Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 2:41 AM, Max sakana...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, Hi Max! 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? It's always hard coming with an estimation for such a thing, especially when you haven't been on the board before and don't know for sure how it really works. That said, I think I should be able to commit to something between 5 and 10 hours a week. I should also be able to find more time if there's an issue that requires more at a certain point in time. Working as an independant, I am quite flexible with my time and I'm able to accommodate my schedule to make room for things I care about in rush periods. 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 seems to me like a place where we have a huge opportunity: there's a free software boom there and people are very enthusiastic. GNOME should definitely push in that direction. Our community members who live in Asia already do a great job by organising events such as GNOME.Asia or release parties. It's difficult for someone who's not there to help. The board can probably do things to help, but they won't be the ones actually making things happen in the first place. What I think the board can and should do is for instance voting for budget allocation, and give advice on how to use money the best way. I'd also like to see more workshop-type events and if we have volunteers willing to organize them, we should make sure they have the means to do that. * Maybe you already notice -- there start to have sponsors from Asia with GUADEC.( There are 2 in 2015 and 1 in 2014 ) I know! I was really happy when I was told that the GNOME.Asia organizers brought me a sponsor last year. I think there's room for more of this in the future and we should indeed encourage sponsors of one the events to sponsor the other one as well. * There are some open source events related and co-work with GNOME Users Group or Members in Asia. Colocating events is a good idea too. It can help save money (splitting some of the cost), get venues (only have to ask once instead of twice) and more importantly it brings visibility to a bigger audience. People interested in one of the two events would be attending another one they might not know of otherwise. So yes, that's something that we should encourage. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
Heya! :-) On Di, 2015-05-19 at 08:41 +0800, Max wrote: 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? Difficult question as I have just started a new job which makes things a bit more unpredictable. It will be better than the last few weeks though. A conservative expectation ranges between four to eight hours. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? I have been on the organising committee for the last few years. I think Asia provides vast amounts of potential Free Software and GNOME users and it would be good if we can leverage that potential. We can debate whether the current GUADEC-esque format, by which I mean going to a different country every year, is the best we can do, though. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
Max sakana...@gmail.com wrote: ... I have 2 questions to all candidates Thanks for the questions, Max! 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? I have the good fortune to work on GNOME as my full time job, and I'm able to devote some of that time to Board work. I'm not going to give a precise number of hours, but I can certainly free up a decent chunk of my week, and I'm confident that I'll be able to find the time. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor / volunteer ... ) Really good question, and there are a few different aspects to it. First, we need to continue supporting the great work already being done by the GNOME Asia team. Within that, we need to review how money is currently being spent, and what the most effective way to spend our resources is with regards to Asia. Second, we can't advance in Asia unless we have a good understanding of the opportunities. To do this, we need to talk to (existing and potential) sponsors, supporters and contributors in Asia. Within this, we need to get a grip on Asia's diversity, so that we can target specific opportunities more effectively. Third, the Board needs to marshal the resources we have. That might require connecting contributors with contacts in Asia, pushing people to have additional events, or supporting specific local or regional activities. A final meta point: I want us to have a board that is able to actively pursue areas of potential growth, but that's a challenge in itself. We need to look at the Board's workload and see if there are any possible changes we can make, so that the Board has the time to develop its own initiatives and agenda. Hiring a new executive director is likely to be a key part of this, but whatever happens: I want to make sure that we are actively reviewing the board's performance so that opportunities don't slip by. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
Hi Max, Thanks for your questions. Responses inline: On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 1:41 AM, Max sakana...@gmail.com 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 The excitement mounts! 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? My weeks look set to be fairly flexible throughout the year and my aim would be to make best use of my free time to dedicate to board matters so that I have some slack during periods where I may have less time to spare. I anticipate spending an average of around 8-15 hours of my time on board matters per week and I would, of course, communicate with the board about my outside commitments on an ongoing basis. I am under no illusion that this is not going be a particularly tough year for whoever gets elected onto the board. It is no secret that being without an ED has put a tremendous strain on and we have all been very grateful for the commitment the current board have shown in dealing with the challenges that have arisen. I think that it is important for anyone who is elected this year to be aware of the difficulties ahead and to come prepared with strategy for making best use of time, from the outset. From my end, I firmly believe that leaders are most effective when they stick within the remit of their role and communicate well; tasks (e.g. treasurer) can and should be delegated out to those with the right skills, so that the board can best focus on those vital tasks which are not possible to delegate, in a timely way. The added advantage of adopting that open and cooperative approach to management, is that this can provide a necessary contingency for dealing with unexpected surprises. I want to want to do my bit to ensure that everyone who contributes to this organisation has the support they need in carrying out their roles. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor / volunteer ... ) Firstly, my plan would be to do my best to make sure I am able to attend the next GNOME Asia Summit, since I have not yet had the opportunity ;-); so it probably won't come as a surprise that I would have to defer to members of the community for feedback about this matter, in the first instance. Whilst I do not want to insult your intelligence by pretending that I know an awful lot about a continent I have not yet even been to, I will say that I have been very keen to see GNOME grow as a global organisation and I think a very important aspect of that lies in having a concrete shared vision for the future. Ideally, I would like to one day see GNOME in a situation where we have an HQ in each continent and although this certainly would not be possible for us to achieve that in the foreseeable future, I absolutely believe that is what we should be aiming for long term and what we are capable of achieving if we do aim for it. In the short term, if Asian members (or any other group) felt that nobody on the board had the right knowledge and skills to best represent them, then I would have no issue with advocating we establish a dedicated role (or committee) to address this. More generally, I would have a look at where our members are located, with a view to identifying whether there is more we need to do to engage and support contributors who come from specific regions. * Maybe you already notice -- there start to have sponsors from Asia with GUADEC.( There are 2 in 2015 and 1 in 2014 ) * There are some open source events related and co-work with GNOME Users Group or Members in Asia. For example ** Hong Kong Open Source Conference ( http://opensource.hk/event ) After GNOME.Asia Summit 2012, there are more GNOME and open source related activities in Hong Kong. They start Hong Kong Open Source Conference at 2013. ** openSUSE.Asia Summit ( https://events.opensuse.org/conference/summitasia14 ) ** FUDCon ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon?rd=Fudcon ) We held GNOME.Asia Summit 2014 together with FUDCon. I know there will be more people ask questions about all domain with GNOME, so I ask question with Asia first. Thanks again for all candidates volunteering to the Foundation Board. (_ _) Thank you again for engaging with these elections! Please feel free to fire away with any further questions you may have. Magdalen ___ 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, May 19, 2015 at 08:41:32AM +0800, Max wrote: 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? As much as is needed. I'm not limited to evenings and weekends; I can work on the GNOME board during work, too. Under normal circumstances, I'd expect to spend 5-10 hours or so a week working on GNOME board activities. However, if some major issue comes up, like the Groupon issue (which I worked on with Sri and Andrea), I will dedicate significantly more time to getting that issue taken care of. At the moment, for instance, I'm working on the Executive Director search committee, which will increase the amount of time I'm spending per week. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor / volunteer ... ) * Maybe you already notice -- there start to have sponsors from Asia with GUADEC.( There are 2 in 2015 and 1 in 2014 ) * There are some open source events related and co-work with GNOME Users Group or Members in Asia. For example ** Hong Kong Open Source Conference ( http://opensource.hk/event ) After GNOME.Asia Summit 2012, there are more GNOME and open source related activities in Hong Kong. They start Hong Kong Open Source Conference at 2013. ** openSUSE.Asia Summit ( https://events.opensuse.org/conference/summitasia14 ) ** FUDCon ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon?rd=Fudcon ) We held GNOME.Asia Summit 2014 together with FUDCon. While I have a few ideas in this area, in large part I think the board should be primarily focused on helping people in the GNOME community enact their ideas and get support from the GNOME Foundation in doing so. For most problems like this, the first resort should be talking to involved community members and seeking a consensus solution (perhaps with suggestions from the board), rather than having the board propose and enact a solution. So, first and foremost, I'd ask: what do you and GNOME Asia see as the biggest barriers to adoption or improved community engagement within Asia? Events? Contact within local developer communities? Contact with local industry, and local universities? Are there any specific areas you could use help with? For my part, I would suggest that building a strong community in an area needs more than just events and local developers. Developers have to come from somewhere, and events need a strong base of local support. So, I'd suggest working with local universities to establish strong support for GNOME and Open Source technologies, both within their curriculum, and through projects/research/outreach/etc. Universities often foster a FOSS environment already for a variety of reasons; is GNOME part of that environment? What do classes or programs doing UI/UX design use? What technologies do students use when writing GUI software? What types of plumbing technologies do students hack on? For that matter, do we have contacts with CS professors at various local universities, through which we could promote programs like GSoC and Outreachy, as well as partnering on research projects? Can you or others within GNOME Asia establish such contacts, and do you need help from the board in doing so? I'd also suggest working with local industry, especially companies making significant use of GNOME and GNOME technologies, and building a support base there. That's in addition to existing efforts to establish events and volunteer contributors. - 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
Hi Max, On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 5:41 PM, Max sakana...@gmail.com wrote: 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? If I get elected it would be my first time on the Board, so it's hard to estimate how much time exactly it will require. Having said that, my expectation is to dedicate 5-10 hours per week to Board work. I can use some work hours for this purpose as well, so I expect to be able to scale up my commitment at times when needed. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor / volunteer ... ) I am very excited by the great work the GNOME Asia team has been doing in recent years to grow local communities and attract new people to the project! I think GNOME as a project should keep supporting and empowering those initiatives in all the ways it can; conferences, hackfests and outreach are a few ways to do that. I'm looking forward to more and I would like to see the Board facilitating connections that make more of those possible. I also feel the question of how to grow visibility and participation in geographical areas that are currently under-represented in our community cannot be entirely separate from how those users consume the software we produce. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in how people experience computing; for many people in developing countries (and many countries in Asia among them) their first contact with a personal computer is very different than what it has traditionally been for people in our community. I would like to see GNOME be at the forefront of that; more concretely that means ensuring our platform stays relevant on the new cheap hardware people will buy in the next few years, and that our software caters to the specific needs of the users in those communities. These are not all tasks specifically or exclusively for the Board to accomplish, but I do wish to see our leadership take a more proactive approach towards areas with potential opportunities for growth, since it has worked for us in the past (with e.g. our Outreach programs). Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 10:23:57PM -0400, Jeff Fortin Tam wrote: The best metaphor I have for a healthy GNOME board is taken from role-playing games: a well-coordinated level 45-70 party that will not be afraid to crawl dungeons together for a year. You need polyvalent classes just like you need specialists (analytic mages, massive damage knights, resourceful healers, quick agile rangers, etc.). So if this makes sense to anyone, I'm a hybrid mage-knight with a ton of HP/MP potions and phoenix feathers ;) I love this metaphor. You forgot the skilled bards/diplomancers, though. Someone needs to seek out quest information to solve ancient challenges, talk nobles and businessfolk into offering high rewards, rally others to the cause, or offer off-the-wall ideas and encouragement. :) - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
