GNOME Board of Directors Foundation Elections 2015 - Candidates
Hello Foundation Members, It's that time of the year again! I'm happy to announce the following candidates for this year's Board of Directors elections: * Alexandre Franke https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg00010.html * Allan Day https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg00011.html * Andrea Veri https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg9.html * Carlos Soriano https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-may/msg00016.html * Christian Hergert https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg5.html * Cosimo Cecchi https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg6.html * Ekaterina Gerasimova https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg00015.html * Jeff Fortin Tam https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg00012.html * Josh Triplett https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg8.html * Magdalen Berns https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg7.html * Ryan Lortie https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2015-May/msg00019.html * Shaun McCance https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2015-May/msg00018.html * Tobias Muller https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg4.html Please see https://vote.gnome.org/2015/candidates.html for more details. Foundation Members are welcome to ask questions to the candidates on foundation-list. Please try to avoid duplicates, and bear in mind candidates invest a lot of time in answering questions. If you have any questions about the elections process itself, drop us a line at membership-committee at gnome.org. Cheers, Fabiana - on behalf of the GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
More questions for Board candidates
I have a few questions for the candidates too. I agree with what has been said by Jeff and Josh that it's important that people on the board have a diverse skillset, so I wouldn't expect all board members to answer yes on these, but I think it's good to know if at least a few people on the board have some background in these areas... Have you ever done any fundraising? Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? Have you ever been in a manager role? Do you have any experience talking to reporters? Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
Hi, On 05/21/2015 02:25 PM, Karen Sandler wrote: I have a few questions for the candidates too. I agree with what has been said by Jeff and Josh that it's important that people on the board have a diverse skillset, so I wouldn't expect all board members to answer yes on these, but I think it's good to know if at least a few people on the board have some background in these areas... Have you ever done any fundraising? Yes. I've been a technical resource during both fund-raising and acquisition stages of multiple start-ups. I've also done deep dives with potential investors. Determining what technology to focus on can be crucial to fund-raising. I do not have experience sourcing new income (with the exception of the Builder crowd-funding), however this is something I'm increasingly interested in. Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? I am. I'm comfortable discovering the reasons it is in their best interest to do so. It's not always obvious how important our stack is to various current and potential sponsors. Have you ever been in a manager role? I have not, other than my time as a maintainer of various projects. While these are different roles, encouragement and fostering growth are key to the success of either. Do you have any experience talking to reporters? To a degree. My experience has been with ensuring they have the information necessary to write articles and less about press releases. Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? I regularly take part in both Free and Open Source software outreach in the San Francisco area. I've spoken to small (a couple people) and large (100+ people) and am comfortable with both. Thanks! -- Christian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 05:25:51PM -0400, Karen Sandler wrote: I have a few questions for the candidates too. I agree with what has been said by Jeff and Josh that it's important that people on the board have a diverse skillset, so I wouldn't expect all board members to answer yes on these, but I think it's good to know if at least a few people on the board have some background in these areas... Have you ever done any fundraising? Yes, in various aspects, including conference sponsorship and donations to organizations. Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? Yes. The worst you can hear is no. (Well, if you're too annoying with an existing sponsor you can lose them, but reasonable and infrequent requests don't normally constitute too annoying.) Have you ever been in a manager role? I've never been a people-manager, but I've been in technical leadership roles and provided direction and support to large groups of people. More generally, I've been in roles where I need to think about people, business, and products, in addition to technology. (I currently have such a role.) Do you have any experience talking to reporters? Some. As part of addressing the Groupon issue, I helped work with the press to publicize GNOME's fundraising and legal campaign. I've also done small-scale press interviews/articles/etc, though only on the scale of LWN rather than CNN. :) Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? Yes. I've given presentations and speeches (both formal and informal), as well as various writings and emails, on topics including software patents, licensing, DRM, the DMCA, FOSS, and many other similar issues. I also generally make a point of saying Free Software, or at the very least FOSS, rather than just Open Source. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
On Tue, 2015-05-19 at 08:41 +0800, Max wrote: Hello all, First, thanks to all candidates for volunteering to the Foundation Board. Max come from GNOME.Asia team and thanks GNOME and board support Asia. I have 2 questions to all candidates 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? Honestly, I don't think board members should have to spend more than 5 hours in a typical week. They all have jobs and families and lives and all the other things they do for GNOME. Certainly there will be weeks that are more demanding. Stuff comes up. But if people have to spend 10 or more hours each week, something is broken. I say this as a former board member, and as somebody who spent the last two years doing a *lot* of time as a board member in another volunteer organization (not software-related). It's not sustainable, and you will burn people out. As it stands, though, without an Executive Director, one (or both) of two things must be happening: (1) board members are spending more time than they should doing things an ED should be doing, and/or (2) things an ED should be doing just aren't being done. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor / volunteer ... ) Asia is certainly a growing market, and that makes it a good opportunity for GNOME and for free software. Historically, we haven't had a strong contributor base in most of Asia, aside from India. I would like that to change. But I don't have specific plans on how to make that change. The best I can do is offer to support the work of people like you who are aware of the issues and already working to address them. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
On Thu, 2015-05-21 at 17:25 -0400, Karen Sandler wrote: I have a few questions for the candidates too. I agree with what has been said by Jeff and Josh that it's important that people on the board have a diverse skillset, so I wouldn't expect all board members to answer yes on these, but I think it's good to know if at least a few people on the board have some background in these areas... Have you ever done any fundraising? Yes. For the last year and a half, I was involved with a group trying to open a grocery cooperative in my neighborhood. We sold over a thousand shares to neighbors and raised a million dollars, making it the fastest growing co-op startup in the country. That work is still ongoing, though I've taken a more passive role lately. I'm very proud of the work we did. I also drum up sponsorship for the Open Help Conference every year. It's not a lot of money, comparatively, but it's a lot of work to make it happen and not drain my pocketbook. Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? I'm more comfortable with it now than I was five years ago. Honestly, it's not my favorite thing to do. I'd rather do conference logistics and let somebody else track down money. But I can do it, and I do do it. Have you ever been in a manager role? I've been in a project lead role, where I've been responsible for telling people what to do. But I've never been in a role where I'm responsible for performance evaluations. Do you have any experience talking to reporters? A bit. I was interviewed a few times for the co-op, and participated in some press conferences. Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? I haven't done it in a formal setting, such as a presentation. But I've frequently talked to groups of friends or colleagues about why I care about free software, and why they should as well. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2015 - Candidacy - Carlos Soriano
Hello Carlos, On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:13:10AM +0200, Carlos Soriano Sánchez wrote: - New developers (aka newcomers): How many people do you think are searching for nice projects to be involved with, live new experiences and learn at the same time? We need to reach those people (I was one of them), and the first step is lowing the barrier to contribution and understanding of the platform. Some of the most important projects I want to push here are GnomeLove initiative and gnome-builder as a developer tool for Gnome. Good initiative. But why do you need to be on the Foundation board to achieve that goal? - Platform reaproachment: I think the current platform around Gnome is a little hidden and difficult to contributors. Initiatives like a Github mirror have been taken, but they are only partly good or not enough. We need to think about how to be more approachable by the people who are already used to other workflows from other open source projects that are using famous tools like Github for code, issues, and contribution or Wikimedia for the wiki, toolkits like Node.js, etc. without giving up on Gnome vision and goals. Ditto. - Focus: We need to focus more and more on the important issues that can make Gnome have a bigger impact. Luckily, what I saw on the last years, is that Gnome is focused and we are doing well here. But I think there is room for improvement, taking some decisions to encourage people to do certain things or for example using more projects from outside Gnome with well established maintenance and community around it. Seems like a good job for the Engagement team. - Community: They want to be listen. They want communication. They want to know how we take decisions. We need to improve that communication while being focused and loyal to Gnome goals and vision. Example of specific solutions I have in mind are: *Encouraging maintainers to create short blog posts communicating important changes. You can write a blog post or start a thread on the desktop-devel list to try to convince other maintainers. *Reach an agreement and explain the way we take decisions both in the projects and in the foundation. For the Foundation, I think everything is well explained in the bylaws: https://www.gnome.org/foundation/governance/attachment/bylaws-2/ *Reach an agreement and explain how to have a voice on Gnome decisions in the projects and foundation as well. To have a voice for the Foundation, discussions can happen on the foundation-list, every member can run for the elections to have a much stronger voice during one year. Or discuss things at conferences and other places (blog, IRC, …). Does it need more explanation? Or does it need to be changed? for example the Foundation members currently only vote for candidates, why not also vote for some of the decisions? Is it that kind of things that you would like to improve? *Ensure we have a guideline for good behavior about taking decisions and how to communicate them to users. Do you have an example of a free software project using such a guideline? Why do we need a guideline specific to GNOME for that? About taking decisions, I think the book Producing Open Source Software [1] can be recommended (and is already recommended in the GNOME Programming Guidelines [2]). [1] http://producingoss.com/ [2] https://developer.gnome.org/programming-guidelines/stable/additional-materials.html.en Hope you like my ideas. I like most of your ideas, but it looks like you can achieve most of them without being on the board. Cheers, Sébastien ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2015 - Candidacy - Ryan Lortie
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Ryan, If any, in what direction would you change gnome after being elected? Kind regards, Philip On 18/05/2015 22:43, Ryan Lortie wrote: karaj, I am announcing my candidacy for the board of directors. If elected, this would be my second time on the board. I have been a GNOME developer during many years, mostly on lower-level things. I am currently affiliated with Canonical where I am in the desktop team, mostly in context of working on the GNOME technologies that are also used in our products. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have about how I would represent you on the board of directors. Cheers ___ foundation-announce mailing list foundation-annou...@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (MingW32) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVWs9TAAoJEEP2NSGEz4aD+KEIAIAMRPmg1wQsUza/Y6lDsJab uXbUh9/9miVz5CH98kPX24A0dAcDJjgFZI/OBAjCR4Lb3avRUupT3eQECFLMEknk JULZpmQ9Co/KC3Y+ve7V3uACQsxLK65BggMti9omblNyAiQl8cH1tPHcf38BnE9F myhZEsxlaVjbdTdX5ClOf+gMIEywv7FL1nuSWkkF2BZ6vEM4KVOWfxI7CvBJLRPE YBLPOgqd1prDPwsnoGj+EMwdVQofQCciXzUbWd5DNpgatUaSgIQRM1DIYMsm6sCq +z+0z2Xu4Uafy2yDLa45cIOrjXDudumWN4ttPF3saieT72Ue7pKW3xTdnJdrhug= =huJX -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
