RFC: PyLadies Global Council Selection Process

[lorenanicole]

PyLadies Global Council Selection Process

This RFC will close on Dec 101 2020 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth.

Translation

We have worked to translate this proposal into the following languages listed below. If you would like translation in another language please email info@pyladies.com or comment on this issue.

• Arabic - In Progress
• Chinese - Still needs to be translated
• French - Done
• Portuguese - Done
• Russian - Done
• Spanish - Done

Overview

The Global Interim PyLadies group closed the RFC for proposing a PyLadies Global Governance Model on September 15, 2019 - #11 and we will be moving to the next stage of the process.

In this next stage, below we have proposed three approaches for how to select the Global council. Initial questions have been outlined below and we will be updating this document with more details on the proposals and in the questions section as feedback is received.

Please circulate this with any and all PyLadies members.

Qualifications

Any self-identifying PyLadies member can propose themselves for the council, provided the requirements below. If nominating another person for election, that individual must be a self-identifying PyLadies member and their consent will be required (e.g. an email sent to the person and they consent to participate).

Additional requirements to consider:

• Proficiency in English (historically English is the language this work has been done in)
• Ability to participate in a regularly scheduled meeting; to start monthly
• Reasonably responsive on email, GitHub, and Slack
• A PyLadies member with at least 2 years experience in the community

Length of Term

The council will have 9 seats. To ensure that new council members onboarding is smooth and institutional knowledge is not lot, council members will have staggered term lengths. Initially, 4 of the council members will hold a term of 1 year with the option to seek an additional term. The last 5 will hold a term of 2 years with the option to seek an additional term.

The length of a term is subject to change given the input of the PyLadies Global Council members.

Diversity and Inclusion Requirements

The PyLadies Global Council will be made initially of 9 members with no one country of residence representing more than 33% of the council during a given council cohort. Other diversity and inclusion requirements will not be mandated in an explicit policy as these requirements can change over time and the end goal is to promote community involvement and feedback.

Proposals

Proposal 1: Elections

Selecting the PyLadies Global council with elections will emulate the Python Software Foundation council of Directors Elections in the process including:

Phase 1: Individuals to propose themselves or another party to last roughly 4 weeks
Phase 2: Voting to last roughly 4 weeks

The timelines provided here are placeholders since only if this proposal selected will a timeline be better detailed. Registration additionally for voting will be determined in a separate proposal.

Proposal 2: Nominations

Selecting the PyLadies Global council with nominations can happen either through self-nomination or nominating another PyLadies self-identifying member. An application will be made available through PyLadies, for example on the website.

Proposal 3: Blend of Election + Nomination

Selecting the PyLadies Global council with elections and nominations would require that some subset of seats are appointed with the rest are elected. This proposal can allow for more fine-tuning for diversity and inclusion considerations while also allowing the PyLadies Global council to backfill seats as needed should members step down.

Again, timeline for an election, how many seats would be appointed through which mechanism and registration for voting will be determined in a separate proposal.

Questions

• Why would a Council member need to be a PyLadies member with at least 2 years experience in the community?

We are looking to make this council as inclusive as possible, so restricting to a specific type of PyLady member (e.g. an organizer) would limit our efforts in this. Additionally, it is important that we have PyLady members on the council that have that has some historical context of the community.

• What is the adequate length of time a council member should serve?

One thing we need to consider is this initial council will have many firsts they will be taking on. As the initial cohort, we need a council body that is able to commit for a minimum requirement (ergo at least 1 year). Additionally making the requirement a bit soft (that is at least 1 year) allows there to be some overlap for when council members leave and new council members join. There's a real danger that if all council members leave at the same time we may lose precious institutional knowledge, have too many new people and therefore lose progress in sustaining ongoing work, and overall create instability for the council. Therefore, as a requirement seasoned council members should be actively involved in onboarding and mentoring new council members.

Let's look to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) for an example. On the PSF, board members use to be elected to terms of 1 year then all seats were up for re-election. This greatly hurt knowledge retention, led to inactivity due to confusion from what board members can do / learning how to even be a board member, and overall progress made on work suffered. In 2017 the PSF moved to tiered elections, where every year ~ 1/3 of the seats are up for re-election and terms last 3 years. You can read this here in the Python Software Foundation Bylaws 5.5 Election and Term of At Large Directors.

• What diversity and inclusion considerations should we explicitly consider?

The following should be considered:

1. Regional diversity -- no more than 33% of the board should come from the same region

• What additional requirements should be asked of anyone considering joining the PyLadies Global Council? For example, do we want to require that council members have been organizers for a chapter for some period of time?

• How will nominations, that is a Council member who is selected by a means other than direct election, be reviewed and selected?

For determining council members from a nomination process, for the initial council we could:

1. the interim global group could receive nominations via submission of a web form
2. again any nominations that aren't self-nominations require approval from that person
3. the interim global group can review over a period of time and select those nominations
   selection will follow the list of guidelines defined in the issue above as well as diversity and inclusion requirements (e.g. not all members be from one same country)

Right now those in the interim global group are experienced organizers of established PyLadies chapters from around the world. We should definitely continue to ensure that group has proper regional representation.

After the initial council is selected, any nominations received would be reviewed and selected by the council.

Timeline for Next Steps

• Dec 15 to Jan 15 2020: PyLadies Organizers vote on one of the proposals above.
• Jan 1 to Jan 31 2020: Review any feedback on basis.
• Feb 1 2019 to Mar 15 2020: Based on selection mechanism open issue(s) to start: building the PyLadies member database (needed for election to happen), application (how will nominate or how will propose for election), talk with PSF about the elections@python.org process if necessary
• Mar 15 2020: Kickoff publicity campaign for election/nominations
• Apr 2020 follow this timeline PyLadies Global Council Timeline #46 to coincide selection/election with PSF BoD election

[theomelo]

A PyLadies member with at least 2 years experience in the community

Would it mean someone that is a leader of a chapter or could it be someone that is contributing as mentor or etc?

[gise]

+1 to @melostbr question, I have the same doubt.

About the length of time a council member should serve, I think the propose period of 1 year is good with at most 2 consecutive terms in the council, adding up to 2 consecutive years at most. I think 4 consecutive years sounds excessive (this would result from having a 2 year seat and reelection).

I really like the location diversity effort. I'd add that we should aim to have one person per "area" if possible. Where "area" could be something defined by us but encapsulating the idea of group of countries with similar challenges and resources (e.g. Latin America, Europe, USA&Canada, etc).

[trallard]

It does not necessarily need to be a chapter organiser/leader but someone that is actively involved in the wider Python community. Some examples are: events organisation (i.e. conference, meetups), mentoring folks in the community, attending Python related events, etc.
The intention was to keep this as broad as possible rather than gatekeeping to "pyladies events/chapters " only

[lorenanicole]

@gise some of the below has been added to the questions section in the issue above and we will continue to update as we have more discussion, thank you for your feedback!

However now in response to:

About the length of time a council member should serve, I think the propose period of 1 year is good with at most 2 consecutive terms in the council, adding up to 2 consecutive years at most. I think 4 consecutive years sounds excessive (this would result from having a 2 year seat and reelection).

One thing we need to consider is this initial council will have many firsts they will be taking on. As the initial cohort, we need a council body that is able to commit for a minimum requirement (ergo at least 1 year). Additionally making the requirement a bit soft (that is at least 1 year) allows there to be some overlap for when council members leave, and new council members join. If all council members leave at the same time we are confronted with the problem that we may lose precious institutional knowledge, have too many new people and therefore lose progress in sustaining ongoing work, and overall create instability for the council.

On the note of individual(s) serving more than 1 term, this too is a bit difficult. Instituting a hard limit I think is a bit premature, at least initially, as we do not know how the selection policy will be. I think this it is a very valid concern that we do not want to encourage stagnation in the council members population. Where I think we should should is to provide: 1.) a baseline of how long an initial term is serve and 2.) permit the option of seeking another term, if one wishes to. This leaves it open to the council to change policies as it sees fit (e.g. before the initial cohort has completed their initial terms).

Why am I advocating for this? Let me provide you an example from the Python Software Foundation (PSF).

On the PSF board members use to be elected to terms of 1 year then all seats were up for re-election. This greatly hurt knowledge retention, led to inactivity due to confusion from what board members can do / learning how to even be a board member, and overall progress made on work suffered. In 2017 the PSF moved to tiered elections, where every year ~ 1/3 of the seats are up for re-election and terms last 3 years. You can read this here in the Python Software Foundation Bylaws 5.5 Election and Term of At Large Directors (snippet below):

Upon completion of the term beginning after the 2017 elections, directors shall be elected for a three-year term, unless they are replacing a director that resigned or was removed, in which case such replacement directors shall be elected to a term sufficient to complete a three-year term as measured from the term of the original cohort. Replacement directors shall be chosen in order of the number of votes received, with the longest terms of service being allocated to candidates according to the number of votes received.

R-Ladies has no fixed limit in length of term or terms overall for their global body (which is the inspiration for this council model #11). Many foundations actually have longer requirements for council members / board members to balance innovation with stability.

[lorenanicole]

@gise responding to:

I really like the location diversity effort. I'd add that we should aim to have one person per "area" if possible. Where "area" could be something defined by us but encapsulating the idea of group of countries with similar challenges and resources (e.g. Latin America, Europe, USA&Canada, etc).

Yes! I am a bit biased to the council being selected with Proposal 3: Blend of Election + Nomination. I think this would provide us as an organization an easier way to mitigate the concern you raise about there being stagnation in the members of the council as well as having overrepresentation of specific members in the council.

I also really love the idea of the group defining what these requirements are for how the board ought to be built.

Question - do you think it would be best to start with a geographic requirement on the council? If so, what do you think would be a good recommendation for how we define the geographic areas?

[gise]

One thing we need to consider is this initial council will have many firsts they will be taking on. As the initial cohort, we need a council body that is able to commit for a minimum requirement (ergo at least 1 year). Additionally making the requirement a bit soft (that is at least 1 year) allows there to be some overlap for when council members leave, and new council members join. If all council members leave at the same time we are confronted with the problem that we may lose precious institutional knowledge, have too many new people and therefore lose progress in sustaining ongoing work, and overall create instability for the council.

This is a very valid point! I haven't thought of it. I understand now why the proposed mixed duration lengths and I agree.

Regarding your concern of adding a 2 consecutive terms max limit too prematurely, do you feel we may have insufficient people that might want to be in the council? My initial idea was that people could reapply after, just not indefinite consecutive terms.

[gise]

Question - do you think it would be best to start with a geographic requirement on the council?

I think it would be preferable although we need to have a back up plan in case there are no nominations/volunteers for a specific area. It's an effort worth pursuing in my opinion as it would create a good space to voice and think about the different conditions, motivations and resources that PyLadies have around the world.

If so, what do you think would be a good recommendation for how we define the geographic areas?

My initial idea for how to define the geographic areas was a combination of:

• Geographical proximity.
• Similar resources and challenges.

The geographical proximity could give us a first division i.e.: Africa, Asia, Central & South America, North America, Europe, Middle East, Oceania. We could fine-tune this division if we have more local knowledge. For example a valid question to ask might be country X is in the limit between areas A and B, technically is in area A but resources-wise and challenges-wise is more similar to area B. What shall we do in that scenario?

[lorenanicole]

@gise regarding:

My initial idea was that people could reapply after, just not indefinite consecutive terms.

Definitely agree on this! The language probably needs to be improved to clarify that. I’ll update!!!

[Mariatta]

I'm unclear on how the "nomination" process work. Does everyone who were nominated automatically becomes council member, until we have 9 people? or is there a different process for choosing who to be selected among the nominees?

[lorenanicole]

I'm unclear on how the "nomination" process work. Does everyone who were nominated automatically becomes council member, until we have 9 people? or is there a different process for choosing who to be selected among the nominees?

@Mariatta regarding the above, great question! To be clear the word nomination means those that are not selected by a direct vote but through some other nomination process.

For determining council members from a nomination process, for the initial council we could:

• the interim global group could receive nominations via submission of a web form
• again any nominations that aren't self-nominations require approval from that person
• the global group can review over a period of time and select those nominations
• selection will follow the list of guidelines defined in the issue above as well as diversity and inclusion requirements (e.g. not all members be from one same country)

Right now those in the interim global group are experienced organizers of established PyLadies chapters from around the world. We should definitely continue to ensure that group has proper regional representation.

After the initial council is selected, any nominations received would be reviewed and selected by the council.

What do you think?

[lorenanicole]

Something @willingc raised in the #33 ticket is worth raising it -- particularly what is the stance of the Council on communication requirements. Proficiency in English makes the Council less inclusive. Can we invest in translation software and volunteers to help if we have Council members that aren't as versed in English?

Does anyone have suggestions or seen this work in practice?

[pyladiesowerri]

@lorenanicole The monthly meeting mentioned above, is it an online thing or facial meeting.

And how do we nomination someone(I mean, what is the platform for the nomination)?

[trallard]

@pyladiesowerri the meeting is online. We usually run these at 6pm BST time (10:00am PDT / 12:00pm CDT) but there is also an ongoing issue #16 to discuss other times

[amadikwajoyn]

Please which place are we doing the nomination?

[lorenanicole]

@treasurechristain @pyladiesowerri as of right now we are only discussing how the selection process works. We haven't decided on when or where the nomination / election will happen.

[jackiekazil]

I think I am biased towards Proposal 3 as well. I wonder if that is something like 4 seats to election and 5 seats to "appointed" (maybe with nominations, from others or self-declared, taken into consideration first -- because you want the people to be engaged in the role, but also reach out).

The blended model falls apart a little bit in the staggered elections, unless it is something like.... 2 elected people at 2 year terms, 2 get 1 year, then some how the 5 appointed are divided among 2/1 as well.

Unless I missed it, is there anything about who is eligible to vote? (I didn't see anything, but maybe I missed it.)

[lorenanicole]

Haaaaaaaa @jackiekazil that's a great thing we should talk about. My thought was we should open next Nov 18 to Dec 18 an issue for discussing election (and thereby voting), if an election is indeed chosen.

[jackiekazil]

Another proposal. This one came from a friend.

The proposal is to add "observers". Observers are invited by board members. Observers are non-voting members, but have the power to advise/influence the direction of opinions/votes of the person who invited them (or the group) depending on their status. The Council members are the voting members and each only have one vote. The Observers do not have voting rights.

^^ Throwing this out there. I could see how this could be helpful in being more inclusive, but also could be talked out of it.

[deboraazevedo]

I finally took sometime to read everything, and as I said the monthly meeting, I believe it would take a little more time to mature these ideas and then have something stablished. I'm going to translate this issue into Portuguese in order to share all this info with our PyLadies in Brazil and hopefully I'll come up with ideas and thoughts from our community. For that, I would need about a month to translate, have the meeting with PyLadies Brazil and then share their thoughts.

[lorenanicole]

@deboraazevedo that's a great idea ... so we'll keep this issue open until Dec 4 2019 as of now ... but there's room to re-evaluate.

So here's some thoughts on translations:

Option 1

As we are noticing, there's a desire to translate this. Should we translate this into at least the 6 official UN languages?

Option 2

Just track who volunteers to translate into what. This is likely the better option as we don't have funds to pay out of pocket for this. Additionally, per the Chapter Directory work I've been collecting -- of the 64 chapters that have responded the language breakdown per chapter is:

Language	Total
en	32
es	19
pt	4
other	9

Therefore I think us prioritizing on the languages our chapters indicate they speak in is the best priority.

Language Translation

Here's the list of translations in flight:

• Arabic
• Chinese
• English (@lorenanicole)
• Spanish (@gise @lorenanicole )
• Portuguese (@deboraazevedo - can you add the Portuguese translation in a Google doc and link here for us?)
• French
• Russian

[amadikwajoyn]

@treasurechristain can handle the English translation.

[amadikwajoyn]

1. Attending the Dec meeting?
   No. I can't. I parent solo that day, and I need to get Izzy ready for bed during that time.
2. Outreach list - That is a lot more than I thought, but none of that happened with the translations.
3. Language rep outreach - That sounds like a great idea.

RE: Plan - I don't think we need to make a complicated plan, I think we just need to address everything. I would frame is as the following...

A. We either commit to being all in to the language translation or kill it. (This ends here if kill translation is the consensus.)
B. Set a goal date and try to get individuals to "own" languages -- where we can do native speakers, that is great, but where we can't find native owners, then we try to get someone else to step in. (If we have non-natives owning languages, we need to consider this with the deadline.) If the deadline passes and the translations aren't done -- it is what it is and we move on.
C. We spread word after translations are available through multiple channels and leave it open for some time period -- I suggested early-mid Jan, because of the holidays through Dec.
D. Jan deadline happens, then this is closed.

Here are some made up dates...
Dec. 15 - Translations due (Dec 15 to leave enough time for recruiting and translations)
Dec. 16-20 - Message pushes
Jan. 10 - Close out.

Or we kill and say this is imperfect and we are committing to not commit to it. (Which is an acceptable answer, but we need to do that consciously and not accidentally.)

I am of the opinion that Translation should be lingered till ending of January or probably February.
Or we leave it pending till the new Board council members emerge to make the final decision on the way forward.

[lorenanicole]

@treasurechristain in regards to:

I am of the opinion that Translation should be lingered till ending of January or probably February.
Or we leave it pending till the new Board council members emerge to make the final decision on the way forward.

This is specifically for translation of this document. Translation for how PyLadies Global Council dictates policy will not be set by us, they will control that after the selection/election in 2020 happens. Again here is the proposed election/selection timeline: #46 .

[lorenanicole]

@jackiekazil in regards to:

2. Outreach list - That is a lot more than I thought, but none of that happened with the translations.

We were not in the position to do translation as we had no owners nor a cohesive policy on the translation of this document.

I think where we sit we still have to make a decision to translate with one of these options I proposed here: #32 (comment). Unless if we have a different option on the table for which languages to translate.

We should also consider the "best effort" option too - we aim to translate, for example in Option 1, all the languages the UN supports as a "best effort" and if we cannot then we cannot. As of now we have two individuals who are helping aid us in this "best effort" approach (option 2), @trallard and @deboraazevedo. I can assist @trallard as needed for Spanish, but I am already working on other efforts including:

• building the timeline for the selection/election (PyLadies Global Council Timeline #46)
• kicking off project groups (RFC: PyLadies Projects #33)
• building the chapter directory (Review Aug 15 2019 Chapter Surveys #25 / Add initial 2019 chapter survey analysis #31 )
• now working on starting a project to build a PyLadies member database.

[lorenanicole]

@jackiekazil for this timeline:

Here are some made up dates...
Dec. 15 - Translations due (Dec 15 to leave enough time for recruiting and translations)
Dec. 16-20 - Message pushes
Jan. 10 - Close out.

Is "message push" meaning emails to chapters? Or what? My proposal would be for this:

• Email chapters the issue in English but include all the translated language as well in the email
• Indicate that any/all feedback is due by Jan 6

I am proposing we revise to Jan 6 as Jan 8 2020 is the next global meeting and it would be good to sync with that date.

[gise]

Btw, I can help with the Spanish effort too. @trallard let me know if you need a hand.

[lorenanicole]

Thanks @gise ! I'm going to say let's start the translation and put here !

[gise]

I've reviewed and completed the Spanish version and I think it's in a decent state to start sharing it.

I'll have another look at it with more of an editorial eye during the weekend and update if needed.

[lorenanicole]

Gracias @gise! I am living for this crew!

[gise]

I didn't want to change the settings on the file but I wanted to share it with the public (in can-view-only mode) as today is the deadline. So I made a copy in my personal drive for now: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Pcn2mUwqUyP57dXDQQq4aWTcIM1qsj8Mv3RFAYBiRo/edit?usp=sharing

[lorenanicole]

I didn't want to change the settings on the file but I wanted to share it with the public (in can-view-only mode) as today is the deadline. So I made a copy in my personal drive for now: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Pcn2mUwqUyP57dXDQQq4aWTcIM1qsj8Mv3RFAYBiRo/edit?usp=sharing

Oh is there a difference between this one and the doc I started? I cannot readily see a difference. Thanks again for all your help @gise !!

[trallard]

I just made some minor changes to the original doc from @lorenanicole and added a question for clarification.
Once this is resolved I think this is ready for publicly sharing

[lorenanicole]

I just made some minor changes to the original doc from @lorenanicole and added a question for clarification.
Once this is resolved I think this is ready for publicly sharing

Im traveling today and don’t want to forget. Can you just update the link in the comment above where we are tracking the translations? Thanks @trallard and if you added another question to the FAQ Can you add where on the issue too? Not sure if that’s what you meant. You rocccckkkkkl chica.

[deboraazevedo]

Hello, eveyone! Here is the link to the Portuguese translation http://bit.ly/conselho_global_pyladies_ptbr

[Mariatta]

A couple thoughts, now that translation efforts are ongoing

This RFC will close on December 4, 2019 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth.

This seems outdated. Should this be Dec 15? or Jan 10?

“Please_ circulate this with any and all PyLadies members”_

can we add “We encourage PyLadies chapter leaders to share and discuss this with their members”?

[Mariatta]

I've created several docs to track translations in Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, French, and Russian.
I've given access to translators to those docs. Thanks to volunteers who stepped up and helping out!

If any of you are currently helping to translate any of these languages, and don't yet receive access from me, please let me know.

• Chinese translation doc
• French translation doc
• Russian translation doc
• Arabic translation doc

[lorenanicole]

@Mariatta I will change the date to be Jan 1 for now and we can review after the next meeting!

[pgagnon]

@lorenanicole Small typo in the Length of Term section (lot -> lost) 🙂

[Mariatta]

no more than 33% of the board should come from the same region

What counts as "same region"? What are the different regions? Is America one region, or do we separate into South America, North America?

[Mariatta]

I'd like to get some clarification on what happens after this RFC close (Jan 1).

I know that we will then have an election for the board members, but what happens with the comments about this proposal? Will the proposal be updated to reflect the comments about this proposal? Do we first vote on which election types we want to choose, before voting for board candidates? How will the voting be administered?

[lorenanicole]

@Mariatta here's my proposal:

• Jan 1 to Jan 31 2020: Review feedback and decide format for selection.
• Feb 1 2019 to Mar 15 2020: Based on selection mechanism open issue(s) to start: building the PyLadies member database (needed for election to happen), application (how will nominate or how will propose for election), talk with PSF about the elections@python.org process if necessary
• Mar 15 2020: Kickoff publicity campaign for election/nominations
• Apr 2020 follow this timeline PyLadies Global Council Timeline #46 to coincide selection/election with PSF BoD election

Above has been added to the proposal at the bottom too.

[Mariatta]

Can we add link to the translations to the top of the proposal?
e.g. before the "Overview" section, add:

Read this in Spanish | French | Portuguese | Russian | ...

[lorenanicole]

Added and note on the stage of translation added @Mariatta ✅ !

[trallard]

What counts as "same region"? What are the different regions? Is America one region, or do we separate into South America, North America?

There are a number of ways to define the regions, a suggestion would be to have:

• North America
• South/Latin America (they differ enough in culture and language from NA)
• Europe
• Middle East
• Africa
• APAC

Or something down that line

[TomKellyGenetics]

@Mariatta Is there still interest in getting this translated into other languages? Might be able to help get it done in Japanese.

[Mariatta]

@TomKellyGenetics If you know of anyone who could help us translating it into the Japanese, we will definitely appreciate it. Please write to info@pyladies.com, with the name&email address of the translator(s), and I can share the Google doc with them. Thanks!