Q&A w/ @indexzero on Individual Membership Candidacy
hackygolucky opened this issue · comments
This thread is for asking @indexzero questions regarding his run for the Node.js Foundation Board of Directors.
Hi @indexzero,
Thank you for running for the Node Foundation community seat! To help me and others get to know you better, I have a set of questions that I'm asking all candidates, listed below. I look forward to your answers!
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How did you get involved in the Node Project?
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What does inclusivity and diversity within the Node project look like to you? How would you work with the board to increase inclusivity and diversity within the Node project?
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How would you work with the board to increase international participation in the Node project?
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What do you think are the pros/cons about the separation of powers/responsibility between the TSC/CC and the Board? How would you improve it?
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What do you think is the greatest weakness in the Node Project? How would you work with the board to fix it?
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What do you think is the greatest strength in the Node Project? How would you work with the board to preserve it?
@nebrius thanks for taking the time for making this set of questions.
1. How did you get involved in the Node Project?
I've been an active participant in the Node.js community since late 2009. At the time I was writing a lot of .NET (WPF, Silverlight) for large financial institutions in New York City. This was long before Microsoft made .NET Open Source. I was frustrated both by the technologies themselves, the resistance against Open Source, and the vendor-centric community.
At the same time these financial institutions I was working for were very interested in the idea of a single language for both their backend and frontend platforms. After much debate with myself, I decided that WPF & Silverlight were simply never going to work as dominant front-end platforms. That meant that logically JavaScript & the Web were destined to win over the other competing frontend platforms. So when Node.js came along offering me the opportunity to write JavaScript on the backend, I was sold immediately. Within a few months I had quit my job, founded Nodejitsu, the first PaaS dedicated to Node.js.
As a founder at Nodejitsu, I was empowered to turn my passion & belief in Open Source into action. My colleagues and I went on to write hundreds of the first npm modules and be a strong voice for growing the then nascent "user-land" community. I've personally written modules that are downloaded 30 million times monthly including winston, forever, and node-http-proxy. The rest (as they say) is history.
2. What does inclusivity and diversity within the Node project look like to you? How would you work with the board to increase inclusivity and diversity within the Node project?
Inclusivity and diversity within the Node project represents a commitment to continue the work that has already been done to foster it. The Board clearly cannot do this outreach & community building work alone. This is why the Board works closely with members of the Foundation Executive. These folks (currently Tracy Hinds) are responsible for the current Community Committee proposal, which I believe is a step in the right direction. This is why I supported & voted for the proposal as the Gold Director in 2016.
With that said, there is clearly more work to be done here. From the perspective of the Board there are several things that can be done proactively to increase inclusivity and diversity:
- Get more direct feedback: Only a handful of the 12 Board members have a history with the Node.js project that predates their membership in the Board. This means there is work the Board as a whole needs to do to get more involved with the community and solicit direct feedback.
- Fund programs to increase active mentorship & outreach: This is work that the Board is already doing (such as funding the current Outreachy partnership), but there are other opportunities out there. The Board should pursue these more aggressively.
- Be more transparent: any outsider (regardless of background) would have a hard time keeping track of what the Board of the Node.js Foundation does today. Minutes are slow to propagate to the public, agendas are not posted ahead of time, Public Board sessions almost never have questions from the public. The Board needs to make this a priority, even if that comes at a direct financial cost such as bolstering the Executive Team with more contractors or full-time employees.
3. How would you work with the board to increase international participation in the Node project?
Increasing international participation is two-fold: making our materials more accessible along with increased international participation through events.
With respect to increased support for translations, as part of this election I had my Statement of Interest translated into Chinese. Within Node.js today there are a number of individual Working Groups that help provide translation of Node.js documentation and other materials. The translation work done by these contributors is laudable, but the Foundation and the Board could directly & financially support increased translation. I will lobby for such direct support if elected as it already closely aligns with the goals that the Board set at the November 2016 meeting around increasing adoption and international awareness.
Regarding increased international participation through events we must be cognizant of the learnings from the Node.js Live series of events from 2015 through 2016. While they were successful, they were not scalable from a human resources perspective. Reducing the number of events and increasing their focus on participation (such as Code & Learn instead of conferences) will be key to improving the effectiveness through 2017. The Node.js Foundation very much already plans this and as an Individual Member I would support these plans as they continue to grow in 2017 and 2018.
4. What do you think are the pros/cons about the separation of powers/responsibility between the TSC/CC and the Board? How would you improve it?
The separation of responsibilities between the TSC/CC and the Board is a critical aspect of the Node.js foundation. For those not familiar with this detail: the Node.js Foundation was structured specifically to place all of the technical ownership in the hands of the TSC (Technical Steering Committee).
The TSC chooses someone (currently Rodd Vagg) to sit on the Board of Directors on their behalf. Rod has done an excellent job as the TSC representative. That being said I think that encouraging more direct communication between Board members and TSC members will only lead to a stronger working relationship between the two. Encouraging TSC members to attend Board meetings (as observers), for example, would make the workings of the Board less opaque and build trust in the process.
5. What do you think is the greatest weakness in the Node Project? How would you work with the board to fix it?
The greatest weakness of the Node Project is one of its greatest strengths: scale. I am not talking about scale in that Node.js needs to handle more concurrent requests, but that it needs a Foundation that can adequately handle the growing people scale of the project. As a Board member this (practically speaking) means two things: refining processes and growing the Executive team of the Node.js Foundation to support them.
Thanks to the separation between the Board and the TSC/CC almost all of the processes the run the project are defined outside of the Board. This is a great thing and having people on the TSC, multiple WGs, and even the Board is also great. It fosters communication and builds the network of the community.
How can the Foundation grow the Executive team to support this? Great question! Most other foundations that exist to back large Open Source projects (and many other non-profits for that matter) have an Executive Director. The Node.js Foundation does not have an Executive Director. Having an Executive Director would allow the current Executive team to focus more on the project and less on the business operations of the Foundation itself. As an Individual Director, I will advocate for a new Executive Director position at the Foundation and (if approved) dedicate time to help whomever is selected be effective in driving the Foundation support of the community.
6. What do you think is the greatest strength in the Node Project? How would you work with the board to preserve it?
At a project level, Node's greatest strength is the broad set of use cases and applications it is used for. From traditional web applications, to CLI & front-end build tools, to IoT, to even desktop applications through electron there is very little that Node.js can't compete in. This diaspora of technology domains means that there are ever more conferences that Node.js is being talked about at. Encouraging and participating in non-Foundation events is paramount to building on the many successes of Node.js. I will work with the Board to encourage this through budget oversight on the Audit & Finance committee.
Just two quick questions from me: (a) In your view, what is the primary role of the Board in the evolution of the Node.js platform and (b) as an individual board member, what would be one thing you'd hope to accomplish over the next year?
Howdy @jasnell. Good questions.
(a) In your view, what is the primary role of the Board in the evolution of the Node.js platform.
The primary role of the Board in the evolution of Node.js is to listen. Listen to the TSC for what they need to help grow the technical aspects of the project. Listen to the Individual Members about what they need to be successful with Node.js. Listen to the Community at large to see what the Foundation can do to help increase adoption & growth of the Node.js. Listen to folks from diverse backgrounds to understand the needs & and challenges for those coming from under represented groups in tech. Listen to the Member companies to ensure Node.js is growing to meet their evolving needs. If the Board can listen effectively then I think there is nothing out of reach.
(b) as an individual board member, what would be one thing you'd hope to accomplish over the next year?
As a previous member of the Board I know how difficult it is to quickly implement even simply policies. There are a number of things I've talked about advocating for if elected as an Individual Director. The first thing I would work to do is also the most achievable: increase transparency in budgeting. I expect that this would be released within the first two Audit & Finance meeting as the members of the committee have already expressed an openness to the idea in previous sessions. From there I would build on that early success to implement the other policies that make up the platform I've presented here.
As an Individual Director, I will advocate for a new Executive Director position at the Foundation and (if approved) dedicate time to help whomever is selected be effective in driving the Foundation support of the community.
That sounds interesting. Is the idea that the Executive Director's responsibilities are primarily around budgeting and day-to-day operations?
How much time, relatively speaking, does the executive team spend on that now? What would they do with the extra time?
An Executive Director for a non-profit is similar to a CEO at other organizations. In addition to being responsible for the financials and the day-to-day operations, they work with the Board and other stakeholders (in Node.js this would be the TSC/CC) to define the vision and macro-level goals for the Foundation. For example, should the focus for 2017 be to increase contributors or increase adoption (and adoption in what vertical?) Clearly both are important but when it comes down to details the Foundation's fixed budget may only allow funding so many programs or initiatives. Choosing how to prioritize these is one of the roles of an Executive Director and indicative of how they help create the vision.
How much time, relatively speaking, does the executive team spend on that now? What would they do with the extra time?
I would suggest you get more information on the specifics from @mikeal and @hackygolucky, but from what I've been able to observe in 2016 I would say these responsibilities are easily a full-time amount of work shared between them. In particular, I know creating budgets and running monthly Board meetings does take a non-trivial amount of time.
By having a new Executive Director focus on these more administrative duties, the other members would have more free time to focus on the Community. I'm sure they have more to say on that themselves though 🤓
Two questions (for each of the candidates):
- How will you communicate with broader Node community you could be representing? What would be the primary avenue for questions and comments to yourself and to the board through yourself?
- How would make future Individual Directors more effective, even continuing past the current term?
How will you communicate with broader Node community you could be representing? What would be the primary avenue for questions and comments to yourself and to the board through yourself?
As you know I'm involved with community conferences focused on both EmpireJS and EmpireNode. Being involved with a distributed Open Source project is more than just in-person.
With that in mind, I plan on holding regular office hours where folks in the community can join in and talk about what's on their mind. There are certainly other opportunities here such as an issue tracker for the Board itself. While I wouldn't expect the majority of the Board to participate frequently it would be a great sourceof questions to surface during Board meetings.