[tei-council] Electing a TEI Technical Council Chair for next year.

Tue Oct 29 17:56:41 EDT 2013

Emailing seems easy and unproblematic. There seems to be no shortage of volunteers to handle ballots, and I think Sebastian, Lou, and Hugh are all perfectly suitable for the job. If for some reason James's original idea (of making this the responsibility of a person who isn't returning) should be considered to have merit, I'd be willing. 

On Oct 29, 2013, at 3:49 PM, Hugh Cayless wrote:

> If being from the same institution is seen as a conflict of interest, I'm happy to count votes. I don't have any concerns about either Sebastian or Lou acting in that capacity though. 
> 
> Sent from my phone. 
> 
>> On Oct 29, 2013, at 14:00, James Cummings <James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I have no problem with the current board representative (Lou) 
>> doing this, or Sebastian who also volunteered as a returning 
>> council member. (My only worry is that both of them may be seen 
>> as being related to Oxford... but well what can you do.)
>> 
>> I think everyone getting doodle logins would be problematic, just 
>> the kind of complication I think we want to avoid.  If we put the 
>> link publicly on the tei-council mailing list, then yes, anyone 
>> in the world could fill in Martin Holmes as the name, and vote 
>> for me. But if there are *two* Martin Holmes who have voted then 
>> presumably the person acting as returning officer will notice 
>> that and email Martin and say "Oi! Did you vote twice, or who do 
>> you really want to vote for?" Or something like that.  i.e. it is 
>> only a problem if someone out there does try to do something 
>> nasty and someone who should vote doesn't vote. (And we should 
>> make it an assumption that all  2014 council members *should* vote.)
>> 
>> I can see that who voted for who maybe should remain secret, with 
>> just totals given.
>> 
>> Any additional, dissenting or agreeing, thoughts? New Council 
>> members, how would you want it to work?
>> 
>> -James
>> 
>>> On 29/10/13 17:40, Martin Holmes wrote:
>>> I think this needs to be an electronic poll, because we can't assume
>>> we're ever going to be able to all meet in person. I see no objection to
>>> Doodle, assuming we don't think impersonation would be an issue. Perhaps
>>> we should all be required to get Doodle logins and make these available
>>> to the organizer ahead of time, so the poll could be limited to those
>>> users, rather than the open system we use for meeting times where we
>>> just fill in our names.
>>> 
>>> The person to organize it could perhaps be the board representative, who
>>> is non-voting, so would presumably be the most objective of us.
>>> Alternatively, the organizer could be the outgoing Chair _except_ when
>>> that person is standing again, in which case it could be the board rep.
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure about transparency of voting. With the current Council
>>> membership I can't imagine any conflict arising, but we should perhaps
>>> plan on the basis that future Councils might be more contentious than we
>>> are now, so perhaps who voted for who should be secret.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>>> On 13-10-29 10:10 AM, James Cummings wrote:
>>>> Dear TEI Technical Council,
>>>> 
>>>> As you know in its desire to become more fully transparent and
>>>> representative body the TEI Consortium has moved to being wholly
>>>> elected and removed the position of institutional 'partners' on
>>>> the TEI Board.  Although I was originally elected to the Council
>>>> for the last year I've been 'Appointed' by the Board and I was
>>>> eager to do away with appointed positions and because the bylaws
>>>> were changing stood for election and was re-elected.
>>>> 
>>>> One of the tasks for the incoming TEI Technical Council for 2014
>>>> is to elect itself a chair as per the description at:
>>>> http://www.tei-c.org/About/bylaws.xml#body.1_div.3_div.3 which
>>>> says that:
>>>> 
>>>> "The Chair of the Technical Council shall be elected by the
>>>> voting Members of the TEI-C Technical Council from its membership
>>>> and shall serve as the chief technical officer of the Consortium.
>>>> If no Technical Council Member is able or willing to assume the
>>>> chair, the Technical Council may request the Board of Directors
>>>> to second one of its elected members to the role, or it may
>>>> nominate a non-elected individual."
>>>> 
>>>> The bylaws are intentionally vague on *how* we do this since they
>>>> wanted to leave it in control of the Council and Board to sort
>>>> themselves out and not be required to use any particular election
>>>> method. I would be interested in Council (new, returning, and
>>>> departing) coming to at least a vague consensus of how they think
>>>> this should take place.
>>>> 
>>>> I believe that we should have the election _before_ the end of
>>>> the year so that the new chair can start sorting out things for
>>>> next year, that we want a simple procedure (since we'll be
>>>> repeating this each year). I'm in favour of it being as open as
>>>> possible, but perhaps not until after the last vote is counted
>>>> (since we don't want one person's vote to influence others)?
>>>> 
>>>> Things I guess we need to know:
>>>> - Who from the new/returning group wishes to stand for election?
>>>> (I can tell them more about what it is like) I'm intending to
>>>> stand but equally don't want to discourage others if they are
>>>> keen to do it.
>>>> 
>>>> - Would something like a 'hidden poll' on Doodle be sufficient,
>>>> if the results (should it be who voted for who or just aggregate
>>>> numbers?) were posted publicly on the mailing after? An example
>>>> of one of those might look like
>>>> http://www.doodle.com/a9fqvskmq5mxexqn Would that be good enough?
>>>> 
>>>> - We need someone to act as the person to organise things (e.g.
>>>> the poll) and while I'd usually suggest this be the current
>>>> Council Chair I think there is a perceived conflict of interest
>>>> if someone intending to stand does this. (I'd be honest,
>>>> ya'know...of course, but it is about perception ;-) ) This could
>>>> be anyone on Council, but maybe someone from the existing Council
>>>> who is not returning? Or two people... etc.
>>>> 
>>>> I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts. If we can come to a vague
>>>> consensus of _how_ you want it to work then I'll put it on the
>>>> TEI-Council-FAQ.
>>>> 
>>>> -James
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk
>> Academic IT Services, University of Oxford
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----------------
Brett Barney
Associate Research Professor
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
bbarney2 at unl.edu