Executive Director Candidate Committee

Concluding Recommendation; Letter to members and contributors

July 30, 2012

Dear OpenStack members and contributors,

One of the first important tasks for the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors, once elected, is to appoint the first Executive Director of the Foundation. The Executive Director will act as Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation and shall, subject to the direction of the Board of Directors, have general supervision, direction and control of the business and the officers of the Foundation.

In anticipation of the Foundation being formed and the Board being appointed and elected, and in order to smooth the transition to operating as a Foundation, the 19 companies who publicly committed to be Platinum and Gold members formed a committee in May 2012 to conduct a process to define a job description, invite applications, interview candidates, and select a candidate to recommend to the Board (once formed) for the Executive Director role.

After a diligent and inclusive process by the committee, which included preparing and posting a comprehensive job description, receiving and reviewing over 40 applications, and panel style interviews of 5 short-listed candidates, the Executive Director search committee has recommended Jonathan Bryce for the Executive Director position.

The recommendation of Jonathan Bryce as Executive Director will be considered at the first meeting of the Board of the Foundation, anticipated to be held on August 28th, 2012 after the completion of Board member appointments and elections. The process the committee developed and used to arrive at its recommendation is outlined on this wiki page. The job description containing a complete listing of the job criteria and detailed job responsibilities is also contained within this wiki page. Sincerely, Committee Members

Alan Clark (chair)
Boris Renski
Brian Stevens
Cliff Young
Eileen Evans
Ewan Mellor
Jim Curry
Jon Mittelhauser
Sean Roberts
Simon Anderson
Tim Bell
Todd Moore
Tristan Goode
Winston Damarillo

Background and Process

Based on action items resulting from the May 9th F2F a Executive Director Candidate committee is being formed to formulate the criteria, to vet possible candidates for the role and to provide a recommendation to the Foundation board. The efforts of the committee will result in ensuring that all are on the same page with the roles, responsibilities, priorities and goals for the ED. Writing these down will be a very good thing for the ED and for the members. While it is the responsibility of the Board to place the ED, this committee can in the interim go through the steps enabling the Board to immediately act. Also having the persons on the committee, who will potentially be the board helps assure that the board will adopt the committees results and recommendations.

The committee members are:

Alan Clark (chair)
Boris Renski
Brian Stevens
Cliff Young
Eileen Evans
Ewan Mellor
Jim Curry
Cole Crawford replaced by Jon Mittelhauser
Sean Roberts
Simon Anderson
Tim Bell
Todd Moore
Tristan Goode
Winston Damarillo
Lauren Sell (For communications)

The output of this committee effort is a candidate recommendation to the board for approval along with a recommendation for the first year incentive goals.

All work will be posted and updated on this wiki page.

The following is the Committee's steps/schedule that align with the Drafting Committees time line.

May 23-30

May 30

June 6

June 11

June 14

June 22

June 27

July 9 - 13

July 18

August 28

Job Description and Candidate Criteria

Executive Director candidate criteria and job description:

[[attachment:Executive_Director_OpenStack_Job_Description_Draft_06_11_2012.[pdf]]

OPENSTACK FOUNDATION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CANDIDATE SOURCING PROCESS

To ensure that the process be as transparant and fair as possible for all candidates and members, the committee developed and adopted the following process for discovering and interviewing candidates

1. Objective:

The objective of this document is to outline the process to be followed by the members of the OpenStack Foundation executive committee to source and pre-selecting the candidates for the executive director role. Depending on the number of credible candidates available for the position, the process may need to be calibrated on the ongoing basis. The end goal of the process is to identify several candidates for the executive director and present the candidates to the foundation board. It is understood by all members of the committee that, once formed, the foundation board will be responsible for making the final appointment of the executive director.

2. Responsible Party:

Executive committee members acknowledge the necessity of identifying a single, responsible party to drive the sourcing process, while keeping it transparent all members of the committee. It is agreed that Alan Clark will be responsible for organizing and executing the sourcing process. The rest of the committee members will observe and participate during certain stages.

3. Sourcing Process Steps:

Executive director sourcing process will consist of the following steps:

Producing a job description
Sourcing a pool of resumes
Selecting the candidates for a phone screening
Committee recommendation
Board Review & Approval

4. Producing a job description:

In producing the description, committee members have researched job descriptions for comparable positions in other non-profit organizations with a mandate that is similar to the OpenStack foundation. Committee members have also considered the mission of the OpenStack foundation, as well as, discussions pertaining to executive director role that took place during earlier gold and platinum member meetings. Taking into the account all of above, executive committee members have collaboratively produced a job description by engaging in a series of open discussions conducted over the phone.

5. Sourcing Resumes:

It is agreed that Alan Clark will source the resumes by advertising the agreed upon job description in a number of places, such as LinkedIn.com, CareerBuilder.com and www.openstack.org/jobs. If the initial postings do not provide the calibar of candidates desired by the committee, Lloyd Wendt of Idetecht Solutions will be engaged to recruit for the position. Lloyd has reviewed the job description and has confirmed that he is willing to personally handle the assignment for a flat fee. The committee determined some sense of confidentiality and personal contact needs to be conveyed to the Candidates. We will therefore limit the initial exposure of the candidate information to the committee members. Candidates will submit their resumes to Alanclark@openstack.org Alan Clark is responsible for aggregating all resumes in a single place, accessible to all committee members. As the resume sourcing process continues, Alan will update all committee members on a regular basis (at least once a week) with respect to the status of the sourcing process i.e. places the position is being advertised, resume flow, any emerging issues/ considerations etc. Resume sourcing process will go on until committee members have come to an agreement that there are enough credible candidates available or until the executive director has been recruited by the board.

6. Selecting Candidates for Phone Interviews:

Initiation of the phone screenings does not imply that the process of sourcing the candidate resumes should stop. Sourcing and screening will proceed in parallel. Once some number of credible executive director candidates has been established, Alan Clark will initiate the process of identifying the candidates to be screened by phone. Executive committee members will convene via WebEx / phone conference to openly discuss the candidates and agree on those to be screened. More than one meeting may be necessary; follow-on email discussion may also be warranted. It is expected that committee members will unanimously agree on which resumes are worthy of the phone screening through this open discussion. If disagreements happen to arise, executive committee members will conduct a formal vote. The exact structure of the voting process may vary, depending on the final number and quality of the candidates being considered. Therefore, it will be agreed upon by the committee members when there is more clarity on this matter.

7. Conducting Phone Screenings Prior to conducting the screenings:

Alan Clark will put together a list of standard screening questions to be asked of the candidates. Alan will circulate the list of questions among all committee members and will give sufficient opportunity for comments and suggestions. If required, a phone discussion between committee may be organized by Alan to finalize the list of questions. Alan Clark will negotiate the screening times with the candidates and announce the time to all committee members. Committee member participation in the screenings is highly encouraged, but is optional. It is expected that the screenings will be conducted via WebEx or phone conference. The screening sessions will be recorded and made available by Alan Clark for all committee members to review offline. During the screening sessions, it is expected that Alan Clark will lead the interview with the agreed upon script of questions while all other participating committee members will listen on mute. Candidates will be explicitly notified about being recorded for offline review purposes. Upon Alan completing the scripted questions part of the interview, the screening will be open to all committee members for a period of 15-20 minutes.

8. Committee Recommendation

Upon completion of the phone interviews, Alan Clark will request of all committee members to provide their opinion (in private via email) regarding the best candidates and a runner up candidate. Having received and aggregated the information, Alan will publicly share the aggregated results of the opinions of committee members without openly revealing the details of individual votes and comments. The committee will convene in person at OSCON to openly discuss the aggregate results. It is assumed that the agreement regarding the top candidate will be easy to achieve. However, should any disagreements arise, a formal voting process will be put in place by the executive committee and executed upon at the said meeting. Those, unwilling to go public about their initial recommendation have the right to abstain from voting. As a result of the meeting at OSCON ED sourcing committee produce a recommendation for the top candidate. The recommendation will be drafted by Alan and ratified by ED sourcing committee members.

9. Board Review and Approval

All materials produced as the results of the steps described above, including the job description, candidate resumes, recordings of the candidate interviews and ED Sourcing recommendation will be packaged and passed on to the board members (once the board is formed). The board will then scrutinize the materials and will make the final decision on candidate hire. As always, it is expected that the board will be able to easily come to a unanimous decision. However, should disagreements arise among board members, a formal voting process will be instituted by the board.

Governance/Foundation/EDCandidateCommittee