On 05/21/2013 08:16 AM, Brian Cameron wrote: > For returning board members, what are 3 conrete accomplishments on the > board that you are most proud of?
This is, for me at least, a tough question to answer. I see the primary role of the Board being to facilitate the ability of Foundation members to achieve great things for GNOME; not to achieve those great things itself. In other words, Board work is not exciting and noteworthy as much as it is necessary. It's the day-to-day administrative stuff that organizations such as ours need to do. I take pride in that work, as I do all my work, and I always strive for excellence. But as a Board member, I feel that I'm "just doing my job." And doing that job well is an expectation to be held; not an accomplishment to be achieved. Mind you, I didn't feel that way last year when I first ran for the Board. In retrospect, I was filled with that conviction of being able to change the world one tends to find in candidates for new roles. In fact, you may recall a very lengthy proposal I wrote in response to one of Richard's questions for candidates [1]. Back then I saw this as a concrete accomplishment to achieve as a Board member; now I don't. That doesn't mean I didn't do work towards achieving it; on the contrary, I launched a pilot/proof-of-concept version of it through the GNOME Accessibility Team. Our team is now collaborating with a new NSF-funded initiative called foss2serve. I introduced the pilot last year at fOSSa [2] and two of the professors will be presenting it via a poster session at ITiCSE 2013 [3]. Am I proud of this? Absolutely! Is this something one could call an "accomplishment on the Board"? No. Running for the Board merely prompted me to move forward on that work sooner than I might have otherwise done. Similarly, while serving on the Board this past year, I became aware that Foundation members were having various and sundry issues with respect to travel sponsorship. The issues struck me as interfering with our members' ability to do the work they wish to do, so I dug into the problem by joining the Travel Committee and doing the work that committee does in order to fully understand it and find ways to improve it. Having done so, I made a proposal which is still being discussed on the Board and Travel Committee. Once all the wrinkles get ironed out and the proposal accepted, I think we'll have a much more streamlined travel sponsorship process. And I'll be proud of that. But I don't see that as an "accomplishment on the Board" either. Serving on the Board made the problems more visible to me, but the work needed to solve them is not something that required being a Board member. > How many action items did you accept over your last term > and what percentage were completed? If things did not get > done or tended to get done very late, please explain why. I'd have to go through the previous minutes to find the exact number. But when there is a task that I'm well-suited for and asked to do, I accept it. And I complete it as timely a fashion as possible. The one exception I can think of was related to the Freedesktop Summit [4] which Ryan Lortie brought to my attention at GUADEC. I did my communication-related action items (e.g. writing the KDE Board) as expected of me. But I also had an action item which more or less boiled down to taking the lead on the GNOME side to help make the event happen. And the reason I ultimately declined it is that Ryan had the vision, contacts, and motivation to make it happen; I didn't. One of the things I think the Board needs to do is recognize when it should step out of the way so that others can move forward quickly. > If you were to give your own performance a grade, what > would it be? B. I think I've done a good job, but I wouldn't call it excellent. > For all candidates, how do you see being on the board will enhance or > facilitate the volunteer work you already do in the commutity? To be honest, I no longer see being on the Board as a means to enhance or facilitate the work I already do in the community, i.e. Accessibility -- and also Travel. ;) Prior to my joining the Board, as issues related to Accessibility came up which I felt needed to be brought to the Board's attention, I raised them to you and/or our Executive Director. If I'm not re-elected this year, I'll resume working with the Board rather than on the Board. Having the direct connection is admittedly convenient, but it is far from essential. Instead, I see being on the Board as separate work that I am happy to do as an additional contribution to our Foundation and community. > How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to > working on the board on a regular basis? Most weeks 7-10. Take care. --joanie [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2012-May/msg00034.html [2] https://site.inria.fr/fossa/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/J.Diggs-Facilitating-Student-Participation-in-Free-Software.pdf [3] http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/events/iticse2013/ [4] http://www.gnome.org/news/2013/04/report-from-the-freedesktop-summit _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
