2015 WASPY & 2015 Election Report

2015 Elections

• We had 15 candidates submit. Of the 15 submissions 1 withdrew on July 28, 2015, 4 did not meet the qualifications and 1 submitted on August 1. All of the candidates have been notified, including the 4 that did not qualify and the 1 that submitted after the close date.

• 2015 Qualifying Candidates
  
  • Abbas Naderi Afooshteh
    
  • Tom Brennan
    
  • Jonathan Carter
    
  • Michael Coates
    
  • Bil Corry
    
  • Tobias Gondrom
    
  • Nigel Phair
    
  • Milton Smith
    
  • Josh Sokol
    

• An email to the Leaders, Community and Board lists announcing 2015 candidates was sent yesterday. Notification that the candidates have been announced was also posted on Twitter, Facebook & on the OWASP Blog.

• I took the top 5 rated questions that were submitted by our community and shared them with the candidates so they can start to prepare for their interviews.
  
  • 1. How would you deal with the surplus funds OWASP has at its disposal? How would you encourage chapters that are "hoarding" funds to better utilize them?
    
  • 2. OWASP has always been driven by volunteerism. What sort of things can you do to help ignite a new wave of this going forward?
    
  • 3. If elected, what are two things you would focus on improving? Please provide an example on how you would improve each of them.
    
  • 4. How would you improve project maturity within OWASP? Do you think governance is realistic in a volunteer-driven organization?
    
  • 5. What do you think of OWASPs current relationship with vendors and what would you change? Do you think OWASPs stance of vendor neutrality is proper for OWASP?
    

• Mark Miller and I have been in contact. He has provided me his availability to host the group interviews. I have shared his availability with the candidates and have already started to confirm interview time slots with a few of the candidates. I sent another reminder to those who did not choose, asking them to do so soon. I also sent Mark and email to find out what platform he plans on using to conduct the interviews since a few of the candidates are unable to use Google Hangouts. I am still waiting on Mark's reply.

WASPY Awards

• All nominees have been notified of their nominations(s)

• All nominees (except for one) have been posted to the WASPY wiki page. The one individual who was nominated asked that I remove them from the two categories they were nominated for. I asked if they would be okay with an "anonymous nominee" but they declined, so I had no choice then to remove them.

• I created a wiki page for each of the nominees who submitted a bio and profile picture and linked the page from their name on the WASPY page.

• I sent an email on Saturday asking people to check that they are on the list of eligible voters and if they are NOT they were asked to contact us immediately.

• The WASPY ballot has been created and all the nominees along with their citations have been added. If they sent a bio and profile picture that too has been added. Sample ballot: https://owasp.simplyvoting.com/?mode=preview&election=36014&mac=c387c49ceaf51a644127

• I sent an email today to the leaders, community and board list alerting all members as of July 26, 2015 to be on the look out later on today for an email with a link to their ballot.

• There is a total of 2199 eligible voters

• I set up email blasts to be released automatically on the following days:
  • Tuesday, August 11
  • Thursday, August 13
  • Wednesday, August 19
  • Saturday, August 22
  • Tuesday, August 25
  • Friday, August 28
  • Sunday, August 30
  • Monday, August 31

• Last day to vote is Monday, August 31