Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

As current chair of the Maemo Community Council, I'm announcing that the third council election will conclude at:

Sunday, 27th September 2009 23:59 UTC

This will give the incoming council about two weeks to nominate a chair; prepare for the first sprint meeting of the new term (Tuesday, 6th October) and get ready for the kick-off of the community days at the Maemo Summit 2009.

What is the council?

The council is an elected body of 5 members of the Maemo community who represent the community to Nokia and facilitate cross-community discussions and organisation. For example, activities the council have been involved in include:

• The Maemo Summit 2009 location, date, schedule and accomodation.
• Promotion and support of Mer, as the future of Maemo for current devices.
• Chairing the monthly maemo.org sprint meetings and helping set priorities for the paid members of staff.
• Triaging bugs.
• Acting as a point-of-contact for people outside of the community.
• Helping define the Extras QA process.
• The interviewing and choice of the maemo.org docmaster.

You don't have to be a council member to work on these tasks, but the council can help avoid duplication of work; and raise awareness of the good work that many people in our disparate community are doing.

Who can stand?

The full election process is outlined in the wiki, however a candidate must meet the following criteria:

• Karma of 100 or higher.

This allows Nokia employees, commercial partners and anyone who is an involved member of the community to stand for the council.

Who can vote?

The full election process is outlined in the wiki, however a voter must meet the following criteria:

• maemo.org account older than 3 months at the date of the election.
• Karma of 10 or higher.

Each voter will receive a tailored ballot which allows them a Single Transferable Vote on the available candidates.

What happens next?

A list of eligible candidates will be prepared and published later this month. There are about 1,600 talk.maemo.org account users who are are eligible to vote but need to register a link with a maemo.org account).

Nominations officially open 2 weeks prior to the election; the nomination period will run from:

Monday, 7th September 2009 00:00 UTC to Sunday, 20th September 2009 23:59 UTC

Nominations must be announced on the maemo-community mailing list in the form:
Eligible candidates can nominate themselves, or be nominated by others. If nominated by others, they must accept the nomination on maemo-community, by responding to the original nomination.

Voting will start following the close of the nomination period and will run for a week:

Monday, 21st September 2009 00:00 UTC to Sunday, 27th September 2009 23:59 UTC

Following the close of voting, provisional results will be announced. Everyone will be able to check that their anonymous vote was registered correctly.

If no challenges are upheld, results for the elections are finalised a week after the voting closes.

talk.maemo.org users
I've identified (as part of my 9.08-05 task in this sprint) that there are about 1,600 talk.maemo.org users who are eligible to vote on their talk.maemo.org karma alone but have not linked their accounts.

The intention is that these users will be allowed to vote (even if they have to create a new account for it) but they must link their t.m.o account to a maemo.org profile.

If, by the end of this month, there are still outstanding user accounts which aren't linked, they should receive an individual email informing them of the action they need to take.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Uh, what, already ? It feels to me like the current one just got elected :-)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Wow! This is a very clear and well-laid out roadmap towards the community elections. The criteria for who can run and who can vote is also clear and I think very generous especially for those who can vote.

Clearly this looks to be shaping up to be a fair and impartial election process. Anyone who doesn't or isn't able to vote only has themselves to blame.

Kudos to the Community Council.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I find it a little confusing to have received an email telling me that having an "account for over 3 months - with 10 or more "karma" points[2]" makes me "eligible to vote" and that my "talk.maemo.org account meets these criteria on its own" but when I jump through the hoops to link my talk.maemo.org account with my maemo.org account I then find out I only have 3 karma points.

So, what was the email telling me again?

Not that I wanted to vote anyhow, but didn't need a fish slapped in my face. :-)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Did you just link your accounts today? If so, please check your karma again tomorrow afternoon.

The karma calculator doesn't run as soon as you link your accounts. It runs on a schedule. Additionally, it's going to be run manually tomorrow morning.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

May I ask why you're not going to vote? Your perogative, but every election to date there's been a vocal minority of ITT/tmo users complaining they didn't know they'd've been eligible or that they didn't know it was happening.

If that happens this time, they've only themselves to blame.

PS. Apologies from Reggie and myself about the slightly FUBAR subject line anyone who got the email received.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I guess I should have said I didn't expect to vote - since, until the email arrived, I had no idea that an election was planned - rather than that I didn't want to.

My poor ole karma is still at 3 at the moment, so its rather academic ... unless the cronjob rescues me. :-)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Ah, and now you know :-)

(The other purpose of the email!)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

If you have a moment, would you please double check that you've set "talk.maemo.org account url" in your maemo.org profile to: It appears the karma calculator has run, but you're still listed with only 3 karma. I suspect the linking between your maemo.org profile and your Talk account may not be correct, as "talk.maemo.org account url" does not appear as a link under "Websites" on your maemo.org profile page.

If you would, please go to http://maemo.org/profile/edit/ and check. Thank you.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Are we absolutely supposed to receive this e-mail to be eligible? I haven't received anything.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I can confirm that my talk.maemo.org account url is definitely correctly entered in http://maemo.org/profile/edit/. Why it doesn't then appear on my profile page as a website is unknown to me.

Is it because I have no other websites defined? Or maybe because I didn't "Click the checkboxes of the fields you want to show in your public profile" during the publish phase. That'll be it, I guess. I'll try now.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Because you haven't said that that url may be shown? You need to edit your privacy settings:
http://maemo.org/profile/publish/

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Same here.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

AFAIK, the e-mails was only sent to the ones that don't have the TMO account linked in the maemo.org profile. The 'voting tokens' will be only sent late in September.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

ralphbb: If you don't feel prepared for the vote, don't worry, we haven't even started the nominations process yet, let alone the voting.

zerojay: This is only for t.m.o. members with old accounts (who could vote in the election next month based on their t.m.o. activity) who either don't have maemo.org accounts or who have very low karma maemo.org accounts that wouldn't be able to vote. The people who got the e-mail were asked to link their t.m.o. accounts to their maemo.org accounts, so they could get their t.m.o karma into maemo.org. Otherwise, these folks would be denied a chance to vote, when they actually could vote.

zerojay, you are not only eligible to vote based on your maemo.org karma, you have enough karma to stand for council.

You should run for the council when the nominations open. :)

EDIT: That goes for Texrat too.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Will our mighty new leader step up to re-enact Starscream's nomination from Transformers the Movie?

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I would run for council just for that alone!

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I think I have already proved myself too stupid to vote! ;-)

Now, who was offering a N900 for my vote ... ?

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

It might even get my vote just for that alone. ;)

Hey.. that's not against any of the rules, is it? :)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I really, REALLY want to do that.

The one thing keeping me from it is a concern that I cannot do the role justice time-wise. It would not have been a problem a year ago... but my situation has changed drastically. :(

No matter what, though, I intend to remain a community advocate/activist and wil devote what time I have to finding ways to improve what I can.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Wow, I have enough karma to run if I wanted to.

Everyone run for the hills!

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Hurrah, with mullf on the council, maybe Nokia will give us a hardcase for the N900!

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I know you're joking, but let's not pretend that the council has any input on hardware choices; and little input on software choices (although we represent the platform's application developers and their desires for particular APIs/designs/documentation etc.)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Say... that little Archos looks kinda cool
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/26...ps-by-the-fcc/

Just saying. Wonder if the Maemo council would take the initiative to contact them and other hardware manufacturers about bringing maemo on this little thing in addition to Android.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

This is why people calling it the "Maemo Council" is so harmful. We do not govern the platform, it's licensing or it's development. We are facilitators for the Maemo Community, and that's why it's called the Maemo Community Council.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

I hope that's a joke. Archos locks their stuff down tighter than almost anyone else despite using Linux on their tablets. They are *not* open to... well... anything.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Actually, they seem to be moving away from Linux, the newest entries in the Archos arsenal are Android + Win7. This is how they solved the problem of the OSS community pestering them about GPL, code, their own promises, and, well, anything.

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

...which just serves to underscore the difficulties of straddling the profit/openness line. Companies desiring to try it need to conduct some really serious thought experiments beforehand...

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

^ nominated

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Another day, now with my profile privacy settings corrected, and my Karma is still at 3. :-(

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

If we had a Karma market, I'd share some of mine...

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

If you start with a Karma market, sooner or later someone will start a Karma futures market, based on potential future Karma earnings. Next thing you know we'll have a maemO.Org SEC making sure there is no hanky-panky going on. Do you really want to be the impetus to all that regulation?

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Wow, nevermind, it seems the Karmic cronjob has now awarded me 20 points! Does this mean I can run for Pope?

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Depends-- what does it pay?

What does THAT pay???

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

The Pope job ain't what it used to be. You can't live like a king anymore, and you aren't considered infallible either. Infallibility is important to me. I like being right. All the time. :)

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

You can still wear Prada slippers and lots of Gucci.

Lipstick red Prada loafers to be exact! And Gucci sunglasses!


Perhaps I should add these to the costumes we designed. Wasn't it you complaining about the shoes anyway??

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

It's those dang Karma credit default swaps that will get you into trouble. They would contribute to an artificial Karma bubble. :cool:

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

How about some sort of Karma stimulus package :cool:

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

Don't forget the Karma speculators and short-sellers. Sheesh. We just started this thing and need a watchdog organization already...

Re: Maemo Community Council: September election announcement
 

tex: -3.855

;)