Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
hi; On 8 January 2015 at 14:29, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: I would like to ask the board to consider discussing establishing democratically elected formal roles so that those with specific interests can support the BoD carry out their work more effectively and strengthen the infrastructure of GNOME: (I suspect these roles may already exist but I am not sure whether they are elected roles or not or who currently manages them) Secretary Treasurer these roles already exist, and are generally assigned to the elected directors during the first board meeting. currently, Andrea Veri is the secretary (hence why he sends the minutes of the board meetings), and the treasurer is Ekaterina Gerasimova. you can see the various roles and who holds them on the wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ (Although I am aware that there are teams who focus on some of these areas already, I am not sure if the following formal roles exist to manage those teams, at this time:) Publicity and Campaigns Events and Socials Research and Development Diversity and Equality Outreach and Engagement most of these roles are covered by the Engagement (née Marketing team) and by local teams. I'm not sure what Research Development means. if it's a technological role, then everything we do is, broadly speaking, research and development. if you mean research and development as exploring fund raising options and venues, then it would be the primary role of an executive director. I'd very much like to see a team devoted to event planning and sponsoring, working with local teams where necessary, but mostly driving the organization of conferences like GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, and the GNOME Summit. I'm not entirely sure why these should be democratically elected. I personally prefer very much a culture of do-ocracy, where those who show up and do the work get to decide what and how to do it, as opposed to various instances of backseat driving that we've all experienced on various mailing lists. we have various teams that operate as emanations of the Foundation itself, but they tend to work as special interest groups or as infrastructure-related groups. ciao, Emmanuele. -- https://www.bassi.io [@] ebassi [@gmail.com] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
the officers do not strictly need to be directors, i.e. the Board may appoint anybody to hold those offices after a vote, but it's the Board that votes, not the general membership of the Foundation; the members of the Foundation elect the Board, though. I can't see any reason why that could cause a problem in the foreseeable future. How about if you [the BoD] were to determine which (if any) common areas you find you need specific support in and then advertise those roles on the foundation list so you could vote on them between yourselves, then? If you did decide you wanted to delegate in some area or other, I would not mind helping you draft a description of it, if that would be useful. As far as I am aware, nobody does any statistical research at GNOME. What informs strategic decisions? we don't do statistical research to decide what to work on. we're a volunteer-driver project, and volunteer work is not fungible — i.e. even if we did do statistical research and determined strategic decisions, we'd still need somebody to volunteer to implement them, and we could not rely on those decisions in a timely manner, thus defeating the whole point. Determining whether seeking out answers about a given problem is going to be practical depends on the situation, but personally I think there are certainly instances where it could be beneficial not to rule out this approach too hastily. what we usually do is rely, for technical direction, on the maintainers that comprise the larger GNOME ecosystem; what they want to work on, what kind of directions they want to impel to the project. we have special interest groups that drive various aspects of the project — accessibility, documentation, internationalization, etc. — as well as other entities that work on the infrastructure and outreach. finally, we have the board, which is concerned with the overall ability of the project to sustain itself financially, as well as protect itself legally. I know about that and technically, I am in one of the teams you mention. :D. I produce a reasonable amount of code (and stuff) for GNOME, anyway... What is less clear is whether there is the aforementioned stuff. :-) Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
hi; On 12 January 2015 at 16:55, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: these roles already exist, and are generally assigned to the elected directors during the first board meeting. Seems a bit unorthodox, but as long as they're willing and able to manage the additional workload I can't see anything wrong with that. :-) it's not really unorthodox, as it's part of the Foundation's bylaws — see Article X here: http://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bylaws.pdf The officers of the Corporation shall be a Chairman of the Board (if appointed by the Board), a President, one or more Vice Presidents (the number thereof to be determined by the Board), a Secretary, a Treasurer and such other officers as may be elected in accordance with the provisions of this Article X. in particular, by 10.2: The officers of the Corporation, except such officers as may b e app ointed in accordance with the provisions of Section 10.3 or Section 10.5 of this Article X, shall be chosen annually by the Board. the officers do not strictly need to be directors, i.e. the Board may appoint anybody to hold those offices after a vote, but it's the Board that votes, not the general membership of the Foundation; the members of the Foundation elect the Board, though. currently, Andrea Veri is the secretary (hence why he sends the minutes of the board meetings), and the treasurer is Ekaterina Gerasimova. you can see the various roles and who holds them on the wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ Thanks for the information. I notice that there is no contact information for any of the teams or links to indicate who they are and what their currently working on. It seems unlikely that someone would easily be able to figure out how to help them out. that's indeed a missing bit of information, but in general any communication with the Board should go through bo...@gnome.org. we could create aliases for all the officers that go through bo...@gnome.org, so that stuff is tracked. I'm not sure what Research Development means. if it's a technological role, then everything we do is, broadly speaking, research and development. As far as I am aware, nobody does any statistical research at GNOME. What informs strategic decisions? we don't do statistical research to decide what to work on. we're a volunteer-driver project, and volunteer work is not fungible — i.e. even if we did do statistical research and determined strategic decisions, we'd still need somebody to volunteer to implement them, and we could not rely on those decisions in a timely manner, thus defeating the whole point. what we usually do is rely, for technical direction, on the maintainers that comprise the larger GNOME ecosystem; what they want to work on, what kind of directions they want to impel to the project. we have special interest groups that drive various aspects of the project — accessibility, documentation, internationalization, etc. — as well as other entities that work on the infrastructure and outreach. finally, we have the board, which is concerned with the overall ability of the project to sustain itself financially, as well as protect itself legally. I'd very much like to see a team devoted to event planning and sponsoring, working with local teams where necessary, but mostly driving the organization of conferences like GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, and the GNOME Summit. Would the events team not be in charge of that stuff? yes, that would be the role of a more formally defined events team, but right now the events team is usually any local team organizing an event, plus the travel committee, plus the board of directors, plus the engagement team. I'm not entirely sure why these should be democratically elected. I personally prefer very much a culture of do-ocracy, where those who show up and do the work get to decide what and how to do it, as opposed to various instances of backseat driving that we've all experienced on various mailing lists. I can't really comment on the examples you're thinking of, since it is not clear what you're referring to . However, I would have thought that in general people would be inclined to vote for those who they felt were most qualified to fill a role or they wouldn't vote at all. Like a democracy, a do-acracy only really works for the benefit of everyone if there is equal access to the same information and opportunities from the outset. then we really need to get better at sharing information. :-) still, I'm not sure holding official elections for points of contacts for various teams, adding election terms and bylaws for each team lead, as well as the administrative overhead that it entails is going to do us any good. at a certain point, election fatigue creeps in. we could use the mechanism provided us by the bylaws, and have the board elect various officers, like it is empowered to do. that would keep the overhead low, while improving the accountability.
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hi Emmanuele, these roles already exist, and are generally assigned to the elected directors during the first board meeting. Seems a bit unorthodox, but as long as they're willing and able to manage the additional workload I can't see anything wrong with that. :-) currently, Andrea Veri is the secretary (hence why he sends the minutes of the board meetings), and the treasurer is Ekaterina Gerasimova. you can see the various roles and who holds them on the wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ Thanks for the information. I notice that there is no contact information for any of the teams or links to indicate who they are and what their currently working on. It seems unlikely that someone would easily be able to figure out how to help them out. I'm not sure what Research Development means. if it's a technological role, then everything we do is, broadly speaking, research and development. As far as I am aware, nobody does any statistical research at GNOME. What informs strategic decisions? I'd very much like to see a team devoted to event planning and sponsoring, working with local teams where necessary, but mostly driving the organization of conferences like GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, and the GNOME Summit. Would the events team not be in charge of that stuff? I'm not entirely sure why these should be democratically elected. I personally prefer very much a culture of do-ocracy, where those who show up and do the work get to decide what and how to do it, as opposed to various instances of backseat driving that we've all experienced on various mailing lists. I can't really comment on the examples you're thinking of, since it is not clear what you're referring to . However, I would have thought that in general people would be inclined to vote for those who they felt were most qualified to fill a role or they wouldn't vote at all. Like a democracy, a do-acracy only really works for the benefit of everyone if there is equal access to the same information and opportunities from the outset. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
2015-01-12 18:07 GMT+01:00 Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com: Hi Alexandre, No, that's not quite the same thing. Most of the core teams mentioned on https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ do not appear on that list. The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors has a meeting once every two weeks where existing and previously assigned to-do items are reported to the Board by the member in charge of that item after the relevant preliminary activity has taken place. Once that happens and we have enough material to base a vote on we discuss the findings and start a vote which will lead to a result we do consider as final for that request, issue, dispute. To-do items and private notes on a specific argument aren't public as they are most likely suggested to change while the preliminary activity moves forward or when the Board starts discussing a specific item and further activity occurs. Additionally the Board has no core teams internally but specific members taking care of managing particular tasks within the Board itself. We value transparency and we make sure the meeting minutes contain every single item we discussed on a meeting (except for private items we do not disclose as per requestor request or argument, i.e Groupon) with a detailed overview. Foundation members are also encouraged to ask for more details if any of the reported items are unclear. Many of the teams you proposed do exist already, what kind of contributions would you be interested in? -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: Thanks for the information. I notice that there is no contact information for any of the teams or links to indicate who they are and what their currently working on. It seems unlikely that someone would easily be able to figure out how to help them out. You mean something like https://wiki.gnome.org/Teams that is linked prominently from the front page of the wiki? -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hi Alexandre, No, that's not quite the same thing. Most of the core teams mentioned on https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ do not appear on that list. Magdalen On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: Thanks for the information. I notice that there is no contact information for any of the teams or links to indicate who they are and what their currently working on. It seems unlikely that someone would easily be able to figure out how to help them out. You mean something like https://wiki.gnome.org/Teams that is linked prominently from the front page of the wiki? -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hi Jeff, I am genuinely not sure whether GNOME has this already but given that the board has stated it is quite overstretched by the current workload on them. I get the impression some tasks tend to be delegated more on a need to know/do basis and that this may be contributing to a heavy workload on the board but it is hard to be certain whether that is a fair assumption with the information available about that. With that in mind though, if this does seem like a constructive long term adjustment, I would like to ask the board to consider discussing establishing democratically elected formal roles so that those with specific interests can support the BoD carry out their work more effectively and strengthen the infrastructure of GNOME: (I suspect these roles may already exist but I am not sure whether they are elected roles or not or who currently manages them) Secretary Treasurer (Although I am aware that there are teams who focus on some of these areas already, I am not sure if the following formal roles exist to manage those teams, at this time:) Publicity and Campaigns Events and Socials Research and Development Diversity and Equality Outreach and Engagement There may be some important areas which I have not suggested a role for and maybe some that are suggested are not quite right for GNOME's needs, so please take the specific suggested roles with a pinch of salt: they are just suggestions and ideas. The main point of consideration that I think might be worth discussion in this instance, is whether some sort of sort of appropriate structured, democratic, delegation might be in order (regardless of whether GNOME seeks a new CEO soon, or not). I can appreciate that in the short term, something like that may be an added burden to organise (but for what it is worth, I would be willing to help out with that). I suspect that formally establishing dedicated roles in a democratic way, could attract community interest in filling them and also that the inferred delegation in that, could significantly free up more of the Board of Directors time and allow you all (and the future cohorts of directors) to focus on the important work, which you find that you are unable to delegate: Those who were to be elected into roles, could also be in charge of managing teams who are willing to support the work they are focused on. If that were to work out, then they could have regular IRC meetings to discuss relevant items in detail and come up with actionable solution which they could then present to the board of directors, as appropriate. It may also provide members of the community who are interested in contributing to a particular area of GNOME's infrastructure to quickly access relevant published communications about that area of interest, so they can more easily figure out what is going on, what needs to be done, who is involved and how they can get involved, etc. It may also serve to assist successors of the future to figure out where to start more easily, in general. Magdalen On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Jeff Fortin Tam nekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting so far: * Funding - quick status check on: Ecosystem (re)mapping Adboard outreach Sysadmin sponsorship * Sitrep on deal with WHS for funds in Europe * Review action items for completeness and status * ED search (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting so far: * Funding - quick status check on: Ecosystem (re)mapping Adboard outreach Sysadmin sponsorship * Sitrep on deal with WHS for funds in Europe * Review action items for completeness and status * ED search (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
