Standing for Election

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

From 26-30 January, an election will be held for the seven vacant positions on the inaugural Steering Committee of the Software Carpentry Foundation. This will be one of the biggest steps in the project's journey from two guys staying up until 3:00 am fourteen years ago to write lessons on Perl for scientists at Los Alamos to a mature open project run by the volunteers it belongs to.

If you are a qualified instructor who has taught at least twice in the past two years, or have done a significant chunk of non-teaching work for Software Carpentry, you can both stand for election and vote. We strongly urge you to consider standing: if you're willing and able to commit to giving the Foundation 3 hours a week, you'll help thousands of scientists get more done in less time and with less pain. It'll be fun, too: few things in life are as rewarding as building something, and our members are building something extraordinary.

In order to stand for election, you must write a blog post to introduce yourself to the community by Friday, January 16 (i.e., a full week before the start of the election). This post:

• must be around 500 words long,

• can be written in any format (e.g. question and answer, paragraph text), and

• must be titled, "2015 Election: Your Name"

You can submit your post as a pull request to this website's repository or by email. It should explain:

• what your background is,

• what your previous involvement with Software Carpentry has been, and most importantly

• what you will do as a member of the Steering Committee to contribute to the growth and success of Software Carpentry.

The last point is the most important. If you have experience managing money, we need a Treasurer; if your passion is helping new instructors or figuring out how well we're doing, we need people to lead mentorship and assessment, while if you come from a part of the world that hasn't seen much Software Carpentry activity yet, you might want to take the lead in getting us going there.

(Actually, the point that's really most important is that everyone will still be very welcome to volunteer in other ways, and that doing so will be as valuable as ever. We will still need topic maintainers, help with the website, and many other things, and I hope that having more people coordinating things will actually make it easier for you all to lend a hand.)

If seven or fewer nominations are received, those people who nominated will be automatically appointed to the Steering Committee and no formal election will be held. Vacancies on the Steering Committee can be filled at any time at the Committee's discretion. The regular positions on the Steering Committee (Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and then any others the Committee feels it needs) will be decided by a vote at the Committee's first meeting.

We believe the following people are currently qualified to stand in the election. If you believe your name should be on the list, or notice that someone else's is missing, please let us know as soon as possible: we're doing our best to keep our records up to date, but sometimes we miss things.

We've come a long way. With your help, we will go even further. It's been a privilege to work with you all: I look forward to doing so again in 2015.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, July 1998

Los Alamos National Laboratory, September 1998

Please visit the list of current members to see who is eligible to stand and vote in our election. If you believe you qualify as a member but are not listed there, please contact us as soon as possible.