Board Nominees and the nomination process

I am very happy to announce that the 4 candidates up for election to the IGDA’s Board of Directors this year are (in alphabetical order):

• Kate Edwards
• Ed Fries
• James Kosta
• Sheri Rubin

The election will kick off this Friday March 2nd, and all professional members as of February 29th will be eligible to vote. We have 2 seats up for election, and voting is done on an approval basis. That is, members will be able to vote for as many, or as few, of the candidates as they would like. All members should receive an email from the IGDA, this Friday with further instructions on how to vote.

One of the most important changes to the IGDA’s Board of Directors election this year, was the introduction of the Nominating Committee. This committee was tasked with vetting all nominees and providing their recommendation for a final slate of candidates, comprising no more than double the number of seats open for election (since we have 2 seats up for election, the committee was to recommend no more than 4 people).

The board decided that this nominating committee should be comprised solely of former board members, and ideally former chairpeople. These are people who, as a group, are most educated in the attributes that make for a strong board member. Further, we decided that this committee should not have any currently sitting board members, and that the current board would provide some direction in terms of letting the Nominating Committee know the biggest issues we are currently facing, and the things we think are most critical right now. The specific details of the process and procedures were left to the nominating committee, giving them the flexibility to find a process that worked best for them.

The Nominating Committee provided their recommendation to the board last week, and their recommendation was subsequently confirmed.

I have asked Jen MacLean, the chair of the Nominating Committee, to provide additional insight into the process they followed to arrive at their final recommendation. Here’s what she had to say:

Early this year, current Chair Brian Robbins asked the former IGDA Board Chairpeople for feedback on proposed changes to the nomination and election process, as well as support in evaluating this year’s candidates. Brian received detailed feedback from many former Chairpeople, which helped shape the overall process. Additionally, Kathy Astromoff (Schoback), Matt Toschlog, Annie Van Bebber and I volunteered to form the first Nominating Committee. Annie, Matt, Kathy and I took this responsibility very seriously. We met to discuss how we would approach and evaluate the candidates, and we agreed that the best approach would be for each member of the Committee to individually interview all of the prospective candidates. Topics for those interviews would include, but not be limited to:

• Understanding of Board responsibilities and duties
• Candidate background and fit with Board responsibilities and needs
• Understanding of and willingness to honor time commitment
• Experience with the IGDA, including work as a member and advocate
• Experience with group dynamics and conflict
• Other relevant volunteer experience
• Opinions on what makes a good (and bad) board member
• Views on current vision, programs, and services and how candidates would support the IGDA mission

We also agreed on the following timeline, and shared both the interview topics and procedural details with candidates on February 2.

• Feb 2: Committee met to review process, criteria
• Feb 2: Jen sent out an introductory email to candidates introducing nominating committee, process, and timeline
• Feb 3-17: Nominating Committee conducted interviews
• Feb 20: Nominating Committee discussed candidates and recommendations
• Feb 21: Nominating Committee returned recommendation to IGDA Board of Directors

Over the next two weeks, the Committee members reached out to every potential candidate, individually compiled notes on the interviews and made recommendations for the final slate. We then shared our work, discussed our assessments, and proposed a recommended slate of candidates, which was delivered to the IGDA Board on the morning of February 22. While we did miss our deadline by 12 hours, we believe that the amount of effort we spent in speaking with the candidates, carefully considering their qualifications, and coming to a final conclusion was worth the delay.

The potential Board candidates were wonderful participants in the process, and we hope you’ll respect their efforts by voting in the upcoming election.

I would like to thank Jen, Kathy, Matt and Annie for sharing their time, energy and expertise throughout this process. I’d also like to thank all of the candidates who participated in the interviews. Finally I’d like to wish the 4 candidates, the best of luck in the coming election.

Brian Robbins
Chair, IGDA Board of Directors

Board Retreat Wrapup – Committees, Open Internet and IGDA Foundation

This past weekend the IGDA Board of Directors, along with Joshua Caulfield, our Executive Director and Charles Sapp from Talley Management Group, convened in San Mateo, CA for a 2-day Board retreat. This was an extremely productive weekend as we moved several things forward, and established a stronger framework to grow from in the coming year. Many thanks to John Romero and Gazillion Entertainment for providing us free space, snacks and hospitality throughout the weekend.

Our biggest focus was to revisit our committees and to establish several new committees, which will be better suited to focus on specific areas critical to our success and our ability to serve our members. As a result several changes and additions have been made. Our old Events committee is now the Events, Sponsors and Partners (ESP) Committee, the Programs and Membership committee has been split into the SIG committee, the Chapter committee and the Members committee. The first two focusing on SIGs and Chapters respectively, with the latter focusing on increasing our member value, participation and retention. We also established a Technology committee to drive our technology initiatives forward, and a Communications committee to better manage and consolidate all of our communications.

In a direct effort to help ensure a better International focus, almost all of these committees include in their charter, a mandate to include at large members who are located outside the US and outside North America.

In addition to the committee work we also approved the final draft letter stating our support of the FCC’s Open Internet Initiative. More information about this will be available in the near future. The previous draft and related member comments were posted previously.

The last direct action taken was to appoint Brian Robbins to the Board of Trustees for the IGDA Foundation. He replaces outgoing trustee Mitzi McGilvray.

Significant discussion was had beyond these direct actions, and there should be a lot more progress and results as these committees begin to take on their respective tasks in the coming weeks and months.

Election Results

I’m pleased to bring you the specific results of the recent election for five new seats on the IGDA Board of Directors.

Our records show that 907 members voted. This means we did not reach quorum, but 11% of the membership voted, which is pretty typical of most elections – both at a national and local level as well as association elections.

So yeah, we’re average. Naturally as game developers we all want to be at the top of the leaderboard, not somewhere in the middle, so we’re not satisfied with this level of voter turn-out. We want more!… next year.

We’d like to hear your ideas for how to improve voter turn-out. Several new things were attempted this year, but there’s got to be a better way. Any suggestions? (Use the comments here or send your favorite board member an email.)

These are the numerical results:

(Remember, with approval voting members were allowed to vote for as many people as they approved of, not just one, so the numbers aren’t going to add up to just 907.)

Top 5
- Darius Kazemi 403
- Coray Seifert 340
- Jane Pinckard 307
- Wendy Despain 258
- David Edery 252

The remainder in order:
- Ian Schreiber 228
- Michelle Hinn 185
- Ann Burkett 168
- John Hight 148
- Ed Magnin 136
- Chuck Hoover 132
- Mike Worth 124
- Sean Kane 121
- Genevieve Lord 115
- Chris Hood 109
- Dino Dini 109
- Michael Lubker 94
- Charles Schulz 80
- Ron Schaffner 75
- John C. Ardussi 63
- Phil Bourke 62
- Eric Francksen 57
- Paul Skiera 44

Since we didn’t reach quorum, technically the board had to declare the election void (it’s in the bylaws). However, they still needed to fill those five seats on the board so the remaining board members chose to appoint the five candidates with the most votes.

And as one of those newcomers to the board, I’d like to say thanks – both to the board for appointing me, and to every member who voted.

Wendy Despain

Meet your new IGDA Board members

The IGDA elections are complete.  Though we did not meet quorum we had more than 10% voter turnout and an exciting election with a significant expansion on the amount of information available on candidates.

We are very happy to announce that Wendy Despain, David Edery, Darius Kazemi and Jane Pinckard have been appointed to the IGDA Board of Directors and that Coray Seifert has been appointed to an additional term on the Board. These 5 people were the top vote getters in our largest ever slate of candidates. Each will bring a different perspective and direction to our board, and they all look forward to serving our membership as we continue our mission to advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers.

A formal announcement of the new board members, along with the officers for the coming term will be made once officers have been selected in the next couple weeks, but we wanted to let everyone know who was chosen to the board as soon as possible.

The entire board looks forward to speaking with many of you at GDC next week, and continuing to work on your behalf in the coming year.

Sincerely,

Your IGDA Board of Directors