Hi Max, For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've seen it during the past few years, and as a time- starved collection of volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from our hackfest last year. I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved from weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, but ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the board should ideally have to meet less often.) As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should move away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business as usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement moves from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very important. As the ED line manager, I think we've made some progress during this term and have converted some of Neil's reporting to the board into eg a blog post visible to the community, but clearer and more frequent updates on "what is the foundation doing" particularly through the activities of staff is something I would hope to be able to continue working on with Neil and his team over the coming year. Thanks,Rob On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:22 +0200, Carlos Soriano wrote: > Hi Max, > Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with > you that we need to improve participation of the community on board > topics, and it's specially difficult if the information is delayed > for too long. > > This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board > discusses are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether > parts of it are private or not, so that requires consensus and > therefore delays happen. As you can imagine, we rely on volunteer > time to discuss and process them, and the availability of each > director and secretaries is limited. In all honesty, while this can > always be improved with our current processes, I think Philip > Chimento and Federico made an excellent job with minutes. > > However, let me comment about the lack of participation. I think one > of the reasons is that minutes are simply not the best tool for this. > Minutes feel to me too much of a one way communication, and on top of > that they are over email, which is not the most encouraging tool to > manage and track discussions. They are good for keeping a record, but > not so good for much else. Improving this situation was one of the > reasons we moved our key conversations to GitLab issues, so community > members could closely follow them and chime in directly if wanted. > > My vision to encourage more participation would be around using more > tooling such as GitLab and Discourse for board discussions, and on > top of that, keep pushing on our goal to put as early as possible key > initiatives there to allow members to actually participate. I believe > we have a big room to improve, specially with initiatives that are > not time sensible. > > Lastly, an interesting idea I think we could do is a round of > questions to the membership to know what topics they were interested > in and that we could have done better with their minutes. Although I > believe the board is always open to feedback, I personally look > forward to know about those. > > Thanks, > Carlos Soriano > > On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 02:43, Max via foundation-list < > foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > Thanks for running for the board. > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > > > Data and information might be different. > > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks > > after. > > ---- Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 > > days. > > ---- Because something might be happening and everyone could > > discuss with board and reply. > > > > ==== Here is the question ==== > > > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the > > board meeting" in a very close time? > > > > Here is my suggestion. > > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board > > meeting" announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ------------------- > > | board meeting | Minutes | in 10 days ? > > | > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ------------------- > > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22 | No > > | > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ------------------- > > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15 | No > > | > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ------------------- > > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15 | No > > | > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ------------------- > > > > > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > > ---- There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to > > announce. > > > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information > > we want to get from all GNOME Board member. > > > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > > > > Max > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > foundation-list mailing list > > > > foundation-list@gnome.org > > > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > > > _______________________________________________foundation-list > mailing listfoundation-l...@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
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