TSC Size
Status | RESOLVED |
Outcome | Extend the size of the TSC to 15 (pending Board approval), to take effect for the next election. |
Minutes Link |
Is the TSC the right size? Should it be expanded?
Comments
I believe I read the discussion(s) from the previous TSC meetings on this topic, but I'm not really sure what we are trying to accomplish with expanding the size of the TSC.
I think the basic arguments are the following:
Making the TSC a little bigger won't make it unwieldy.
We have a lot more diverse members and projects than when we started. The general opinion is this has brought a lot more people who are "qualified" to be TSC members to the table. These people bring new knowledge and perspective to the table, and it would be worthwhile to include as many of them as we can in the TSC without becoming too unwieldy.
I think Hart got it right. There are many ways and certainly more sophisticated ones to go at this that have been mentioned and that could maybe lead to a more diverse representation but I understand from the staff that if we simply took the next 4 people from the election results this would already improve diversity so I'm happy to go with this as a first step. It has the advantage of being simple and implementable very quickly.
I'm a strong believer in iterative processes and open to refining this further down the line but I don't want investigating other possible ways to come at the cost of doing nothing for months.
OK ... got it. I just worry that people will interpret "diversity" in different ways .... if the real outcome here is just that we think that we need a larger number of members given the current size of the community, then simply adding 4 makes sense.
I would hate to make decisions about the size of the TSC in combination with understanding the increase in diversity. If we did not know this information would we make the same decision? Will this hold true next year? Is the diversity that we are adding just project diversity? Does the additional members hurt our increased gender diversity (2/11 vs. 2/15)?
Thanks for chiming in Tracy. I have to admit my goal was indeed to increase project diversity because that's what had primarily been brought up by Chris when he first talked about this before the election and then after the election by the critics of the results. I had not thought that this might result in a decrease in gender diversity which sadly is actually very likely given the lack of diversity among the candidates in the first place.
So, what should we do about this? Any suggestion? It seems like we can't win on all fronts.
No good suggestions. Based on what we are trying to accomplish (increase in project diversity), adding the next four people may help this year, but is this really a long-term solution. What’s to say that we don’t end up next year with a TSC that is still not representative of the broader community? Do we again increase by 4 to get that? Or do we need to increase by 8 next year? We have a systemic problem with diversity of all sorts and I don’t know that the proposals that are on the table solve this long term. The DCI WG was created to help provide suggestions surrounding diversity, but it will most likely take a while before we see results in these efforts.
Proposal: Extend the size of the TSC to 15 (pending Board approval). To get started, add the next 4 candidates from the last election results to the current term.