Name: Jeff Waugh Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nick: jdub Affl: Canonical Ltd, sponsors of Ubuntu
(Apologies for my late candidacy statement. I had to make a hurried return from the USA to Australia, which unfortunately coincided with the original deadline. Though I was content to take the bullet and not run, I have just read that a fresh window of opportunity appeared, so my candidacy statement won't go to waste! According to Vincent Untz, the new deadline is 23:59 UTC Thursday.) The Role of the GNOME Foundation Board -------------------------------------- I believe that a core part of the Board's role this year will be to strongly define and communicate the role of the Board. Thus, my candidacy would not be complete without describing what I think the role of the Board should be, and what we need to do to get it there. * Representation I believe we've made a mistake in our communication of the Board's role in the past few years. We delegate 'doing' roles to Directors by electing them, thus freeing ourselves from the responsibility of getting things done ourselves, within the greater community. This disengages the natural strengths of our community - co-operation, distribution, the greater pool of knowledge, etc. I would like to redefine the Board's role as purely representative. As such, the Board would be responsible for delegation of tasks, and ensuring that active members of the community are given all the 'official' assistance they need to contribute fully. A representative board would not monopolise the community's ability to 'get things done', it would delegate parallel responsibility instead of bottleneck it. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-October/msg00104.html Thus, we should elect people who we feel are capable of listening to, understanding, and communicating our needs as a community. We need to elect people who understand and care about our community, and those we trust to make decisions fairly and rationally. We do not need to elect people to do the work of the community - we need to elect people who can help the community work together in more effective and meaningful ways! * Conflict Resolution A purely representative Board would be naturally equipped to act as a point of conflict resolution, so stakeholders can have their say, our problems can be solved, and we can get on with building Free Software. Though we have stated very clearly that the Foundation does not set the direction for GNOME development, we can use it as a point of conflict resolution when problems arise. * Fundraising and Administration As the Foundation must hold assets and funds for its members, the Board must be responsible for making sure they are used wisely, *and* that the finances and assets of the Foundation are well known to its members! Of equal importance is the ability of the Foundation to raise money for its projects. Often a sensitive issue, this is something that really should fall to Board members alone - but they have the ability to hire someone to manage that task, too. * Employee Management This is not a task that can be delegated to the community for all kinds of sensible (and legal) reasons. :-) * Conduit Between Stakeholders The Board is well placed to bridge the gap between stakeholders inside and outside of our community. Not only do we have the Foundation members, but the greater GNOME community, the Advisory Board, other companies who contribute to or rely on GNOME, ISVs (both proprietarly and Free, users, other Free Software projects and organisations, etc. If a representative Board should be doing anything, it is this! (This being representation!) Size and Structure ------------------ I do not believe that the outcome of the Board size referendum was positive. Though I was once a staunch supporter of reducing the number of directors to seven, I had a very strong change of heart when I realised that it was being done for all the wrong reasons, and that more effective solutions to the Board's decision gridlock problems were not considered thoroughly enough. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-October/msg00056.html As stated in the above email, I think a directly elected executive is the right structure to ensure that candidates share a mandate to make decisions with a strong responsibility to the electors in the community. It is not a way to give one person the right to do anything, unchecked - they will know that they must listen to and work toward the goals of the Foundation membership. If I were running for a Board with this structure today, I would nominate for the positions of President, Vice President and Ordinary Member. A representative Board would not need to meet as regularly as every week or fortnight. I would start by shifting to monthly meetings. We are all capable technologists, familiar with email and IRC - we should use them more for our work on the Board. Directors should not be timid about their position on the Board - foundation-list is there for us to communicate with members. Members should not be timid about the responsibility of directors to the community, foundation-list is there for you to publically communicate with the Board. THEY WORK FOR YOU. One challenge the Board will have to deal with in the short term is handover from the parting Executive Director. All correspondence, financial details, current projects must be documented for the Board to finalise or continue. Why You? -------- First and foremost, I am passionate about and dedicated to GNOME. I have not contributed to GNOME by writing code because I found very rapidly that I was not going to be useful in that capacity. Embarrassing, yes. Useful, no. So, I have spent a long time contributing in every non-technical way I could. If there is one skill above all others that I bring to the Foundation, it is my ability to communicate and connect people together. Earlier this year, I was gobsmacked to receive the Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award for Evangelism (of GNOME and Ubuntu). I have spent the last six weeks touring the Northern Hemisphere, speaking about GNOME and Ubuntu, and getting lots of people very excited about what we're doing. I believe I've earned the trust of the GNOME community to represent it, both as a communicator outside the project, and as a mediator and leader within our community. Here are a couple of my previous candidacy statements that are well worth reading if you want to know more about me: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2003-November/msg00010.html http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2002-November/msg00008.html - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2006: Dunedin, New Zealand http://linux.conf.au/ _______________________________________________ foundation-announce mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce
