Hi Andreas, thanks for highlighting the lack of gender diversity. This is a problem which past Boards and Membership Committees have no doubt worked on; perhaps those people can say more about their efforts and challenges.
I understand that contributors with non-technical backgrounds make up a minority percentage of the Foundation's members. Considering that candidates from the Board come from this group, doing more to encourage new members to join from our existing non-technical teams seems like a one good approach. A more diverse Membership makes possible more diverse Board candidates. Regarding affiliation and your comments about my statement: I hilighted my independence because affiliation is a critical issue for many Members in this election, and also for statutory compliance. To clarify the links which you posted and address your suspicion: from 2014 to 2015 I worked for 13 months as Consultant Marketing Manager for Collabora Productivity. Four intervening years working in a different sector have passed, during which time Collabora and I have communicated only on TDF lists, and briefly at LibreOffice conferences. During these years I've been an independent TDF member and supported the TDF Marketing Team as best I could. I believe my experience marketing LibreOffice, both professionally and voluntarily, would be valuable to the Board. Happy to answer other questions in this vein which you or others may have. Sam. On 28 November 2019 20:45:35 GMT+01:00, Andreas Mantke <ma...@gmx.de> wrote: >Hello, > >there is the view that diversity is key for a successful community, >leading body etc. This counts for open source communities and their >(leading) bodies too. > >I had a look into the applications for the next TDF board and found >there the narration 'while our user base is amazingly diverse, and so >is >our community (...)'. > >This makes me curious and I tried to find out, if the applications >reflects this narration. > >First I had a look at gender of the candidates and thought that among >them would be more women than among the members of the German federal >parliament (Deutscher Bundestag): >https://www.bundestag.de/abgeordnete/biografien/mdb_zahlen_19/frauen_maenner-529508 >709 members, 221 women and 488 men; about 31 % female members. >TDF board candidates: 12 candidates, 0 women, 12 men; accurate 0 % >women. >Thus the prediction about the gender relation of the next TDF board is >not that difficult. There will not be any gender diversity. > >The newspapers and news pages in Germany talk about a Swedish study >today that women are the better leaders, because of their soft skills. > >I looked further around for amazingly diversity among the candidates. >But I don't get the information that among them is someone who is not >working inside the IT business. Is this an effigy of the current TDF >community? > >Let's have a look at the affiliation of the candidates. One of them >declared him 'an independent candidate', something that alerted me and >made me suspicious. And I found this: >http://samtuke.com/tag/collabora/ >and >http://samtuke.com/2015/12/goodbye-collabora-hello-phplist/ > >But the message of the declaration 'an independent candidate' could >read >as: I'm the only independent candidate. > >Let's have a look on the affiliation of the candidates: five or more >(?) >of the twelf candidates have an affiliation with one company: about >41%. > >It seemed this overcompensate the missing balance between female and >male board candidates ;-) > >Kind regards, >Andreas > > > >-- >To unsubscribe e-mail to: >board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org >Problems? >https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ >Posting guidelines + more: >https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette >List archive: >https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ >Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
