Hi all, Well, I have been struggling for a long time, thinking if I should self-nominate or not. Marina sent messages to me to strongly suggest me to run for the BoD. I have the will to contribute more to the community, but I told her that self-nomination is really not a part of our culture. In Eastern Asian culture (Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, ... most areas affected deeply by Confucius) self-nomination usually means arrogant. Especially I have just got involved more into TDF for only around 2 years, which means "running for BoD position" is really a bold decision (and it would usually be interpreted as arrogant by people here). You may feel strange or funny, but that is exactly why I'm struggling.
Today I just finished the first version of subtitles of Bjoern's interview video in LibreOffice Conference 2017. (It's on Amara https://amara.org/en/videos/JzyUE4THGsVz/en/2028661/ it's still just a draft and please feel free to proofread it). I found that we have common thoughts and ideals. In my interview I said that, what LibreOffice needs is to make more people understand that, everyone can contribute to LibreOffice (or any FOSS). It's not an easy task as we've worked hard on it for more than a decade in Taiwan. Bjoern's interview made me think more and decide to self nominate for the BoD. IMO the position of BoD is not "leading" the community. Of course members of BoD need to make decisions for many important things but I don't think it as "leading". IMO the BoD should be "the intersection of the community", which means most people in the community agree, approve, and recognize the BoD to make decisions for the community. So an important part of BoD is to communicate with people. What I can (and have been doing) contribute to LibreOffice (either as a member of BoD or not) is to spread the words everywhere, and connect LibreOffice community to Asian people more closely. Also, I'd like to keep focusing on marketing both ODF and LibreOffice, especially to the governments, either in Taiwan or in other countries. Also, I'd like to communicate and make the UX of LibreOffice more close to Asian people, or say, make it more diverse. Currently there are some UI design not friendly to Asian people (for example, in Calc there's a shortcut key Ctrl-Space, which for us is to switch the input method and hence would never transfer to Calc). Currently in Taiwan I think we're in a historical high point of adopting ODF and (derivatives of) LibreOffice, which also means that we're now in a plateau period. We're still running for a new 3-year projects and setting more rules to governments. I'd like to connect closer with ODF committee, and share my experiences to different places about ODF and LibreOffice. As for myself, I own a small company in Taiwan running for training courses and migrating projects of FOSS. But actually in most occasions I'll use the identity of the President of Software Liberty Association Taiwan, which was founded in 2001 and is an NPO to promote FOSS. In the past decade we focused a lot more on education, which I think gives us a good base to promote FOSS/ODF/LibreOffice now. Phew, that's it. I hope to have the chance to contribute to the whole community in different ways. --- separate line --- Full name: Franklin Weng (Weng, Chia-Chi on my passport) e-mail address: frank...@goodhorse.idv.tw, frank...@libreoffice.org Affiliation: Software Liberty Association Taiwan The candidacy statement: "If I'm elected as a member of BoD, firstly I'll do my best to be the bridge between the community and Asian countries, and then I'll also focus on communicating with people and marketing ODF and LibreOffice to governments of different countries. Besides, I hope to make the products more friendly to Asian C/J/K people in the aspect of UI/UX." Regards, Franklin
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