Nominations for steering council 2024 election

, ,
1

We will use this post to nominate candidates to the upcoming council election as indicated on our governance .

But we had elections in Dec 2021, aren’t the steering council terms for 4 years? It isn’t Dec 2025 yet

Yes, however, @fonnesbeck and I recently joined PyMC Labs, which added to @twiecki and @junpenglao meant there were more than 2 people reporting to the same company which is not allowed:

No more than 2 Council Members can report to one person or company (including Institutional Partners) through employment or contracting work (including the reportee, i.e. the reportee + 1 is the max).

This is also a general rule for NumFOCUS projects to ensure NumFOCUS sponsored projects are not only open source in the pure code availability sense but also community driven and not controlled by any single actor.

EDIT: I was pointed out that steering council member terms are 2 years instead of 4 according to the governance doc, I was confused with terms for the ArviZ steering council. This means we are actually 1 year overdue on elections to renew the council. I left the note above as it continues to be what triggered the election (even if it should not have been).

This topic should be dedicated to nominations only. If you have questions about the election or other governance issues, please open another topic and feel free to tag me so I don’t miss it.

For clarity, I am going to outline the key steps of the election process here, but when in doubt or if wanting more details, consult the governance doc.

The first step are nominations. Only core contributors can nominate people and only core contributors who match the eligibility criteria can be nominated.

To nominate someone, add a response below with the name of the nominee. In order to accept a nomination, nominees have to like their nomination or add a new response explicitly accepting the nomination.

Nominations are open for two weeks (that is, at least until November 1st, anywhere on earth). After that the nominees who accepted their nomination become candidates for the election and voting starts.

Voting will be mediated by NumFOCUS with me and @fonnesbeck acting as contact points as needed.

Tagging all core contributors (in the order github showed them in the team page which I assume is mostly random) so everyone is aware of what is going on: @rpgoldman @zaxtax @fonnesbeck @twiecki @aloctavodia @cucho @aseyboldt @colcarroll @reshamas @ericmjl @Spaak @AustinRochford @lucianopaz @Armavica @michaelosthege @martinacantaro @bwengals @drbenvincent @RavinKumar @ferrine @symeneses @junpenglao @maresb @_eigenfoo @juanitorduz @larryshamalama @tcapretto @ricardoV94 @AlexAndorra @cluhmann @Sayam753 @jessegrabowski @almostmeenal @purna135

7 Likes
2

I nominate @colcarroll

3 Likes
3

I nominate @lucianopaz

2 Likes
4

I nominate @ricardoV94

5 Likes
5

I nominate @michaelosthege

2 Likes
6

I nominate @OriolAbril !

1 Like
7

I nominate @cluhmann

1 Like
8

I nominate @jessegrabowski

3 Likes
9

I nominate @aloctavodia

2 Likes
10

While I am grateful to be nominated again, I reject my nomination for this round. Not as a sign that I will be less involved with the project but for the following reasons.

I have already been on the council these last 3 years, I think PyMC is big enough that we’ll have more than enough people to fill the position, which will help the project continue to grow.

I also feel that between my involvement in updating the governance doc and being on the steering council, the project following what is written there or not depends on me personally more than it should, I’ll continue to make sure that we follow the governance and update it as necessary as I continue to believe it is a key element to a healthy and sustainable project; but hopefully it will become something more organic.

I am also on the ArviZ council, and generally more involved with ArviZ than PyMC given ArviZ is a better fit to my interests. I don’t think this is a conflict of interest, but it is more work and especially more context switching. For example, their governance procedures are similar but not the same, which also makes me prone to apply ArviZ procedures to PyMC and vice-versa.

1 Like
11

Nominating @tcapretto and @fonnesbeck

2 Likes
12

Thanks @OriolAbril – I’ll nominate @twiecki , then.

14

I’m going to decline my nomination as well (but thanks, Ravin!). While I don’t believe the entire council needs to turn over every term, I’d like to see some new representation this time around.

15

I don’t know how to “unhide” the answer. Yes, self nominations are allowed and every single person can nominate as many people as they’d like.

That being said, Luciano has been nominated already. A second nomination (or other things like having 10k likes on their nomination) post are irrelevant to the process. The only output of this step is a list of people who will be candidates in the election

16

Yeah, I realized that it was repeated, that’s why I deleted it. Thanks for double checking

17

I accept.

1 Like
18

Closing the thread. Everyone who was nominated was eligible for the steering council, so everyone who has accepted their nomination is a candidate in the election: @colcarroll, @ricardoV94, @jessegrabowski, @aloctavodia, @tcapretto and @twiecki.

@fonnesbeck and I will now coordinate with NumFOCUS to send the form to all core contributors and will publish the results here on Discourse when they finish.

21

We have run into a snag with the nominations: 4 of the 6 accepted nominees are independent contractors who are consulting with PyMC Labs, and the limit for council members reporting to the same person/company is 2 according to our governance. We are going to re-open the nominating process for a few days as an opportunity for additional non-Labs core contributors to be nominated. The election will then take the top 4-7 popular vote-getters, with Labs nominees being ineligible once 2 places are filled by the company’s nominees.

We will leave the nomination process open until Friday (Nov 15). Let me know if there are questions.