Comments

sime’s picture

Can you provide an example of when being on the Association would have helped with an infrastructure issue/project?

nnewton’s picture

Thank you for the question.

I'm not really concerned with how being on the board would help with Infrastructure projects. On the whole, infra projects should be handled by the infrastructure team. My concern and why I wanted to run is when a decision comes up that impacts infrastructure. Hosting decisions based on cost, decision on the direction of drupal.org that will vastly impact infra, those sorts of issues. I also feel I could bring some helpful reality checks to the board on proposals/presentations. i.e. if the board is told something will take N amount of time, its likely I'll know if that is reasonable.

webchick’s picture

There are actually several instances this year already where a voice like Narayan's on the board would've been helpful, namely:

- Evaluating OSL pricing structure changes which provided them with more sustainability.
- What sorts of things would be within bounds / out of bounds for the yearly goal of "Make Drupal.org awesome for site builders / developers"
- Estimates and timelines for the Drupal 6 => Drupal 7 upgrade of Drupal.org
- Feedback on the yearly infrastructure budget (especially important for 2013 given we have a new release planned, which will naturally indicate a huge spike in traffic)

Right now, a lot of these types of things end up on my plate by default, as the most Drupal.org-knowledgeable board member (though Jacob and Neil do a lot more one-on-one collaboration). I feel like I do my best here to represent the infrastructure team, but there's of course a canyon of difference between advocating for the infra team and being the leader of the infra team and someone who gets paged when d.o goes down. :)

mortendk’s picture

Hey webchick
Its cool you giving you input, but DA board members should not go out public telling why a specific individual would be good on the board.
Sitting Board Members voice in a public vote have a high weight, and anything that can be seen as favoritizing single candidates, can end up in myths and storys for conspiracy trolls (which nobody needs)
Not to mention that this is a completely other tone you're showing candidates that are critical towards the DA board

I know you and i know that this is not done in by any ill will & you just wanna clear out why Naryan could be a great part of the DA.- which he will be along with all other candidates :)
When i see a political beehive and practices/actions that can be interpritated as shady I have to ring the bell. We dont need a DA myth about favoritizing candidates - If the DA board officially go out and recommends candidates then its a completely situation, and then this would be totally ok.

All actions we done now will shape the future of this community - so lets make sure were not making the small mistakes, that will overshade the big things we all wanna do.

cheers & go timbers ;)
/mortendk

bertboerland’s picture

hi

"Its cool you giving you input, but DA board members should not go out public telling why a specific individual would be good on the board."

I agree there.

If the DA wants the things you list ("knowledge of infra, partner for hosting party, ect", seems like a valid DA job), then this could have been listed on the job description for (one of the) the vacancies.

webchick’s picture

Sorry, I thought I was simply answering sime's question, as a DA representative. I thought that it's probably useful general information to know how DA board and the d.o infrastructure team currently interact.

Note I said a voice like Narayan's. There's another member of the Drupal.org infra team, jthorson, who's also running for a spot on the board. My statement should not be taken as an endoresement for or against Narayan.

bertboerland’s picture

we all like Narayan and hope he continues his work, no problem there. :-)

next time it would help however, to have define roles , wanted characteristics and specialism per seat.

coltrane’s picture

Hypothetically, if you were a board member and a "decision comes up that impacts" some other project than infrastructure, of which there is no one of that team on the board, how would you individually (and how should the board) go about providing sensible review? In other words, how should the board improve collaboration with drupal.org teams?

nnewton’s picture

Personally I believe that when a decision that heavily impacts an established team "comes up", that team should be brought into the discussion. They should be sent the information describing the situation, the background, the parts that impact the board, why its a board decision and then a meeting should be scheduled between the board, possibly the advisory board and the team. This is important for a few reasons:

* This is a new board, its not the DA board that was pulled almost entirely from the community and had a working knowledge or at least background on a wide variety of issues that loom large in the community. There are members of the board that are very new to the community.

* Drupal as a whole has had some very active and mature volunteer teams. They should be given the respect of being talked to quickly and having their voice respected. This is absolutely required if we want to keep these teams and should be required if we want good decisions.

This is what I feel should be done as a whole. Individually, I would A. push for this style and B. if it was rejected, go talk to the team personally and try to represent them as best I could. I tend to dislike top-down decision making in general. Its certainly required sometimes, but in my experience in the community and in industry there is far too little respect given to the people doing the day to day work. In my job I try to go out and talk to staff-level stakeholders before making any decisions, I'd try to do the same thing here.

kattekrab’s picture

Hi Narayan,

In 50 words or less, what will you bring to the board of the Drupal Association?

- Donna