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.

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

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.

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. :-)

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.

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.

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. :-)

Ah, and now you know :-)

(The other purpose of the email!)

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.

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