Technically the Foundation Governance panel was made up of people who have had any Community involvement, but the Zcash Foundation Board had the final say: home - zcash foundation
I said anyone could have asked to be part of the panel, all you had to do was show you were part of the Zcash Community, the bar was not super high imho. So I think if you were passionate about Zcash and had asked, Josh @acityinohio would likely have approved you.
And Sonya posted an open call on the Forums for more people to join: Community Governance Panel
But this is kinda getting bogged down with the past Foundation process, which ultimately had zero effect on Zcash Companies decision on not rushing a protocol change to brick ASICs.
So the real question in my mind is what is a “better way” to measure Community sentiment for changes to consensus? It seems like no matter how inclusive of a system is designed we are always going to have people later say that they missed the email, or post, or the system was rigged, etc…
If we want to move the conversation forward the first question to tackle is the one of how to measure the entire communities opinion not just a vocal few.