AB Meet the Candidates 2025

[wareid]

The AB nomination period is underway, and will be followed by the election period. During the election period we usually run a "Meet the Candidates" session to have potential candidates introduce themselves to the membership.

What kind of questions would we like to ask potential AB candidates?

[koalie]

I think the "Meet the candidates" sessions create significant overhead in addition to duplicating to some extent the "candidate statements" which are a pillar of the election process.
The latter is very egalitarian and allows candidates and voters to engage in written conversations in the W3C Members forum, at everyone's preferred pace.
Organizing a "meet the candidates" session not only attempts to redo differently the "candidate statements" exercise by subjecting candidates to questions they do not control as though it were an exam to pass, but also when held as live meetings it gives an unfair advantage to candidates who are more at ease with speaking English.
I wish we stopped both practices of inventing the same questions for all candidates and grilling them in live distributed conversations, and instead relied on encouraging those who have questions for candidates or about their statements, to take place in writing on the Members forum.

[michaelchampion]

The latter is very egalitarian and allows candidates and voters to engage in written conversations in the W3C Members forum, at everyone's preferred pace.

The Meet the Candidates session doesn't discourage good candidate statements, written conversations in AC-Forum or Slack. If anything it could serve to encourage written conversations to follow up or clarify points made in the live discussions.

gives an unfair advantage to candidates who are more at ease with speaking English.

Perhaps real-time language translation technology is getting good enough that W3C can and should experiment with letting people communicate in their preferred language and expecting others to accommodate them. For example, perhaps Meet the Candidates sessions could use Zoom (or whatever's) translation / transcription capabilities to enable a candidate to express themselves in their preferred language ... and the AB do likewise for their remote meetings.

But for now, and for better or worse, to be effective on the AB one must be able to converse in spoken English. That is a relevant skill, so it's not useful to call it an unfair advantage.

[koalie]

The Meet the Candidates session doesn't discourage good candidate statements, written conversations in AC-Forum or Slack.

I didn't imply it did. I said the Meet the Candidates session creates significant overhead and duplicates in a way the "candidate statements" exercise.

If anything it could serve to encourage written conversations to follow up or clarify points made in the live discussions.

I am arguing that to encourage written conversations, you do not need a "meet the candidates" nor a wiki with the same set of questions to all candidates.

Perhaps real-time language translation technology is getting good enough that W3C can and should experiment with letting people communicate in their preferred language and expecting others to accommodate them. For example, perhaps Meet the Candidates sessions could use Zoom (or whatever's) translation / transcription capabilities to enable a candidate to express themselves in their preferred language ... and the AB do likewise for their remote meetings.

Perhaps instead of trying to find solutions to problems as they arise and thus making the whole thing even more complex, we should state the value of subjecting candidates to a set of questions they do not control as though they were an exam to pass.

But for now, and for better or worse, to be effective on the AB one must be able to converse in spoken English. That is a relevant skill, so it's not useful to call it an unfair advantage.

It is only an unfair advantage when candidates are assessed compared to the others in the specific context of a "meet the candidates" live meetings in the context of an election.

[csarven]

I'm not particularly familiar with AB Meet the Candidates, but I agree with everything Coralie mentioned in her comments - aligns closely with how I felt for TAG Meet the Candidates 2024. I didn't mind doing the homework, but I did feel some pressure and found it somewhat redundant given the required nomination/candidate statements - my original statement may have already covered most of it.

If there's a set of questions the community want answered, those could be shared ahead of time so candidates can optionally address them in their statements.

[cwilso]

@csarven This is precisely the issue. It is quite easy to over-ask questions in an asynchronous mode like the TAG MtC 2024 (i.,e., ask a complex set of questions, and of course as a candidate you want to give a complete answer, so you spend hours crafting your responses); I've filled out many such a questionnaire myself, but the reality is very few voters bother to read them. I'll show up to an hour call; I won't read 7+ candidate statements. (Your statement from the TAG election is about a 7m30sec read, so these are about equivalent in time sunk to the voter.). The point of a live session is not only allow candidates to share their own thoughts, but to give some inkling of how they might work in the community - because these roles are in a community, and for the time being our default language is English, and secondary votes are quite important in STV elections. I'm strongly supportive of sharing the questions ahead of time, so everyone has a chance to think about them.

[fantasai]

Suggestion of a question to add (since this issue is about collecting questions, not about what format the questions should be asked in):

What are the challenges facing W3C as an organization in the next two years, and what skills and interests will you bring to the AB to help with addressing them?