Re: Solid CG Chair Election 2023: Chair Self-Nominations

To elaborate on
https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid/pull/4#pullrequestreview-1744637120, here
is my statement regarding my background and why I am running:

In 2010 I quit my day job to start the Unhosted projec
<https://unhosted.org>t (which is also a W3C CG
<https://w3.org/community/unhosted>), which aims to liberate web users from
the web 2.0 platform monopolies by separating apps from data.
I later discovered Tim's blogpost
<https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/CloudStorage.html> from a year earlier,
and met Henry Story and elf Pavlik at FOSDEM and FedSocWeb in 2011, and
later Melvin Carvalho, Amy Guy, and Tim himself. Ever since, the Unhosted
project and the Solid project have been closely related - with the Unhosted
project focussing a bit more on the Progressive Web App side and the Solid
project focussing a bit more on the Linked Data and Read-Write Web side.

Through a coincidence, since I had co-founded the Terms of Service; Didn't
Read <https://tosdr.org> project, I eventually ended up talking with Mitzi
Laszlo and working at Inrupt for a while.
After that, Sharon Stratsianis and I joined the Solid OS project on a
mission to improve the code quality, test coverage and documentation of the
mashlib stack, working closely with Tim in the weekly Solid OS meetings.

I joined up with engineers from Muze to form PDS Interop and together we
built Solid-Nextcloud <https://github.com/pdsinterop/solid-nextcloud>, and
wrote a test suite for the Solid spec <https://solidservers.org/>.
I created an Open Collective
<https://opencollective.com/independent-solid-test-suite> to support the
sustainable maintenance of this test suite, and together with Pete Edwards
and later Sarven Capadisli, formed the Solid Test Suite panel.

I supported Gijs van den Beucken in the establishment of
https://www.solidcommunity.nl/ where I'm also a technical advisor.
In response to demand from the Netherlands and UK, I created the Solid
Software Consortium <https://solidsoftwareconsortium.org/> which so far
remains inactive but has helped reshape the thinking about the possibility
of a production-grade open source implementation of Solid in various
conversations.
Earlier this year I attended the EU's SEMIC workshops and co-organised the
session about Solid at the My Data Global conference, which may or may not
have helped to put Solid into the minds of EU policy makers.
When the plans for a Solid WG were announced, I registered my employer
Ponder Source as a paying W3C member and attended TPAC in Sevilla to help
represent the Solid community towards the rest of the W3C.
I am also a volunteer for the Solid Team, helping with the chores to
maintain the website <https://solidproject.org> and the Solid community pod
server <https://solidcommunity.net>.
I also registered my employer as a sponsor of both the first and the second
Solid Symposium <https://events.vito.be/sosy2024>, which by the way, you
should all attend if travel allows! :)
Together with others I started the Solid Data Modules
<https://github.com/solid-contrib/data-modules> project which I think is an
important next ingredient for Solid.
I was also actively involved in recent discussions around access grants vs
access control lists, on which we recently had a Special Topic meeting, but
which I think will deserve some more room to grow within our CG in the
coming time.

I think this puts me in a position where I know quite a bit about the Solid
project and how we can organise ourselves, as well as represent ourselves
as an inspired and pluriform community towards the wider circles of people
who care about web standards and human-centric internet, both to help
promote the ideas we are working on, and to make sure potential new
contributors can find us. I try to help foster plurality wherever I can,
and make sure we make progress on our goals while having fun and respecting
each other at the same time, and where I fail I try to learn from it.

As for my reason to run for CG co-chair, I think it's important that the CG
exists as a space where the Solid project can happen. I don't think the
chairs should be very prominent or do a lot of things with their "chair
hat" on - I think ideally we should be on the periphery, acting as trim tabs
<https://www.sloww.co/trim-tab-buckminster-fuller/>. In this context it's
important to note that we'll not be taking over the guiding tasks Sarven
had as spec editor - this election is only about the CG chairing tasks. I
think it's good if we share this task with multiple people, and I also *hope
at least one more person will still self-nominate before Tuesday,* so we
can for instance rotate as CG meeting chairs! :)


Cheers,
Michiel

On Wed, 22 Nov 2023 at 15:45, Michiel de Jong <michiel@pondersource.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> As discussed in today's CG meeting and as I already said in
> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-solid/2023Oct/0015.html I'm
> also volunteering to help out as a CG co-chair. I'll add my name to
> https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid/pull/3/files as well.
>
> Cheers,
> Michiel
>
> On Thu, 16 Nov 2023 at 13:50, elf Pavlik <elf-pavlik@hackers4peace.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I already expressed my availability and willingness to co-chair in this
>> email:
>>
>> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-solid/2023Oct/0055.html)
>>
>> I would also like to encourage everyone who has availability and
>> willingness to share chair responsibilities to step up and self-nominate as
>> well!
>>
>> Since I'm also volunteering to help with the election process I created a
>> PR to keep track of all the candidates
>>
>> https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid/pull/3/files
>>
>> Once it gets merged the up to date list should be available on
>>
>> https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid/blob/main/elections/2023/candidates.md
>>
>> Election volunteers team can keep it up to date, as well as candidates
>> can PR their name and link to their mailing list announcement.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>> On 11/15/23 03:06, Sarven Capadisli wrote:
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> This is an announcement about the CG chair election as per the Solid CG
>> charter [1].
>>
>> As part of the Solid CG Chair Election Procedure [2], we're currently in
>> the phase where chair nominations are being accepted until 2023-11-28.
>>
>> The charter specifies that individuals seeking election must
>> self-nominate and provide a statement about their background and reasons
>> for candidacy on the group's mailing list. More ways to engage with the CG
>> are outlined in [2].
>>
>> Chair candidates and voters might find the Self-Review Questionnaire for
>> Chair Candidates [3] beneficial. There will be a dedicated topic in a CG
>> weekly meeting for candidates if they would like to make a statement or
>> answer questions from the community
>>
>> If you have any questions or comments, please join us in chat [4] or CG
>> weekly meeting [5].
>>
>> [1] https://www.w3.org/community/solid/charter/
>> [2] https://github.com/solid/specification/discussions/582
>> [3] https://github.com/solid/specification/discussions/568
>> [4] https://matrix.to/#/#solid_specification:gitter.im
>> [5] https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid/#participation
>>
>> -Sarven
>> https://csarven.ca/#i
>>
>>