Reps' Mentorship as non-essential criteria for Council membership

Description

Mentorship and Council membership are two different sorts of focus area, demanding considerably different bundle of skillsets required, in order to deliver for each role. With that in hand, the criteria - a rep to have to be a Mentor, in order to be nominated as Council Member - seems mostly unnecessary.

Will be glad to expand this further (skills for each role etc), should there be a counter-argument (quote & thread out please).

Impact Area

Participation meta. This directly affects the structure/formation of ReMo itself, and passively how participation model is implemented/integrated with it.

Owner

Deb

Backer(s):

Name of mentor(s) backing the proposal (can be defined during the mentor review phase)
If you’re a Reps’ mentor and agree with the proposal, please edit & add your name here.

Type

New Proposal (but amendment of existing SoP)

Priority:

P2 (important, not urgent)

1 Like

I totally back this (and have suggested it a few times myself :wink: )

Being a mentor is time consuming and so many Reps don’t have time to help with governance of other areas of the program as well as being a mentor. I would amend the proposal to say that you have to be a mentor or a member of another working group/task force to run for council. @r_qDYrxoJ3X9S_ltyv6BEiGw - how do you feel about that?

1 Like

Hello @r_qDYrxoJ3X9S_ltyv6BEiGw,

Thanks for creating this here.

Some questions that can help to drive the discussion:

  • Why do you think this is a problem right now?
  • What’s the concrete change proposal?

Cheers.

I somehow like the idea, here are the two positive things I’m seeing as first glance (without diving too much):

  • At some point we will have repeating council members if we can only select them among the mentors (so this will help to have new people as council members)
  • It will help to apply the principles of changing the way that communities participate.

However, it will imply a few negative aspects:

  • How will be the “selection” process?? (if we have only the 51% of Reps active, not anyone will be able to propose to be a candidate).
  • Reps who are more “known” will be more eligible, since a Rep that are the only one in his country, won’t likely obtain too many votes.
  • How many Reps do you think that will like to run for this?, it implies a lot of time.
  • Reps without good english skills. Language can be a barrier for this, since the Council communicates in english.

So I will probably ask the same question than Nuke:

  • Why do you think this is a problem?

Is the option proposed by Kensie not a good alternative?

1 Like

Thanks kensie, glad that you stepped forward and backed this. Hi5!

I don’t think I got the idea quite right of this sentence (literal sense, I’m not being passive-aggressive, in case my phrasing appears so). Could you please elaborate a little?

Longer discussion. I’d probably start a “Reply as a Linked Topic” to explain “how” part, when “yes, this makes sense” part is established. For now, let’s consider/suppose, there is a way to nominate council members efficiently. Your next questions can also be answered as a continuation to that discussion.

@r_oVhPfcJCUUC5wbm6i4_C2Q good suggestion on proposal enhancement. I’m inclined to make edits on the initial proposal to append those answers, and not reply as a new comment to keep the proposal integrity in one place. Would that be fine, or otherwise?

If you do that, please put a note on the original message to be able to see there are things that have changed and add a new comment so we can get a notification :smiley:

Several times, council has tried to launch task forces or working groups to
get Reps’ help in running the program. However interest from Reps has been
low. I think perhaps part of this is because to “unlock” extra value from
the program you have to be a mentor.

Emma also worked some on council to try to expand the idea of a mentor, and
that the current type of mentor we have would be one type, but we would
open up ways for Reps with other skills to help mentor and “unlock” the
extra value of the Reps program that currently only comes with being a
mentor.

For the simplicity of language, let’s consider the current mentor role to
be a task force that has a lot of members. The task force focuses on
supporting Reps budget/swag requests and making sure they stay active. It
is currently the only successful task force. By changing the criteria to be
on council to say that you have to be an active member on any task force,
not just the mentor task force, we might help encourage Reps to participate
in the other areas of governance that need extra hands. It would also be a
first step in creating other roles that help unlock more value for Reps.

I think by virtue of putting this in the council criteria it will help
create incentive to try again to get these groups off the ground and help
take the load off of council.

1 Like

Maybe we could tie this in with the leadership initiative @george Roter explained in the last call? Those 150 “leaders” could be eligible for the “first stage” and we could see how to find some criteria for the next phase.

I also believe that council and mentorship run in parallels and we should look into this.

Maybe those who want to run for council can get a recommendation or approval from their mentor?