the Functionality Board (FuBo)
with as main goals:
- advise & decide on functionality issues
- come with proposals (functional docs) for new projects
- and of course: getting more users involved with coding projects
some practical jobs they can do are:
- reviewing feature requests at the Tracker (projects.blender.org)
- providing 'buddies' for coder projects, to help reviewing test versions, provide demo examples, help with a release (docs, tutorials, artwork)
- make decisions on the very basal interface issues, like menu wording, hotkey assignments, wire frame colors, etc.
- provide feedback & approval on software projects that affect the end-user of Blender.
The decision process can be organized as follows:
- the FuBo gets a similar structure as the current bf-blender coders project; with three admins, and a larger group of members
- the admins can decide to allow or reject members
- the three admins have the right to force decisions, but they try to find maximum consensus among the members
- on functionality issues, the FuBo *and* the coders (admins) have to agree.
I will personally facilitate the process. Make sure communication goes well, using maillists, irc meetings, making notes, etc. When no agreement among the teams can be reached I reserve the right to force decisions. In this 'presidential' role I can also put down a veto, but won't do that easily.

This is still a proposal, part of a discussion that went on after reviewing the past release. Right now, the most urgent thing is to have an official platform to get feedback from. Daily practice then will learn us how cooperation will work best.
The 'democracy' issue plays here as well... we could for example organize elections for the FuBo. My proposal is not to do that (yet). I like to get some feedback on this topic first. With sufficient positive reactions, people here can propose candidates (or themselves!). I then will appoint the three admins myself, and let them find the members. After a 3-6 month period, we then can evaluate it all.
-Ton-