The Technical Advisory Board (TAB) represents the broader ODK community. It reviews and gives feedback on major roadmap decisions, new designs, specifications, features, and protocol changes. See the Governance Overview for more information on the TAB's place in the ODK project and community.
TAB membership will be determined via a public application process. The application requirements will focus on relevant experience, contributions to the suite ecosystem, and availability to provide technical direction to the suite.
Members will be elected by a 2/3rds (rounded up) majority of the current TAB and serve for a term of 2 years, unless they resign or are removed. Elections are typically held yearly in March and typically half of TAB is up for election.
The TAB must have one permanent member from Get ODK Inc and at least two elected members, but there is no fixed size. The expected target is between 6 and 12, from a minimum of 3 separate organizations, to ensure long-term sustainability, adequate coverage of important areas of expertise, and ability to make decisions efficiently.
There is no specific set of requirements or qualifications for TAB membership beyond these rules.
The TAB may add additional members by a regular decision at a duly called meeting (see below). A TAB member may be removed by voluntary resignation, or by a 2/3rds majority (rounded up).
TAB members are expected to regularly participate in TAB activities. Members who have not consistently taken meaningful actions as TAB members in the past 3 months will be considered for removal. Examples of meaningful actions are participating regularly in calls, reviewing code, committing code, providing technical mentorship, leading working groups, etc.
No more than 1/3 of the TAB members may be affiliated with the same organization. If removal or resignation of a TAB member, or a change of employment by a TAB member, creates a situation where more than 1/2 of TAB membership belong to the same organization, the situation must be immediately remedied by the resignation or removal of one or more TAB members affiliated with the over-represented organization(s).
Changes to TAB membership should be posted in the agenda, and may be suggested as any other agenda item.
The current TAB members are listed at https://getodk.org/about/ecosystem.html.
The TAB will meet regularly (currently every four weeks). The meeting will be run by a facilitator chosen by the TAB and each meeting will be conducted and published to a publicly accessible platform (e.g., YouTube). Meeting frequency, times, agenda, and notes will also be published to a publicly accessible platform (e.g., the forum, Google Docs).
The TAB will default to working in public, but sensitive topics (e.g., pre-disclosure security problems, confidential pre-agreement discussions with third parties, personal conflicts among personnel) should only be discussed on private channels.
Any community member or contributor can ask that a matter be considered at a TAB meeting by writing a forum post with the TAB tag. It is the meeting facilitator's responsibility to collect these items together and consider them for addition to the agenda or add them to a list of topics for future consideration.
The facilitator must share the meeting agenda on the forum at least three days prior to the meeting.
The TAB may invite non-members to participate in a non-voting capacity. These invitees will be listed on the agenda.
Meeting minutes will be kept and shared publicly.
The TAB follows a consensus-seeking decision-making model. When an agenda item has appeared to reach a consensus, the facilitator will ask "Does anyone object?" as a final call for dissent from the consensus.
If an agenda item cannot reach a consensus, a TAB member can call for either a closing vote or a vote to table the issue to the next meeting. The call for a vote must be approved by a majority of the TAB or else the discussion will continue. If all members of the TAB are not present during the meeting for contentious issues, the final vote should happen asynchronously (e.g., via email). Simple majority wins.
This a derivative work of the Node.js Project Governance. This work is licensed under the MIT license with copyright held by Node.js Website WG contributors.