Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)

2013-05-22 Thread Joanmarie Diggs 
On 05/21/2013 10:46 PM, Karen Sandler wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2013 1:14 pm, Richard Stallman wrote:
>> The number of candidates so far is pretty small -- I saw only 8 -- so
>> we will not have much choice in our voting.
>>
>> On general principles, and not as criticism of the people who have
>> already stepped into the race, I think it would be good for more
>> people to run.  I encourage you, and everyone who has already run, to
>> stay in the race.
> 
> I am pleased to say that the candidates we already have are *all*
> exceptionally strong.  I feel that I should point out that there are one
> or two people who would probably join the race as well if we extended the
> deadline. As I said, though, the current candidates are pretty awesome and
> they all got their announcements in on time :)

True, but the announcement period this time was shorter. In 2012, the
announcement went out 17 April with a deadline of 20 May. [1] This time,
the announcement went out 6 May with a deadline of 19 May. [2] Given
Richard's observation that we have a lack of choice combined with the
shorter announcement period, I wonder if it would be worth extending the
call for candidates for, say, another week.

Take care.
--joanie

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2012-April/msg00015.html
[2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2013-May/msg00032.html

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Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)

2013-05-22 Thread Tobias Mueller 
Ahoi!

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 06:36:29AM -0400, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> I wonder if it would be worth extending the
> call for candidates for, say, another week.
> 
I thought about that, too, and I came to the conclusion that I don't 
think it will be worth it. Unless you have more information than I do. 
I am not aware of anyone not being able to announce their candidacy.

And the whole election procedure is hairy enough so that I'd like to not 
mess around with that at this stage.

FWIW: The schedule we tried to use last year is pretty much the same as 
this year's: https://vote.gnome.org/2012/rules.html

Cheers,
  Tobi
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Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Joanmarie Diggs 
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.k

Re: New Foundation Members

2013-05-22 Thread Sindhu S 
Hi, Sri!

Thank you :)
I am always on the look out to fix a bug ;) So am pretty much put with
GNOME for a long time from now :)

Thank you for the support and good words, I hope to pass this on if I were
given a change to mentor anybody in the upcoming rounds.

-Sindhu


On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 3:36 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:

> Welcome folks!  Especially Sindhu who decides to stay on even after her
> internship.  Awesome!
>
> As well folks writing apps, and other cool things.  Thank you for joining!
>
> sri
>
>
> On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 7:04 AM, Andrea Veri  wrote:
>
>> Hi, The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is proud to announce our
>> newly approved Foundation Members. Please welcome and thank them for their
>> great and valuable contributions over the GNOME Foundation.
>>
>> They are: *
>>
>> 1. Stefan Westerfeld (beast contributor, gst123 maintainer)
>> 2. Daiki Ueno (caribou and gettext maintainer, IBus developer)
>> 3. Sreerenj Balachandran (GStreamer contributor, commits to several GNOME
>> modules)
>> 4. Michael Hasselmann (GTK+ contributor, EDS and Rygel contributions)
>> 5. Hau Heng Haggen So (GNOME.Asia organization, GNOME Hong Kong organizer)
>> 6. Balasankar C (GNOME Malayalam translator and reviewer)
>> 7. Sindhu S (GNOME Documentation contributor, gitg contributor)
>> 8. Vladimír Beneš (GNOME tester, GUADEC '13 Organizer)
>> 9. Andres G. Aragoneses (Banshee maintainer, GSoC mentor)
>> 10. Antonius Riha (Tasque maintainer)
>>
>> * Syntax is Name Surname (area of involvement)
>>
>> For any further question you may have, feel free to mail us at
>> membership-commit...@gnome.org. (or me directly)
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Andrea
>>
>> Debian Developer,
>> Fedora / EPEL packager,
>> GNOME Sysadmin,
>> GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman
>>
>> Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
>>
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>>
>
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Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)

2013-05-22 Thread Andrea Veri 
2013/5/22 Joanmarie Diggs 

> On 05/21/2013 10:46 PM, Karen Sandler wrote:
> > On Tue, May 21, 2013 1:14 pm, Richard Stallman wrote:
> >> The number of candidates so far is pretty small -- I saw only 8 -- so
> >> we will not have much choice in our voting.
> >>
> >> On general principles, and not as criticism of the people who have
> >> already stepped into the race, I think it would be good for more
> >> people to run.  I encourage you, and everyone who has already run, to
> >> stay in the race.
> >
> > I am pleased to say that the candidates we already have are *all*
> > exceptionally strong.  I feel that I should point out that there are one
> > or two people who would probably join the race as well if we extended the
> > deadline. As I said, though, the current candidates are pretty awesome
> and
> > they all got their announcements in on time :)
>
> True, but the announcement period this time was shorter. In 2012, the
> announcement went out 17 April with a deadline of 20 May. [1] This time,
> the announcement went out 6 May with a deadline of 19 May. [2] Given
> Richard's observation that we have a lack of choice combined with the
> shorter announcement period, I wonder if it would be worth extending the
> call for candidates for, say, another week.
>

Yearly the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee has a meeting to decide
when and how the elections should take place. It seems that both on the
past [1] and the current year [2] the timeline for proposing candidacies
was 13 days. Apparently on 2012 the Board didn't coordinate with the
committee and decided to send out the announcement earlier on the 17th of
April. While I agree we should send out the announcement a bit earlier the
next year (maybe moving the "Announcements and list of candidates opens" to
April?) I feel there's no real reason to postpone the last date for
proposing new candidacies given the fact that no one expressed an interest
in sending out a candidacy after the 20th of May neither publicly or
privately to me or to any other member of the membership committee. 13 days
is a good amount of time for thinking deeply about running or not and for
writing a little sum up of what the candidate has achieved in term of
contributions during the past months / years.


-- 
Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNOME Sysadmin,
GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
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GNOME Board of Directors Foundation Elections Spring 2013 - The candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Andrea Veri 
Dear Foundation Members,

I am glad to announce the following list of candidates for the Board of
Directors:
   * Marina Zhurakhinskaya
   * Ekaterina Gerasimova
   * Sriram Ramkrishna
   * Andreas Nilsson
   * Emmanuele Bassi
   * Joanmarie Diggs
   * Max Huang
   * Tobias Mueller

Please see  for details.

You are invited to ask the candidates questions by sending them to
foundation-list. But please try to avoid duplicates and bear in mind, that
the candidates invest a lot of time answering questions, thus please be
reasonable with the amount and scope of the questions. You might want to
send your question to membership-commit...@gnome.org instead, so that we
can collect, sift and sort the questions before we send them out shortly
after the ballots were sent. But again: if you feel the need to ask your
question directly, please do so.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them at
membership-commit...@gnome.org or electi...@gnome.org.


-- 
Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNOME Sysadmin,
GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
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Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)

2013-05-22 Thread Andrea Veri 
Forgot the links:

[1] https://vote.gnome.org/2012/rules.html
[2] https://vote.gnome.org/2013/rules.html


2013/5/22 Andrea Veri 

> 2013/5/22 Joanmarie Diggs 
>
>> On 05/21/2013 10:46 PM, Karen Sandler wrote:
>> > On Tue, May 21, 2013 1:14 pm, Richard Stallman wrote:
>> >> The number of candidates so far is pretty small -- I saw only 8 -- so
>> >> we will not have much choice in our voting.
>> >>
>> >> On general principles, and not as criticism of the people who have
>> >> already stepped into the race, I think it would be good for more
>> >> people to run.  I encourage you, and everyone who has already run, to
>> >> stay in the race.
>> >
>> > I am pleased to say that the candidates we already have are *all*
>> > exceptionally strong.  I feel that I should point out that there are one
>> > or two people who would probably join the race as well if we extended
>> the
>> > deadline. As I said, though, the current candidates are pretty awesome
>> and
>> > they all got their announcements in on time :)
>>
>> True, but the announcement period this time was shorter. In 2012, the
>> announcement went out 17 April with a deadline of 20 May. [1] This time,
>> the announcement went out 6 May with a deadline of 19 May. [2] Given
>> Richard's observation that we have a lack of choice combined with the
>> shorter announcement period, I wonder if it would be worth extending the
>> call for candidates for, say, another week.
>>
>
> Yearly the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee has a meeting to decide
> when and how the elections should take place. It seems that both on the
> past [1] and the current year [2] the timeline for proposing candidacies
> was 13 days. Apparently on 2012 the Board didn't coordinate with the
> committee and decided to send out the announcement earlier on the 17th of
> April. While I agree we should send out the announcement a bit earlier the
> next year (maybe moving the "Announcements and list of candidates opens" to
> April?) I feel there's no real reason to postpone the last date for
> proposing new candidacies given the fact that no one expressed an interest
> in sending out a candidacy after the 20th of May neither publicly or
> privately to me or to any other member of the membership committee. 13 days
> is a good amount of time for thinking deeply about running or not and for
> writing a little sum up of what the candidate has achieved in term of
> contributions during the past months / years.
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Andrea
>
> Debian Developer,
> Fedora / EPEL packager,
> GNOME Sysadmin,
> GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman
>
> Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
>



-- 
Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNOME Sysadmin,
GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
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Re: A Question for New Candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Ekaterina Gerasimova 
Hi Allan

On 21 May 2013 11:12, Allan Day  wrote:

> […]
>
> It's also fantastic that we have so many fantastic new candidates this
> time around, and I have a question for you. One thing I find myself
> asking is: what do you think you will personally bring to the role if
> you are elected? In other words: why do you think that you will be a
> good board member?
>

Besides the obvious necessities of time and commitment, I realise that a
large part of the board work is not particularly glamorous yet is essential
to the continued existence of the Foundation and the community which it
supports. As you probably noticed, I did not put myself down for any
specific role when I sent in my candidacy. I think that I would be well
suited to take on the role of treasurer from Shaun, who has been doing an
excellent job, as I have experience in the area through my current and
previous work.

In my candidacy statement, I listed some specifics, such as improving the
events workflow, and I think that a position on the board would allow me to
achieve this effectively.

Kat
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Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Ekaterina Gerasimova 
On 21 May 2013 13:16, Brian Cameron  wrote:

> For all candidates, how do you see being on the board will enhance or
> facilitate the volunteer work you already do in the commutity?


I do not think that there is much overlap between the work I already do in
the community[1] and the board, so it would be fair to say that I do not
think that being on the board would enhance it. The GNOME project has goals
that are common to all areas of the community, so I see the board work as
complementing my existing involvement.

How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to
> working on the board on a regular basis?
>

Based on my conversations with current and past board members, I anticipate
that I would need to dedicate a couple of hours per day to board work. I
expect the workload to vary somewhat throughout the year and, because I
have flexible working arrangements, I am able to spend considerably more
time than that on board work when it is needed.

[1] Documentation team, travel committee and Outreach Program for Women
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Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Marina Zhurakhinskaya 




- Original Message -
> From: "Fabiana Simões" 
> To: "Foundation List" 
> Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 10:22:45 AM
> Subject: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> First, thanks to all candidates for volunteering to the Foundation Board.
> 
> We have a number of candidates running for a second term, and knowing what
> were these candidates' contributions to the Foundation in the past year is
> quite important for me as a voter. However, as per Zeeshan's questions, I
> find it hard to follow the Board's progress and accomplishments. I would
> like to know what are your ideas on improving the visibility of the Board's
> actions, and communication to Foundation members.

Two possible ideas are to
1) Have highlights on the top of the Foundation meeting minutes. 1-3 items 
everyone in the Foundation should know about - whether because help is needed 
in completing them or because they got completed.
2) Have the board members take turns in writing a monthly blog post in their 
own blog about the happenings on the board, from their perspective. This will 
give people an interesting first-hand insight and place it in front of their 
eyes on Planet GNOME. This is similar to how we learn about what happened at 
hackfests or what the interns have been up to. There should also be a wiki page 
where the posts' authors will be responsible to add links to their reports. A 
schedule of who is responsible for the blog post each month should be created 
in the beginning of the board year.

> 
> Thanks,
> Fabiana

Thanks,
Marina

> 
> 
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Re: A Question for New Candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Marina Zhurakhinskaya 
- Original Message -
> From: "Allan Day" 
> To: "foundation-list" 
> Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 6:12:45 AM
> Subject: A Question for New Candidates
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Big thanks to everyone who has put themselves forward as a board
> candidate. It's really awesome that you are willing to spend time on
> the foundation.
> 
> It's also fantastic that we have so many fantastic new candidates this
> time around, and I have a question for you. One thing I find myself
> asking is: what do you think you will personally bring to the role if
> you are elected? In other words: why do you think that you will be a
> good board member?

I think I'd be a good board member because I have
* willingness to reach out to people - both newcomers and people in the wider 
Free Software / technology community
* insight into the design and development process of GNOME
* attention to detail
* ability to come up with new solutions, plan things out, and follow through

> 
> I don't expect an essay here, btw. :)
> 
> Thanks again,
> 
> Allan

Thank you,
Marina

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Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

2013-05-22 Thread Marina Zhurakhinskaya 
- Original Message -
> From: "Brian Cameron" 
> To: "GNOME Foundation" 
> Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 8:16:48 AM
> Subject: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
> 
> 
> My question to the candidates:
> 
> For returning board members, what are 3 conrete accomplishments on the
> board that you are most proud of?  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.  If
> you were to give your own performance a grade, what would it be?
> 
> For all candidates, how do you see being on the board will enhance or
> facilitate the volunteer work you already do in the commutity?  How
> many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to
> working on the board on a regular basis?

Being on the board would help me identify and help establish more outreach and 
engagement efforts that are relevant to GNOME. I'm particularly interested in 
seeing us move ahead on Joanie's idea of the Outreach Program for Professors.

Beyond that, I'm interested in identifying some other way I can help the GNOME 
project and community thrive, which would inform my work outside the board.

I would have 5-10 hours a week for my work on the board.

> 
> Brian

Thanks,
Marina

> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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