For the last 18-months I have served on the Board of Directors on behalf of the Gold members who elected me in 2015. This past year, the Gold membership tier shrank by one to only two members. The Node.js foundation by-laws state that:
"In the event that there are two Gold Members, each desiring to vote for its own nominee, the winner shall be determined by a coin toss."
I lost that coin toss this December and as a result will cease to be on the Board of Directors as of January 2017. I've been part of the Node.js community for a long time. I feel that I've been able to help it continue to grow & improve it as a member of the Board. To further this goal of continuing to support the Node.js community through a Board seat I am running for the Individual Seat on the Node.js Foundation Board of Directors. Please accept my deepest thanks for your consideration to vote for me on the Board in the upcoming election. You can find my full biography below.
Before going in to my specific platform points about why you should elect me (back) to the Board of Directors, I'd like to spend some time explaining the function of the Board of Directors within the Foundation, and the role of the Board Members within the Board itself.
All Board Members are volunteers; none of us are is getting paid to serve as a Director by the Node.js Foundation. Whether the Member Companies are paying Board Members for their time serving is on a company-by-company basis. GoDaddy supported me as a Gold Director in several ways such as through travel and lodging to Board Meetings, & Conferences where my attendance is strongly encouraged as a Board Member.
The Node.js Foundation was structured specifically to place all of the technical ownership in the hands of the TSC (Technical Steering Committee). The TSC chooses someone to sit on the Board of Directors on their behalf; currently Rod Vagg. The Board of Directors therefore, is primarily concerned with fiduciary responsibilities such as budgets.
Fiduciary responsibilities? That sounds pretty vague. It is! That's one of the tough challenges of being a Board Member: figuring out the correct way to get a policy (or policies) implemented using the limited tools at your disposal. Hopefully now you have the context necessary to evaluate what it means to be a Board Member. With this in mind: you should vote for me to represent you on the Board of Directors for four reasons
- I've been supporting Node.js from the start
- I am an experienced member of the Board of Directors who will listen to you
- I vow to increase transparency in budgeting
- I understand the relationship between Open Source & Business
It certainly doesn't feel like six years. That's how long I've been immersing myself in the Node.js community. Today at GoDaddy we fund Bradley Farias' work on TC-39 to ensure that ESModules will interoperate with Node.js. Funding contributors is nothing new to me. I also made sure that Nodejitsu was one of the first companies to employ a full-time core contributor, supporting Fedor Indutny when he became a member of the core team in early 2012.
This community matters to me. At Nodejitsu my colleagues and I worked to make it successful creating some of the early popular resources (such as blog.nodejitsu.com, docs.nodejitsu.com) and funding important events (such as the first NodeConf) that helped grow the then nascent community. I also helped create and run the EmpireJS and EmpireNode conferences which focus on improving the community and increasing diversity in both attendees and speakers (including many first-time speakers such as core team member Jeremiah Senkpiel). Lastly, I was closely involved in the forming process of the foundation starting with node-forward, the Joyent Node Advisory Board, and now the Node.js Foundation itself.
It takes time to get up to speed with how the Node.js Foundation operates and what role the Board of Directors plays within that. This is why each Individual Member receives a two (2) year term. It is expected that the first year is pretty much them getting up to speed with what they need to know and becoming effective at getting their programs executed by both the Board of Directors and the Node.js Foundation itself.
What does that mean for you as an Individual Member? It means you will have someone who already knows what they are doing. As a member of the Board since 2015, I will be able to be immediately effective in my duties to serving the community of Individual Members such as my promise to increase budget transparency.
As part of my transition from the Gold Director to an Individual Director I promise to hold several open ended sessions to solict direct feedback from any Individual Member that wants to learn more about the Foundation, and discuss potential policy changes or new policy.
As a member of the Audit & Finance committee for the Foundation the past 18-months I have intimiate knowledge of the Foundation's budget. One of the initiatives I've proposed there is to externalize this budget information to the community in a digestable way. I have experience doing this for the [EmpireJS conferences] (see: EmpireJS 2014 transparency report).
A screenshot of the EmpireJS 2014 transparency report
As an Individual Member of the Board of Directors I vow to drive this budget transparency project to completion. I am confident in this pledge because I a capable executor who knows how to turns relationships and discussion into action. I led and closed funding for Nodejitsu, the acquisition of Nodejitsu by GoDaddy, and GoDaddy's financial support of the Node Foundation.
As an existing member of the Board I have brought a unique and seasoned perspective because I know first-hand the importance and complexities of maintaining mature open source projects. I created and grew some of the most popular modules in the broader open source Node.js ecosystem including winston, node-http-proxy and forever. Modules I've helped create are downloaded ~30 million times monthly.
Second, after joining GoDaddy I am one of the few ex-vendor "graduates" of the Node ecosystem. My 5+ years of experience working with other vendors and customers ranging from enterprises to SMBs to individual developers gives me a deep understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the community, vendor companies, and enterprise companies. This experience and position provides a unique point of view to the foundation board and help balance current vendor interests with those of the community and the large enterprises using Node.
Charlie is a Senior Director of Engineering at GoDaddy where he is leading convergence around JavaScript and Node.js across all User Experience efforts. Charlie was previously the founder and CEO of Nodejitsu (acquired by GoDaddy in 2015). Founded in 2010, Nodejitsu was the first commercial PasS vendor for Node.js. An open source enthusiast and community builder, Charlie is the author of many of the most popular Node libraries, a frequent speaker at JavaScript and Node conferences, the creator of the EmpireJS and EmpireNode conferences in New York City, and an advisor to several technology startups. Charlie is a graduate of McGill and holds a Master's degree from Columbia University.