(Note that I am not writing this in the name of the Nominating Committee, but personally.)

We (NomCom) don't have a lot of time to finish the first phase of the job: to make some kind of the short list (maybe ~20 names) for contacting potential Board members. The deadline is September 15th. So, whatever idea you have for the names, please let us know ASAP. You may send names to some of us (see our names at [1]).

I am asking you here because...

- All of us are well introduced in persons who are globally known. You may propose some of such persons, of course; but, it is not so (badly) needed, while it may be useful: we may forget someone.

- I was thinking about persons from Serbia. There are not a lot of such persons which I may propose (between 0 and 5 at the most, depending of my criteria: am I too restrictive or not). I may propose maybe 5 more persons from former Yugoslavia and this is it. Note, also, that 6 persons are not able to cover the whole world. Countries of our origin and residence are: US, China, Germany, UK, Belgium and Serbia. The rest of the world is not covered by in depth knowledge of the society and prominent persons. So, please, think about persons from your country/region and send to some of us proposal with a couple of sentences of explanation why do you think that that person is the right to be a member of the WMF Board.

During the IRC meeting we made a scratch for the selection criteria [2]. It may be useful to you, too, in finding the right names.

In short: if you think that you are able to propose the right person, this is the right time to do it.

Also, this is the first process which involves two community members for the NomCom. The next year the same process will be repeated. So, it would be good that communities [and Wikimedians personally, too] start to think about proposing Board members to the next NomCom *now* and to be prepared for the next year.

Note that we are treating names of the candidates as confidential (unlike the criteria). Because of that the best idea is not to use a public list (in this case: foundation-l) for suggesting the names. (But, I think that we should think how to make process more open; but, again, this time we don't have a lot of time and I hope that the next year process would be much more open and transparent. After we finish with work on proposals, I think that transparency foundations of the NomCom should be our next important task.)

[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee [2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria