A Chicken in Every Pot

Last week, Mike Milinkovich sent an email to the eclipse.org committers mailing list announcing important dates for the upcoming 2007 elections of the Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors.

There are four coveted seats on the board of directors reserved for committer representatives to be elected by their peers for a one-year term starting April 1, 2007. This year, the nominations open Dec 17 and close Jan 13. Voting takes place from Feb 7 through Feb 21, and the winners are announced on Feb 28.

So I thought this may be a good time to take a look back at the accomplishments of the current elected representatives over the past year. Wait a minute. We can't, or at least I can't.

With all due respect, I, for one, have no idea what they did on behalf of committers. Not to say that they did not do anything, it is just that the communication was pretty much non-existent. As a result, I am not very well-informed.

There are so many ways and channels already available to the elected representatives (and us all) to communicate effectively with the rest of the committers. Unfortunately, these channels were not utilized well, if at all.

It would have been useful, for example, if the representatives published an interim report after each board meeting to the committers mailing list outlining issues discussed and conclusions reached. Blogging is another complementary and useful outlet to keep their constituents informed.

I also do not recall the representatives soliciting for input from the committers in a public forum on what issues are most important to them that they can bring it up to the board of directors. How do they know they are really representing our interests?

I hope the next class of freshmen and/or incumbent committer representatives take the time to communicate effectively with the rest of the committers and community.

Actually, what I am asking for is nothing new or groundbreaking. Bjorn used to do that when he was an elected member a few years ago, and the webmaster keeps us very well-informed on the issues that affect us the most.

We all appreciate that, and let's have more of it.

Incidentally, the title of this post is, of course, a reference to the famous 'A Chicken in Every Pot and a Car in Every Garage' slogan of Herbert Hoover's 1928 presidential campaign during the depression.

Trivia: The Simpsons had an episode about an election with a title that is very similar to that slogan. what was the title?