Hi Dave, > I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open, > and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask...
Ok. > The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the > GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two > major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation > has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove > roadblocks or encourage productive contribution. > > After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances > are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2]. > > What do you see as the best way to spend this money? In terms of hiring, > do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive director? What other > priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside of our usual > cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)? I think the best way to spend this money in 2008/2009 is: - To support (presential) activities that will facilitate contributors to move the desktop and platform forward. - To support activities that will streghten the local user groups around the world. About the hiring, it really depends. At first sight, I would prefer to hire an executive director because it would have more impact on GNOME Foundation actions (marketing, business partnerships, conferences, etc). However, if we can't find a really good person for the position, I would prefer to hire a sysadmin. Of course, one thing doesn't necessarely exclude the other. > A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points > of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? Weak points: - Sometimes certain things get stalled because we (Board) don't get enough feedback (+1's or -1's) among us. We should have more effective ways of making those daily micro-decisions and getting things done more quickly. - We could delegate more often. When delegation is possible, the Board should have some sort of list of potential volunteers for certain types of actions. For example: business partnerships (Dave, Quim, Jonathan, ...), Artwork (Andreas, Jakub, Vinicius, ...), user group contacts, etc. Actually, I think I'll start doing this straight away. :-) - We could be more pro-active on proposing actions to the community. You solve this by proposing actions. :-P I'm planning to propose some small developers summits to some maintainers. Cheers! --lucasr _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
