- Kubernetes Steering Committee
- Steering Committee Election Charter
- election app
- election page
- voter exception form
- schedule
The role of this election is to fill out the three (3) seats due for reelection this year on the Kubernetes Steering Committee. Each elected member will serve a two (2) year term.
This year is the second year we will be using Elekto to conduct the election. Elekto is a new application, commissioned as an internship by the CNCF. As well as having a new web UI, it relies entirely on GitHub Oauth for voting, and as such does not use email at all. Elekto also handles exceptions, eligibility checks, and other aspects of the election. See the Elekto voting documentation for how to use it.
This does mean some changes to the nomination, running, and voter exception process, so please read below.
This election will shape the future of Kubernetes as a community and project. While SIGs and WGs help shape the technical direction of the project, the Steering Committee Charter covers the health of the project and community as a whole. Some direct responsibilities of steering members to consider as you are deciding whether to run or who to vote for:
- Through the chartering review process, delegate ownership of, responsibility for and authority over areas of the project to specific entities
- Define, evolve, and defend the non-technical vision / mission and the values of the project
- Charter and refine policy for defining new community groups and establish transparency and accountability policies for such groups
- Define and evolve project and group governance structures and policies
- Act as a final non-technical escalation point for any Kubernetes repository
- Request funds and other support from the CNCF (e.g. marketing, press, etc.)
- Define and enforce requirements for community groups to be in good standing such as having an approved charter
For more context, please see the current steering committee backlog or a previous governance meeting video which led to this whole process.
Please refer to the Steering Committee Election Charter for Eligibility for candidacy
Eligibility for voting in 2022 is defined as:
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People who had at least 50 contributions to the Kubernetes project over the past year, according to a snapshot taken 2022-08-12 of the data driving the devstats developer activity counts dashboard, who are also Org Members. Contributions include GitHub events like creating issues, creating PRs, reviewing PRs, commenting on issues, etc. For full details see the SQL query used by devstats for developer activity counts.
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Full members of the Code of Conduct Committee (CoCC) and Security Response Committee (SRC), as listed in SIGs.yaml, at any time between August 2021 and August 2022, regardless of contribution count.
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People who have submitted the voter exception form and are accepted by the election committee.
Corporate affiliation is applied after the election. If an organization finds itself with too many representatives it is up to those individuals to come to a consensus on who should serve on the committee.
We explicitly believe that the above heuristic will be inaccurate and not represent the entire community. Thus we provide the form for those who have contributed to the project but may not meet the above criteria. Acceptance of a form submission will be defined by a simple majority vote, and the criteria used during this process will be used to help refine further elections.
If you otherwise qualify to vote but have not yet applied for Org Membership, then please request an exception (and please apply for Org Membership as well).
Note that, if you are already eligible, instead of the voter exception form you will see "You are already eligible to vote in the election."
Only contributions to projects and artifacts that fall under Steering Committee's governance will be considered for voter exception.
Examples of contributions that would be considered:
- Slack admins who are not active in GitHub
- Code of Conduct Committee members whose actions are private by default
- Working Group or User Group leads without a lot of GitHub activity
Examples of contributions that would NOT be considered:
- Contributions to ecosystem projects and products
- Organizing meetups or podcasts
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Friday, July 22 | Steering Committee selects Election Committee |
| Monday, August 15 | Announcement of Election and publication of voters.md |
| Monday, August 29 | Steering Committee Q+A for the candidates |
| Tuesday, August 30 | Candidate nominations due at the end of the day in AoE time |
| Friday, September 2 | All candidate bios due at the end of the day in AoE time |
| Tuesday, September 6 | Election Begins via email ballots |
| Friday, September 16 | Deadline to submit voter exception requests |
| Thursday, September 29 | Election Closes at the end of the day in AoE time |
| Friday, September 30 | Private announcement of Results to SC members not up for election |
| Sunday, October 2 | Private announcement of Results to all candidates |
| Monday, October 3 | Public announcement of Results at Public Steering Committee Meeting |
| Tuesday, October 4 ??? | Election Retro |
Candidate nomination, bio, and election close deadlines will be done using Anywhere on Earth timing, meaning it is still valid to submit new nominations/bios/votes as long as it is still the last day anywhere on the planet (i.e. at the end of that day in UTC-12).
Nomination
-
If you want to stand for the election, create an issue in this GitHub repo (kubernetes/community) with the title
Steering Committee Nomination: Your Name (@yourgithub). If you want to nominate someone else, you may do so, but PLEASE talk to them first. -
After creating the issue, send an email to [email protected] with a link to the issue. The subject line of the email should be same as the title of the issue. This email should encourage people to second your nomination on GitHub, as +1s via email will not count. Here's an example email:
Hi! I'm nominating candidate for steering committee this year. If you are an eligible voter and think they should run, please add your +1 as a comment on the issue link and mention the organization you work for. While supportive replies are very nice, only comments on the issue will count towards their eligibility.
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If you wish to accept a nomination from someone else, reply to the nomination issue saying something like "I accept the nomination".
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Finally, the candidate closes the issue (
#NNN) by opening a Pull Request to add their bio (see below). The PR body must contain the textFixes #NNNto automatically close the issue once the PR is merged. -
Create the PR for your bio by copying the
nomination-template.mdfile in this directory, and creating a new file titledcandidate-githubid.md. Fill out all the fields in the template, but avoid making and format changes.
Endorsement
Once nominated, you must get the endorsement of three (3) different eligible voters from three (3) different employers. If you are eligible to vote yourself, you count as one of the three. Endorsements from non-voting members does not count towards the final count.
Eligible voters may endorse candidates of their choosing by replying to the candidate's nomination issue saying something like "I endorse this nominee, and I work for " or "+1". Please state that you an eligible voter, and include your employer's name so that we see can which candidates have sufficient endorsements.
Note that only endorsements on the GitHub issue will be considered. Endorsements on the nomination email will NOT be considered.
When a candidate has reached the necessary three endorsements, one of the Election Officers will announce that on the GitHub issue.
Running
Eligible candidates can submit a pull request with a biography in this
directory with their platform and intent to run. This PR will copy nomination-template.md
to a file named candidate-YourName.md. It will fill out the fields in
that template.
All biographical statements should be brief and to the point, with a guideline of around 300 words total for all text. If your statement is excessively long, you will be asked to abbreviate it before it is merged.
Please refer to the 2021 candidate bios for examples of content. Biography statements are optional.
Missed deadlines by the candidates will be addressed by the election committee on a per case basis to determine eligibility.
Campaigning
Please refer to the Steering Committee Election Charter and understand that we care deeply about limiting corporate campaigning. The election officers and members of the steering committee pledge to recuse themselves from any form of electioneering.
You should be running as a "brand free" individual, based on your contribution to the project as a member of this community, outside of whatever corporate roles you may hold.
Contributors may check their voter eligibility at any time once the election process starts, by going to the election app, logging in, navigating to the 2022 election, and seeing if the screen there says that they are eligible. That screen takes its data from the voters.yaml file.
If the app does not say that you are eligible, because you have worked on Kubernetes in a way that is NOT reflected in GitHub contributions, you can use the exception form built into the same app to ask to participate in the election.
Elections will be held using time-limited Condorcet ranking on Elekto. The most preferred candidates will be elected to the open seats.
Employer diversity is encouraged, and thus maximal representation will be enforced as spelled out in the Steering Committee Election Charter.
You will be ranking your choices of the candidates with an option for "no opinion". In the event of a tie, a non-involved SC member will flip a coin.
The election will open for voting starting on the dates specified on the calendar at the top of this document. You will be reminded that voting has opened by an email to kubernetes-dev, but no email is required for you to vote.
The Steering Committee has selected the following people as election officers:
- Noah Kantrowitz, @coderanger
- Davanum Srinivas, @dims
- Kaslin Fields, @kaslin
In addition, the following contributors are helping with the election:
- Alternate Officer: Bridget Kromhout, @bridgetkromhout
- Infra Liaison: TBD
- Contributor Comms Liaison: TBD
Please direct any questions via email to [email protected].
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First, the results are privately announced to the incumbent Steering Committee members (who are not up for election) and all the candidates.
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The newly elected body will be publicly announced in the scheduled monthly public Steering Committee Meeting.
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Following the meeting, the raw voting results and winners will be published on the Kubernetes Blog.
For more information, definitions, and/or detailed election process, please refer to the Steering Committee Election Charter
Nominees may be found in the election app.