Board Member Application Mini-HOWTO Federico Mena-Quintero November 2006
Background ========== In pretty much all the elections for the Board of Directors of the GNOME Foundation, it has been inevitable that the "rock stars" who nominate themselves are eventually elected. The rock stars are the most prominent hackers who contribute to GNOME. They know that their contributions are valuable, and they wish to give even more of their valuable time to further GNOME's goals: this is why they nominate themselves for the Foundation's Board of Directors. And since everyone in the Foundation knows who they are, they get elected. I have been a Board member of the GNOME Foundation for three or four non-consecutive years. I am also a pretty visible member of the GNOME project, and a busy hacker at Novell. My personal experience in being a Board member is that I never have time to do all the little administrative things that are part of being a Board member, and I end up feeling terrible about myself. This is not a problem only for myself. Other Board members, if they happen to be busy hackers, also suffer from this problem. They never have time to do all the little things that one must do for the Board, and the Board is seen as a nebulous entity that accomplishes nothing. Would you be a good member of the Board? ======================================== * If you are a rock star hacker (or a busy non-rock star hacker at work), you will not be a good Board member. Don't think that you can squeeze in a couple hours each week; you won't be able to. In the Board you have to do little tasks like answer mails, take minutes, send minutes to the public, be in contact with the companies in the Advisory Board, make plans, etc. If you wouldn't normally have time to participate in a volunteer organization where you do paperwork, the Board is not fit for you. * If you are a hacker, your GUADEC experience will be destroyed. GUADEC is about meeting fellow contributors and talking to them in person. It is about having lunch with them, discussing the technology or your favorite brand of beer. If you are a Board member, during GUADEC you will be in meetings literally all day and you will not be able to talk to fellow hackers. Forget about the parties; you will be too tired to go to them if the meetings are even over by then. * You need 1 hour every two weeks for the regular meetings. You need about 1-2 hours each week to deal with minutiae: your assigned actions, writing mails to people, figuring things out. But this is not 1-2 hours of well-defined work. It's a big context switch from your regular activities, and if you don't like interruptions for paperwork, you'll dread having to do it. If you are the kind of person that forgets what you talked about two weeks ago, you won't be a good Board member. * The Foundation will not reimburse you for the conference calls. The calls are invariable hosted in the USA, so you may have to do long-distance calls every two weeks. We haven't done any work to make the calls through VOIP or anything. So who would be a good member of the Board? =========================================== * People who have had experience in running other volunteer organizations. * People who have had experience in administering other people's money. I.e. you could be the Treasurer for the Foundation. * People whose daily jobs don't extend beyond "normal work hours": hackers tend to keep working on the stuff from their job even after they go home. * People who are good at paperwork, following up in communications, and who don't mind frequent meetings. But don't let me discourage you =============================== I am not trying to discourage all hackers from nominating themselves for the Board elections. I am just pointing out why being a Board member is not the best idea for everyone. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list