The ASF is holding it’s annual Member’s Meeting next week to elect a new board and a number of new Members to the ASF. Â I’m honored to have been nominated to stand for the board election, and I’m continuing my tradition of publicly posting my vision for Apache each year.
Please read on for my take on what’s important for the ASF’s future…
Shane’s Director Position Statement 2017 v1.0
If you want a director who will keep the board focused on being clear, consistent, and polite; who will provide oversight for independent governance for our projects; who will help the board improve our shared strategic vision for growth while delegating effectively to the officers and volunteers who provide services to our projects, then I ask you to vote for me.
What We Need In A Board
We are lucky to have candidates who all have immense amounts of passion for the ASF and experience in the Apache Way of doing things. But that’s not enough to make an effective board. We need directors who can work well together, and who can work well when speaking to all the other parts of the Foundation: with our corporate operations (infra, brand, legal, press, fundraising, and even our vendors and sponsors), and with the thousands of volunteers working in Apache project communities.
The board needs to focus on providing the independent oversight for everything we do. That independence from corporate influence is the most important part of what makes the ASF different. That oversight should be trust but verify. We trust that our projects will do the right thing, and verify by reading their quarterly reports. Only if something seems wrong does the board speak up – and then, to ask the community to self-correct. Only if a project community can’t self-correct does the board take formal action.
We need a board that will give the officers, staff, and volunteers who run our non-project corporate operations the same respect and trust as we do our projects. Since we rely wholly on unpaid volunteers to govern organizational decisions, the board needs to ensure officers have a safe, consistent, and clearly defined space to do all the “paperwork” that keeps our legal corporation running. Since all corporate officers provide monthly reports, the board has plenty of visibility to what they do.
When the board has questions or advice – or when directors have questions – they need to ensure it’s brought into project communities clearly, concisely, and professionally. The organizational aspects of providing oversight are often not the day-to-day work that committers are doing on their project codebase. When the board (or any officer) jumps into a project community, we need to explain both how things should work at Apache, but also the why they work that way.
I hope that I’ve shown this kind of behavior in the past; if I haven’t, please let me know. Keeping our communities welcoming is important.
What Shane Does At Apache
For those who don’t follow Apache operations on a regular basis, here are some of the places where I’ve worked to take the tribal knowledge of our mailing lists, and better explain it to both our communities and the world at large:
- About trademarks & brands
- About how the ASF works
- About Community over Code & The Apache Way
I’ve served on the board for several terms, and serve as VP, Brand Management. I’m hoping to get back to coding on Apache PonyMail. My first mail to an Apache list was in November 1999.
If elected, I will
- Attend every board meeting
- Ensure that there is clear, consistent, and polite feedback from the board to projects
- Work to promote constructive, polite, and efficient working environments for our staff and all our community volunteers
- Speak at every ApacheCon (if they accept my CFPs!)
- Be available to speak or meet with Apache projects or meetups in the New England area or other conferences I attend
About Shane
I am currently unemployed and hold no allegiance other than to the ASF (and my family!) I will not accept a job that would compromise my ability to act in the best interests of the ASF. I live with my wife, daughter, and four cats.
