other’s work, or rely on edX/2U or Axim to do the work we need. We need our organizations to design, build and fund projects with each other.

We also need to make it easier for core contributors to have the availability they need, by contributing more time to core contribution & maintenance – and have this work prioritized.

4. Operators, educators and learners

Help to develop better communication & feedback channels with operators, educators and learners, to integrate more the opinion of the actual users of the project.

We currently still don’t have very good means to reach out to educators, learners, or even most of the operators – the community is spread over many instances, few aware of what happens in the larger community or the project itself. We need to develop ways to spread information within the larger community, as well as get more direct feedback and discussions about the project.

Relevant experience

Open edX contributor since 2013

I joined the Open edX project as an early contributor - I had the privilege of contributing the project’s first merged external pull request, right after the project was published as open source. I am an avid MOOC user, a learner on multiple Open edX sites, a teacher of the Open Source Masterclass MOOC, an operator at OpenCraft, a core contributor and a current member of the TOC.

One of the reasons I’ve started contributing was to give back to a community which had given me a lot as a learner. Little did I know, that the project and its community would come to alter my life path even more. I’ve been enjoying trying to make it up to the project ever since, by contributing to it.

OpenCraft

Part of my approach to improve the project has been through founding OpenCraft. It is a service provider company created with the goal to help Open edX sites operators to fully benefit from the open source model. By contributing the code of improvements our clients need to the project, we guarantee the quality and longevity of the work ordered, and ensure that our approach remains compatible with the evolution of the project. This has also allowed our clients and us to be prolific contributors to Open edX, since day one in 2013 – the open source model allows everyone to better benefit from the work done by others, accelerating the development of Open edX.

Core contributor program & TOC

The healthier the project and its governance is, the better this works – which is why I’ve helped to create programs like the core contributors. Over the last 10 years, I have hoped and pushed for the type of changes that are happening to the project since the 2U/Axim split – so I feel some responsibility for helping the project mature and adopt proper open source practices, now that it can do that!

Lately, besides making sure that we at OpenCraft keep contributing the majority of our work to the platform, my contributions as a TOC community member and core contributor revolve around:

• Governance - helping to define, discuss and implement processes, like the TOC elections, but also participating in improving code & product review processes of contributions
• Project management for the core contributor program – organization of sprints, helping getting contributors unblocked, and informed about each other’s work

Open source advocacy

I am also a long-time contributor of free software communities: I am a co-creator and maintainer of the Open Source Masterclass MOOC; a former board member of April, the main free software advocacy organization in France; I have initiated the Ryzom.org campaign; and I co-developed the free software game Card Stories.

Time commitment

I currently dedicate ~20h/month on average to contributing as a TOC member and core contributor, and I expect to continue dedicating a similar amount of time to the goals and activities above if I’m re-elected for 2024.

[ndespujol (Nacho Despujol)]

Candidature

## Full name

Ignacio (Nacho) Despujol Zabala

## Picture

## Title (1-5 words)

Let’s make continue making Open edX the best LMS for on and off-campus use!

## Goals summary for the 2023 term (<40 words)

I want to help make Open edX a sustainable open source project with a strong and diverse community. I also want to contribute to incorporating the point of view of the university’s platform managers into the Open edX governance and help to expand edX into being a strong contestant in the on-campus LMS arena.

### Details

I think that Open edX is the best LMS for massive online learning, but it has a lot to improve as an on-campus LMS. I have been involved in managing the financing that 8 Spanish universities have got from the European Union as a seed to foster this change, and I want the broader community to profit from it.

I also want to contribute to the process of transforming Open edX into a completely open and diverse open source project with a vibrant community, and I think that now we have a big opportunity to do it right.

## Relevant experience

I am the MOOC initiative coordinator of Universitat Politècnica de València. We are members of edx.org with more than 120 moocs and 4,2 million enrollments and also have a local instance of Open edX for more local courses and first runs of the Edx courses, which we have been using since we started 2014. With it we have done several experiments, creating Xblocks and other developments that we have presented in several Open edX conferences (though we have not contributed them to the core).

I was appointed as one of the initial TOC community members, where I participated in the strategy-setting meetings held during this year, and collaborated with Xavier in the development of the election process of TOC community members.

I am also leading the initiative of several universities from Spain to expand Open edX with 500,000 euros of European Union funding, a project that I presented to the community at the Lisboa Open edX conference. Following this line, I am one of the founding members of the “Open edX for Campus use” working group, to keep the project aligned with the broader community and make Open edX one of the best on-campus LMS.

I am a core contributor, trying to bring the platform operator’s point of view to the developing community.

## Time commitment

I plan to dedicate 5 hours per month to TOC activities, and 10 more per month to my activities as core contributor, so 15 hours per month in total, but I am open to dedicating more if needed.

[volodymyr.chekyrta (Volodymyr Chekyrta (RaccoonGang) - raccoongang.com)]

Full name

Volodymyr Chekyrta

Picture

Title

Comprehensive Mobile Experience & Global Reach

Goals for the 2024 term

My top priorities as a TOC board member are as follows

• A “mobile as a first-class citizen” approach to enhance the Open edX mobile experience which is to be on par with the web platform as well as with competitor apps.
• Improved process of accepting contributions to increase chances of getting more and better community contributions.

Details

• Comprehensive Mobile Experience: I aim to make sure the Open edX mobile app is all-encompassing and easy to use by developers. This will enable learners to access the platform seamlessly on their mobile devices and enhance accessibility for underserved learners.

• Streamlined Contribution: Simplifying the contribution process is vital. We should foster a more engaging environment for contributors, harnessing the wealth of creative ideas within our community. In other words, we should maintain the balance between fun (getting community contributions) and safety (maintaining code-base quality).

The open-source project is only as good as its community - so my focus is all about easing of joining as a user or a contributor. The goal is to maintain momentum in Open edX adoption, keeping contributions at high quality to support the platform’s continued success.

Relevant Experience

Bringing a fresh perspective, I revitalized an application by migrating it to modern technology, increasing its appeal and encouraging contributions. I played a key role in launching the Mobile Product Working Group. While I’m new to open source projects, my background includes teaching Android development and experience in edutech. As a co-leader of a working group and a mobile team leader with three years of experience, I’m well-prepared to contribute to Open edX’s success, aligning with my TOC vision for comprehensive mobile experience and global reach.

Time Commitment

I can allocate 4 hours per week, i.e., ~16 hours per months in addition to what I already allocated for Open edX contributing work.

[regis (Régis Behmo)]

Sorry for announcing my candidacy at the very last minute, the last few days have been hectic

Full name

Régis Behmo

Picture

Title

Increase the pace of innovation of Open edX.

Goals for the 2024 term

1. Follow a product-minded approach to research real problems experienced by teachers and learners.
2. Ensure that all new technical components are extensible by design. Including: courseware, forum, micro-frontends, mobile app, etc.
3. Use these extension points to resolve the pain points discovered in #1.
4. Go back to step #1 and repeat.

Details

What has changed in the Open edX community since last year’s TOC election? A lot, actually. But in a way, also too little.

As an engineer, I think that the team at Axim Collaborative has done an astounding job since they have been at the helm of the Open edX ship. They have managed to resolve many tricky technical issues that have been affecting Open edX administrators and developers for years. Including, but most definitely not limited to:

• a future-proof mobile application
• a fantastic analytics platform
• runtime microfrontend configuration
• faster edx-platform asset building
• huge improvements to the developer experience

And many other very difficult topics are being addressed as we speak: a simpler ecommerce solution, a complete rewrite of the forum stack in Python, a redesign of the microfrontend architecture…

These issues are all addressed in joint partnership between Axim and the rest of the Open edX community, in a spirit of equality that was previously unmatched.

On the other hand, as a learner and teacher, my impression is that there is not enough innovation and experimenting happening around Open edX. The platform remains mostly suited to a linear learning model that works great for large, well-funded universities, but less so for other communities.

I want us to find answers to the following questions:

• What can Open edX do for learners and teachers in the poorest communities?
• How can we foster peer-to-peer interactions to improve the online learning experience?
• What changes do we need to make to truly enable lifelong education?

Educators, researchers and students already hold some of the answers to these questions. We need to better listen to them. Then, adopt a product-minded approach to implement their solutions. But, as an engineer, I realize that we will not able to implement these solutions if the technical bedrock of Open edX is not sufficiently stable and extensible.

Which is why I propose that the Technical Oversight Committee puts a strong emphasis on the extensibility and documentation of all new Open edX components. In other words, Open edX needs to be easier to work with. If we achieve this, then we will truly be able to reach a billion learners.

Relevant Experience

I am a machine learning scientist and open source software engineer. I started contributing to Open edX in 2014. As the creator of Tutor and its many extensions, such as Cairn, my job for the past six years or so has been to make life easier for Open edX administrators. I have also been a higher eduction teacher, both offline and online. Once a week, I teach video game programming to teenage kids, and I enjoy it greatly.

This year, I have joined Edly as VP of Engineering. The amazing team that I found here has allowed me to shift my focus from Open edX programming to research and product design. In particular, I am currently investigating the potential of AI applied to online and offline learning.

Time Commitment

16-32 hours/month – but really, whatever is necessary to be a productive member of the TOC.

[juancamilom (Juan Camilo Montoya)]

Juan Camilo Montoya

## Picture

## Keep strengthening our Community to drive Open edX towards 10K organizations

## Goals for the 2024 term

I’d like to push for:

• More robust product discovery and product management practices
• Extensibility and alignment with elearning standards
• Improvements to the project’s website and outreach
• Building more support, knowledge, resources and tools to help Open edX adopters overcome the challenges they face beyond technology alone.
• Deeper insights from the organizations using the platform to drive our investment and evolution

### Details

The Open edX project is undergoing a key transition period, where we are challenged to build a strong governance model, a winning product, and a healthy and productive ecosystem, as well as to increase global access and impact with the platform.
We’ve made outstanding progress, in the past few years, but there is still a lot to be done, towards:

• Building a more robust product,including some key features that are currently missing because the largest contributing institutions don’t need them, but most of the medium and smaller ones do.
• A strong and stable core and an architecture with the required extensibility to allow and incentivise a larger number of contributors to create additional features, extensions, integrations and interoperability with other services.
• An updated and more compelling value proposition in the project website and its documentation sets.
• A diverse set of resources to facilitate adoption by many more organizations and to help more of them achieve their goals.
• A deeper understanding into what the adopter organizations and user’s needs and pains are, especially in the areas where the platform is not meeting the expectations or where they are struggling to sustain their online learning offerings.

This will certainly take much longer than 2024, but the project has been evolving and improving for a long time and we need to keep going.
Here are some concrete programs I’d propose to pursue:

• Coordinate, fund and promote a series of collaborative efforts around specific issues, similar to the recently proposed frontend pluggability summit.
• Establish and develop a yearly “Open edX award” to be granted to the institution that makes the most significant contribution to the commons, following the standards we want everyone to adopt.
• Keep developing and strengthening visibility and transparency in the funded contributions program.
• Explore ways to leverage interoperability and create synergies among institutions that already use the same platform. (Think federated configurations, interchangeable courses, learner records transfer, etc)

## Relevant Experience

After 10 years working in edunext, exclusively with the Open edX platform, supporting organizations that adopt the platform, building our own value proposition and contributing to the community from different angles, I believe I’m well positioned to understand the struggles of:

• Organizations large and small that want to leverage the Open edX platform
• Organizations that want to build value or a healthy business on top of or next to the Open edX platform.
• Organizations that want to build synergies and integrations with the platform.

## Time Commitment

I can commit 8 hours per month on top of the current commitment as a Core contributor.

[ehuthmacher (Eden Huthmacher)]

Candidate nominations for the 2024 Community TOC Election is now officially closed. Thank you for your nominations @abstract-technology @antoviaque @ndespujol @volodymyr.chekyrta @regis and @juancamilom. I will publish the list of voters and send out the election links in the coming days. Please email me if you have any questions in the meantime.