Re: Question for candidates

[Max]

Dear Marina

Thanks for reply my question.


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Marina Zhurakhinskaya
wrote:

>
> - Original Message -
> > From: "Max" 
> > To: "foundation-list" 
> > Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:18:33 PM
> > Subject: Question for candidates
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > Thanks for run the board.
> > This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go).
> > GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit.
> >
> > My question to all of you:
> >
> > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia"
> > -- GNOME.Asia summit ?
>
> The GNOME.Asia team is doing a fantastic job organizing the conference and
> it will undoubtedly boost the interest in GNOME. It would be great to have
> meetups of people working on GNOME and free software in Beijing throughout
> the year, so that more people who learned about GNOME at the conference are
> interested in travelling to the next year's location.
>
> >  Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I
> saw
> > it last GUADEC but not start to use)
>
> I created a new "activities to track" page for the board and added it
> there. We will find out what is going on with it and encourage development.
>
>
Thanks, it help a lot.


> >  Other idea?
> >
> >
> > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women
> >  What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia?
>
> We should continue to provide materials and encouragement for past OPW and
> GSoC participants to run introduction to free software / GNOME / GSoC / OPW
> sessions and host meetups in their cities throughout the year, so that we
> have more applicants from Asia applying for these programs who have
> experience contributing to free software. There are materials available for
> OpenHatch "Open Source Comes to Campus" and GNOME Newcomers Workshop, which
> can be used for such events.
>
>
OpenHatch is a good idea, but it might need non-english interface(website).

I join the OpenHatch and introduce it in Taiwan Campus, but I think it will
be better if it could have different language pages.

I think I might be could contact tryneeds platform
http://tryneeds.westart.tw/tryneeds/ it focus to translate open source
application to Chinese.


> >  How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for
> promote it
> > with more country in Asia?
>
> Of 39 interns GNOME has this summer, 14 are from India, 1 from China, and
> 1 from Philippines. As I mentioned above, we need to encourage these people
> and other community members to promote the internship programs and help
> people become contributors before they apply.
>
>
Agree


> >
> >
> > -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia?
> >  How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year,
> if
> > they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new )
>
> There is https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide , which we can encourage
> people to fill out. There are also translators, whose information you can
> get from Git or on https://l10n.gnome.org/teams/. Also there are
> localization and regional mailing lists.
>
>
I think https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide might not active now, and *GNOME
community at Google Maps
.
 there is only 1 man there.*
Maybe we could have a wiki page and split it by location, like
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors_list





> >  How do we get these member / resource together?
>
> I think you already do a lot of this by organizing GNOME.Asia! Perhaps you
> can have a BoF at the conference to figure out what are the resources you
> want to put together and what are the activities you want to see happen.
>
> > -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve?
>
> The GNOME Foundation sponsored Sindhu to go to FOSSASIA this year, where
> she ran contributing to GNOME workshop, did a talk about documentation, and
> participated in a panel about women in IT. We should have more people
> proposing talks and going to FOSSASIA next year. We should also have people
> proposing talks and going to LinuxCon Japan. Identifying and participating
> in any other free software conferences in Asia would be great.
>
>


> >
> > -- Anything you plan with Asia.
>
> Thanks for all the great questions! I'm excited about growing our presence
> in Asia and I'm sure we will succeed.
>
> Marina
>
>

Thanks Marina
 ^^
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Re: Question for candidates

[Max]

Dear Andrea


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 1:55 AM, Andrea Veri  wrote:

> On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
>
> Hey Max!
>
> > My question to all of you:
> >
> > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia"
> > -- GNOME.Asia summit ?
> >  Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?(  I
> > saw it last GUADEC but not start to use)
> >  Other idea?
>
> Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a
> valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The
> software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager
> [1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing
> machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been
> granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please
> let me know.
>
>
Yes, I am missing access ^^


> We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it
> has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to
> follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected.
>
> > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women
> >  What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia?
> >  How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for
> promote
> > it with more country in Asia?
>
> While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being
> widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia
> regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably
> do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can
> be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will
> make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the
> idea to the relevant localization team)
>
> That would hit another language barrier though which mainly relates to
> the fact none of the current mentors are Chinese speakers. Max, did
> you try interacting with any local university already? if yes, is
>

Yes, I try interacting with local University, and I think Beijing team and
other GNOME Users Group in Asia do too.


> there anyone (both english and chinese speaker) who might be
> willing to mentor a chinese-speaking student during one of the next OPW
> rounds?
>
>
I think we could discuss more with other mentors, the point is "They really
don't know how to start and which is start point".
There might be need "GNOME Love" for both english and chinese speakers who
is first time to be a mentor.
^__^




> Max, how much the events that were organized and sponsored by the
> GNOME Foundation did benefit the Asia region as a whole? how many new
> contributors joined your ranks? what do you think could help you
> improve the organization of the GNOME.Asia event?
>
>
Good point, Andrea ^^
I just check the

Events - GNOME Wiki
https://wiki.gnome.org/Events

* for GNOME community google schedule
https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mdnrfqhbsjn37b6sgad089q...@group.calendar.google.com,
who have the permission to add the event?
I only see the GUADE and Beijing GUG meeting and Taiwan GUG meeting.

In Taiwan, we have "Taiwan Open Source" Calendar
https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=p09uh8cg4uvt2ij4obf45cl...@group.calendar.google.com

You could see the Mozilla, Pycon APAC and other Linux Users Group
.activities.

Taiwan OSSF(Open Source Software Foundry) news will list and mail community
event, it's good to remind people to join or where to find an event to join.
http://www.openfoundry.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9219&Itemid=4;isletter=1

I think we might be do some event list more detail like openSUSE:Advocates
events
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors_events





> During the past GUADEC we discussed the creation of an additional
> planet to aggregate all the chinese-speaking feeds to help
> non-english-speaking contributors to be aware of what's going on
> behind the scenes of events like GNOME.Asia but generally any other
> initiative happening in that area (the Planet GNOME rules currently
> disallow localized content to be posted and while that keeps the
> planet polished from mixed content to be published it also restricts
> non-english-speakers to read it), do you think such addition would
> still make sense?


I think that is make sense to non-english speakers to read it, at least you
will know somebody is moving. Who care about that.


> if yes, do you have a list of feeds to aggregate
> there already? is a planet really needed or would a news feed on the
> GNOME.Asia website be enough for the goal?
>
>
If everyone think that is a good idea, we could beg the GNOME foundation
member in Asia first, provide their non-english feed.
(I have 2 blogs, one for English and the other one is Chinese, but most
case, I write the Chinese one  XD )


> It's just awesome how deeply you care about GNOME and expanding its
> horizons to Asia. Thanks for your contributions Max!
>
> [1] https://github.com/openSUSE/osem
>
>

Thanks And

Re: Question for candidates

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya]

- Original Message -
> From: "Michael Catanzaro" 
> To: "David King" 
> Cc: "foundation-list" 
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 7:48:54 PM
> Subject: Re: Question for candidates
> 
> On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:55 +0100, David King wrote:
> > Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the
> > board
> > needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these
> > goals,
> > which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track"
> > will be challenging to meet over the next year.
> 
> I have a follow-up question (for David and incumbents): why do you want
> (or not want) to hire a new executive director? What responsibilities do
> you think the executive director role should entail? Can the foundation
> afford to wait to hire a new executive director?

We need to hire an executive director because we need someone whose paid 
full-time job is to make sure that the Foundation operates well and grows. 
Fundraising for their own salary would still afford the executive director a 
lot of time for other activities. The key responsibilities for the executive 
director would be to track and prioritize all the things that need to happen to 
have the Foundation thrive and to work with the Foundation members to get those 
things done. The executive director personally can focus on any number of those 
things, depending on which match their skills best.

I think we should aim to start the hiring process for an executive director as 
soon as all the OPW back payments and advisory board fees for this year are 
paid. This is when we will best be able to evaluate if having an executive 
director is sustainable with the current Foundation's income and how much we 
need to tie their salary to additional fundraising.

> 
> I'm asking because most of Karen's work was not highly-visible. I'm
> aware that she worked on recruiting new advisory board members and spoke
> at conferences, both of which seem important. But I'm sure there must be
> more to the job that I am unaware of, to justify the significant
> expense.
> 
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Re: Questions for the candidates: finances

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya]

- Original Message -
> From: "Jim Nelson" 
> To: "Foundation List" 
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 2:19:37 PM
> Subject: Questions for the candidates: finances
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> First, I'd like to voice my support for Dave Neary's question. I also believe
> finding an executive director may be the most important task for the
> incoming board.
> 
> From some earlier discussion it sounds like the other defining task will be
> stabilizing GNOME's finances. Others have asked questions about improving
> the foundation's financial situation, but almost every response is about
> locating more corporate sponsorship and increasing personal donations. My
> concern is that those paths are well-trod and potentially lean, and that
> novel ways of financing should be explored. At least one candidate (Emily
> Gonyer) stated a desire to ween GNOME off of corporate sponsorship.
> 
> My questions for the candidates is:
> 
> Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would
> you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel
> these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?)

I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations 
than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to 
a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and 
application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is 
of interest to people to build their own products with or create services 
around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult 
financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual 
donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of 
GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, 
and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and 
having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy 
to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for 
advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim
 ited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively.

I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative 
founders which has informed some of my views on it.
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source

Thanks,
Marina

> 
> -- Jim
> 
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Re: Question for candidates

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya]

- Original Message -
> From: "Emily Chen" 
> To: "foundation-list" 
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 11:16:14 AM
> Subject: Question for candidates
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> I would like to ask below questions to future board:
> 
> 
> 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your
> plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ?

In many cases, for an organization to sponsor these conferences, they need to 
have some ongoing relationship with GNOME and budget the sponsorship in 
advance. We have been finding out a lot about interests of some of the sponsors 
we approached this year, and we have started to track this information. We 
should make an effort to build a working relationship with each organization 
around their interests and also ask them to budget for the conference 
sponsorship as early as November of the previous year.

> 
> 
> 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your
> opinion ?

Write great software, promote it to users and potential contributors, manage 
finances well.

> 
> 
> 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ?

We need to engage more with our advisory board members and other organizations 
that might like to support GNOME and figure out how we can best meet their 
needs and what activities they are most interested in supporting. We need to 
report back to our individual donors what their support has enabled and run 
annual fundraising campaigns.

> 
> 
> 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week?

Recently, it has been about 10 hours a week. I can continue contributing 10 
hours a week until we have an ED, at which point I would like to scale it down 
to 5 hours a week.

> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> Emily Chen

Thanks,
Marina

> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Question for candidates

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya]

- Original Message -
> From: "Max" 
> To: "foundation-list" 
> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:18:33 PM
> Subject: Question for candidates
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Thanks for run the board.
> This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go).
> GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit.
> 
> My question to all of you:
> 
> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia"
> -- GNOME.Asia summit ?

The GNOME.Asia team is doing a fantastic job organizing the conference and it 
will undoubtedly boost the interest in GNOME. It would be great to have meetups 
of people working on GNOME and free software in Beijing throughout the year, so 
that more people who learned about GNOME at the conference are interested in 
travelling to the next year's location.

>  Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw
> it last GUADEC but not start to use)

I created a new "activities to track" page for the board and added it there. We 
will find out what is going on with it and encourage development.

>  Other idea?
> 
> 
> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women
>  What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia?

We should continue to provide materials and encouragement for past OPW and GSoC 
participants to run introduction to free software / GNOME / GSoC / OPW sessions 
and host meetups in their cities throughout the year, so that we have more 
applicants from Asia applying for these programs who have experience 
contributing to free software. There are materials available for OpenHatch 
"Open Source Comes to Campus" and GNOME Newcomers Workshop, which can be used 
for such events.

>  How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote it
> with more country in Asia?

Of 39 interns GNOME has this summer, 14 are from India, 1 from China, and 1 
from Philippines. As I mentioned above, we need to encourage these people and 
other community members to promote the internship programs and help people 
become contributors before they apply.

> 
> 
> -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia?
>  How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if
> they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new )

There is https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide , which we can encourage people 
to fill out. There are also translators, whose information you can get from Git 
or on https://l10n.gnome.org/teams/. Also there are localization and regional 
mailing lists.

>  How do we get these member / resource together?

I think you already do a lot of this by organizing GNOME.Asia! Perhaps you can 
have a BoF at the conference to figure out what are the resources you want to 
put together and what are the activities you want to see happen.

> -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve?

The GNOME Foundation sponsored Sindhu to go to FOSSASIA this year, where she 
ran contributing to GNOME workshop, did a talk about documentation, and 
participated in a panel about women in IT. We should have more people proposing 
talks and going to FOSSASIA next year. We should also have people proposing 
talks and going to LinuxCon Japan. Identifying and participating in any other 
free software conferences in Asia would be great.

> 
> -- Anything you plan with Asia.

Thanks for all the great questions! I'm excited about growing our presence in 
Asia and I'm sure we will succeed.

Marina

> 
> 
> GNOME.Asia team member
> 
> 
> Max Huang
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Question for candidates

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 11:18 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
> one of the options that I want the board to investigate
> is to tie in the executive director's wage and travel budget with
> adboard fees in such a way that the executive director will only be
> compensated up to a maximum of what the Foundation receives in adboard
> fees. This would free up some of the donations to be spent on
> sponsoring the Foundation members to attend events and do outreach.

I understand the value of performance-based bonuses, but this sounds
like it would create the possibility that a new company joins the
adboard and its fee goes entirely to the executive director.


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Re: Question for candidates

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:55 +0100, David King wrote:
> Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the
> board 
> needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these
> goals, 
> which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track"
> will be challenging to meet over the next year.

I have a follow-up question (for David and incumbents): why do you want
(or not want) to hire a new executive director? What responsibilities do
you think the executive director role should entail? Can the foundation
afford to wait to hire a new executive director?

I'm asking because most of Karen's work was not highly-visible. I'm
aware that she worked on recruiting new advisory board members and spoke
at conferences, both of which seem important. But I'm sure there must be
more to the job that I am unaware of, to justify the significant
expense.


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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Tobias Mueller

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 15:28 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
> As the board minutes show from a few weeks ago, the board has been in
> touch with some advisory board members to find out if they could
> donate some person time towards the upgrade. Since then, the sysadmin
> team has also been in touch with someone who may be able to port the
> only customisation that we really need. What resources would you steer
> towards the goal?

Is this customization the Splinter patch review system?


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Re: Question for candidates

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya]

- Original Message -
> From: "Dave Neary" 
> To: "Foundation-List" 
> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 12:58:21 PM
> Subject: Question for candidates
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to
> Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation.
> 
> So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you
> will be looking for in the next executive director?
> 
> when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle:
> * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free
> software cultural alignment
> * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a
> direction for GNOME
> * Administrative and organizational experience
> * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem
> * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience
> * Cost
> 
> Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now,
> and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I
> didn't list?

Two additional desirable characteristics for an ED are the ability to fundraise 
and legal knowledge.

The board and community members can fulfill many functions of an ED, which is 
something that is evident now when we don't have an ED. So I think this gives 
us some flexibility in what are the strengths of the person we hire. I think 
the two essential characteristics are free software cultural alignment and 
organizational abilities. It's important that the ED is able to keep track of 
all the activities that need to happen for the GNOME project to be stable and 
grow, seek input, and delegate effectively.

Thanks,
Marina

> 
> Thanks!
> Dave.
> --
> Dave Neary, Lyon, France
> Email: dne...@gnome.org
> Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
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Re: Mass Reboot: Monday 19th of May, 21.00 - 22.00 CET

[Andrea Veri]

On Sat, 17 May 2014, Andrea Veri wrote:

> We'll also take the time during the reboots to switch our current 
> storage away from our current main NFS node to the brand new GlusterFS 
> nodes. This should not affect the reboots planned downtime.

The maintenance took a bit more due to rsync taking its good time to 
transfer the missing files from our old NFS server to the two new
GlusterFS volumes.

Thanks for your patience and please report any issue you may find to 
the GNOME Sysadmin Team. [1]

Have a good day!

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Sysadmin/Contact


-- 

Cheers,

Andrea

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

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av


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Re: Question for candidates

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

On 05/19/2014 04:31 AM, David King wrote:
> Right now (taking into account the poor financial situation that the
> Foundation is facing), I think that a candidate for the executive
> director position would be someone who has experience of raising funds
> for not-for-profit organisations. For GNOME, the board does not exert
> strong control over the project, but tries to steer it in the right
> direction by ensuring that funding is directed appropriately, making the
> executive director role particularly challenging.

My follow-on question, then: raising money for what?

> I do not think that
> technical proficiency is an essential quality for an executive director,
> if by that you mean ability to code.

I meant "understanding of the technology, ability to explain it, and
ability to be articulate about what the GNOME project needs to do to
stay relevant".

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary, Lyon, France
Email: dne...@gnome.org
Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
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Re: Questions for the candidates: finances

[Tobias Mueller]

Hi.

On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:19:37AM -0700, Jim Nelson wrote:
> Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) 
> would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances?  (Or 
> do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this 
> goal?)
Reducing costs; although I think it is quite obvious that you cannot spend 
money 
that you don't receive.
I see potential in various areas, such as our Friends of GNOME 
programme, the travel budget, or the people we pay for GNOME related work.
Right now, we ship donors' gifts from the US.  That's probably not the most 
economical option, esp. when sending things to our European donors.
We could scale down travel support or have a policy that covers, say, up to 80% 
by default.
Also, while we need committed people to do work for us, I'm not entirely
convinced that we need to pay a salary.  We could try to get committed community
members to take over responsibility before thinking of hiring someone to do it
for us.  I don't think we can scale down much further now, though ;-)

As for sources of income, I think we need to make it attractive for people
to give (personal) donations first, before thinking of scaling up or expanding 
in other areas.  That includes being able to receive money via something 
not Paypal or reaching out to our donors and tell them what we've done with the 
money they gave us.

Cheers,
  Tobi
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Re: Question for candidates

[Dave Neary]

Hi Oliver,

On 05/18/2014 06:08 PM, Oliver Propst wrote:
> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Dave Neary  wrote:
>> when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle:
>> * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free
>> software cultural alignment
>> * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a
>> direction for GNOME
>> * Administrative and organizational experience
>> * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem
>> * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience
>> * Cost
>>
>> Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now,
>> and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I
>> didn't list?
> 
> I personally believe a future executive director should have all the
> skills/experiences you describe and there is really no single skill
> that are more importent then ohter

I am afraid that "all of the above" is not realistic.

You may be able to get someone with a small base salary plus aggressive
bonus plan if they have a history of boosting revenue for organizations
like GNOME but that will come at a cost - a lack of focus on the
direction of the project and cultural alignment with free software and
open source principles, for example.

You might get a great organizer who is not a very loud mouthpiece. You
might get someone who does a lot of evangelism (with a resulting high
travel budget) but a lot of travel will result in a lack of focus on
revenue and organization.

You might get someone who is great at process, getting invoices out and
ensuring no future cashflow issues, but will that personality type be an
effusive communicator?

let me put it another way - if I give you 25 pebbles, and you can put
0-10 pebbles in each of the 6 boxes above, which ones do you want to
optimise for? We might get lucky and get someone great in all areas, and
also cheap. We might also have Microsoft and Apple decide that desktop
software isn't really interesting and see them discontinue their
products. But I think that's pretty unlikely.


> With that said, for me its very important that a future executive
> director are able to form, communicate and execute a direction for
> GNOME.

Thanks - that's a better answer, I think.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary, Lyon, France
Email: dne...@gnome.org
Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
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Questions for the candidates: finances

[Jim Nelson]

Hello everyone,

First, I'd like to voice my support for Dave Neary's question.  I also 
believe finding an executive director may be the most important task 
for the incoming board.


From some earlier discussion it sounds like the other defining task 
will be stabilizing GNOME's finances.  Others have asked questions 
about improving the foundation's financial situation, but almost every 
response is about locating more corporate sponsorship and increasing 
personal donations.  My concern is that those paths are well-trod and 
potentially lean, and that novel ways of financing should be explored.  
At least one candidate (Emily Gonyer) stated a desire to ween GNOME off 
of corporate sponsorship.


My questions for the candidates is:

Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) 
would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances?  (Or 
do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this 
goal?)


-- Jim
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Re: Question for candidates

[Andrea Veri]

On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote:

> Hi everyone,

Hey Max!

> My question to all of you:
> 
> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia"
> -- GNOME.Asia summit ?
>  Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?(  I
> saw it last GUADEC but not start to use)
>  Other idea?

Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a
valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The
software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager
[1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing
machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been
granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please
let me know.

We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it
has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to
follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected. 
 
> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women
>  What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia?
>  How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote
> it with more country in Asia?

While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being 
widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia 
regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably 
do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can 
be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will 
make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the 
idea to the relevant localization team)

That would hit another language barrier though which mainly relates to 
the fact none of the current mentors are Chinese speakers. Max, did 
you try interacting with any local university already? if yes, is 
there anyone (both english and chinese speaker) who might be 
willing to mentor a chinese-speaking student during one of the next OPW 
rounds?
 
> -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia?
>  How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if
> they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new )
>  How do we get these member / resource together?

I'm not sure whether adding a "country" field on the foundation
database would be enough to achieve the proposed goal given someone
might just decide to not specify that information at all (for 
protecting the privacy for example), additionally there is no real 
need for the Membership Committee (and the Foundation generally) to 
know where a contributor is based. But that's not all the Committee is 
very busy lately and increasing the information to manage for each 
single member would not be ideal. (I'm also sure the "country" field
would become inconsistent within a few months from it being introduced 
for the simple fact someone might just forget to send an update to the 
committee specifying he just moved to a new country)

What we can probably do is populating the "apply" form some more 
including more information about how new or existing members can reach 
their localized communities. (by suggesting the new member to 
subscribe to gnome-cc-l...@gnome.org (Country Code) for example or if 
missing to ask the creation of a new list in case that specific community
is growing in number)

> -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve?
> 
> -- Anything you plan with Asia.

I've not been following very closely what the current situation for 
GNOME.Asia is but Dave and Kat's emails clearly state the Foundation 
is totally oriented on improving the current situation for the next 
term and they will be personally there at the upcoming event to 
instruct participants on the multiple ways to be engaged to the GNOME 
project as contributors.

Max, how much the events that were organized and sponsored by the 
GNOME Foundation did benefit the Asia region as a whole? how many new 
contributors joined your ranks? what do you think could help you 
improve the organization of the GNOME.Asia event?

During the past GUADEC we discussed the creation of an additional 
planet to aggregate all the chinese-speaking feeds to help 
non-english-speaking contributors to be aware of what's going on 
behind the scenes of events like GNOME.Asia but generally any other 
initiative happening in that area (the Planet GNOME rules currently 
disallow localized content to be posted and while that keeps the 
planet polished from mixed content to be published it also restricts 
non-english-speakers to read it), do you think such addition would 
still make sense? if yes, do you have a list of feeds to aggregate 
there already? is a planet really needed or would a news feed on the 
GNOME.Asia website be enough for the goal?

It's just awesome how deeply you care about GNOME and expanding its
horizons to Asia. Thanks for your contributions Max!

[1] https://github.com/openSUSE/osem

-- 

Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNO

Agenda for board meeting May 20th

[Andreas Nilsson]

Hello Foundation members!
Next board meeting is May 20th at 16:00 UTC

This is the agenda:
 * Quick budget update
 * Delegating back to the Travel Committee
  * Proposal from the Travel Committee to the board: 
https://wiki.gnome.org/Travel/wip/Events

 * ED hiring and plans going forward
 * Visa fees reimbursements
 * Receiving Donations in the EU via the WHS
 * Pitivi dontations fees
 * Upcoming events
  * GUADEC 2014
  * GNOME.Asia
  * Upcoming hackfests
* Bugzilla upgrade

- Andreas
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Re: Question for candidates

[David King]

Hi Emily

On 2014-05-19 23:16, Emily Chen  wrote:

I would like to ask below questions to future board:

1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your
plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ?


The advisory board has seen a shrinking membership over the last few 
years, and it has traditionally been the source of a large proportion of 
sponsorship for bigger events. The board could seek to grow the advisory 
board membership, which provides funding for GNOME as a whole.  
Alternatively, the board could seek out sponsors from organisations 
external to the advisory board, such as local sponsors which might have 
a connection to a location, but less of a connection to GNOME. This 
would be most effective if done by the local organising team, but the 
board should make sure that appropriate assistance is in place, so that 
the local team is not overburdened.


As you (and many of the GNOME.Asia team) are long-term local organiser, 
I would appreciate your input in acquiring and retaining sponsors.



2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your
opinion ?


Firstly, the board needs to return the Foundation to a state of 
financial security, by increasing the cash reserves to a comfortable 
level. Secondly, the board needs to grow the revenues of the Foundation, 
such as by acquiring new sponsors and examining new sources of revenue.  
Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the board 
needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these goals, 
which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track"

will be challenging to meet over the next year.


3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ?


I think increasing the value of being an advisory board member, with a 
view to getting more long-term sponsorship, would be a priority. The 
board may find it possible to seek out some one-off sponsorship 
opportunities over the next year, but I think that the biggest challenge 
will be retaining those sponsors over the coming year, and the advisory 
board is a good mechanism for that.



4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week?


Given the current lack of executive director, I would expect at least 10 
hours per week at the moment, dropping to 5-10 hours per week when an 
executive director is found to reduce the workload.


--
http://amigadave.com/


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Re: Question for candidates

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Emily,

On 19 May 2014 16:16, Emily Chen  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to ask below questions to future board:
>
> 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your
> plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ?

Firstly, I think that reliable sponsors need to be contacted much
earlier, when they set the budget rather than closer to the event.
Last year, I had a chance to talk to our sponsors and advisory board
members to find out when they needed to receive the sponsorship
information to be able to allocate the conference budgets
appropriately. I encouraged the production of the sponsorship
brochures for GUADEC earlier in the cycle and asked our executive
director to contact the potential sponsors at the most convenient
times for them.

In the upcoming year, I plan to propose that the advisory board should
be recognised for their support and should be offered additional value
with an exclusive discounted sponsorship package which can be paid at
the start of the year, at the same time as paying the advisory board
fees. I am also keen to revisit the advisory board charges structure
and to assess whether we can improve that to entice smaller companies
into joining.

> 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your
> opinion ?

Financial stability is by far the highest priority, which I think will
involve hiring an executive director to help with fundraising. The
board should also focus more on supporting outreach efforts by our
community members and I have worked on making it easier to track where
we have done this previously.

> 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ?

Most of our funding comes from the advisory board fees. The Foundation
needs to seek out corporate support from more users of GNOME in
corporate environments, but also to make it easier for contributors to
donate by offering donation methods other than what is currently
available. The board has been working in this direction for the last
year, with the effort being led by Tobi.

> 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week?

The least that I have worked has been 2 hours per week and the most
has been over 60 hours per week. I think that under normal operational
conditions, I would be spending up to 10 hours per week on board work,
but I expect that it will continue to be closer to 25 hours per week
for the next two months or so.

> Thanks!
>
> Emily Chen
>
>
>
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Re: Board of Directors Election 2014 - Candidacy - Jean-François Fortin Tam

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Jeff,

On 15 May 2014 20:42, Jeff Fortin  wrote:
> Name: Jean-François Fortin Tam
> Email: nekohayo at gmail
> Affiliation: none (freelance)
> Web/bio/blog/etc.: http://jeff.ecchi.ca
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> I would like to offer my candidacy to serve on the Foundation Board.

Thanks for throwing your hat in the ring!

As can be seen from the board meeting agenda for 2014-05-06 and will
be visible from the agenda for 2014-05-20, there is an item called
"PiTiVi funds statement". GNOME handles money for PiTiVi and this item
is related to a finer point of the interpretation of the contract
between PiTiVi and GNOME which was signed by you and two others on
behalf of PiTiVi. As a board member, you would always be expected to
take an active role in defending GNOME's interests. How would you be
handling this issue if you were currently on the board given that you
have a conflict of interest?

> I have been involved in various areas of GNOME since 2004 or so, including
> testing, triaging, marketing, mentoring, coding, public speaking and
> advocacy, UI/UX design, etc. I also graduated from business & management
> school, so I would like to put that background to good use. I'm keeping this
> description short & simple (as I suspect many of you will know me); you can
> learn more about me at http://jeff.ecchi.ca
>
>
> In GNOME's context, my areas of interest include (but are not limited to):
>
> The "big picture": becoming a sustainable ecosystem for attracting
> developers and partners. For example, sustainable bug tracking[0][1] and the
> revival of a QA team; steering our focus from the initial "disruptive
> innovation" phase of GNOME 3.x towards also re-emphasizing the perhaps more
> "boring" but essential bits (a renewed effort/focus around performance and
> robustness); etc.

As the board is rarely involved in the development and technical
aspects of the Foundation, how would being a board member help you
achieve this?

> Organizational processes and tools. From my experience and what I have seen
> in previous threads (or meeting minutes) here, there probably is room for
> improvement in the way we handle partnerships, financial operations and
> policies, etc. I'm not saying I magically have all the answers, but this is
> something I would like to get more familiar with, evaluate and help
> streamline if possible.

As the current treasurer, I have had to do something to this effect
during my year on the board. I would like to know how you would aim to
get to know the process without disrupting the workflow of our
employees, especially given that our administrative assistant's
workload is currently very high.

> Financial security: fundraising, diversification and protection against
> downturns. This is not only the recent events regarding the state of the
> Foundation's finances, but also about the "big picture". I'd like to help
> ensure the sustainability of GNOME as an organization.
> Nurturing our brand.
> Major technological shifts (such as Wayland, GTK4, systemd, you name it).
>
>
> I hope to continue serving GNOME to the best of my abilities.
> The board is one area where I hope to make a difference.
>
> Thank you for your consideration,
> Jean-François "Jeff" Fortin Tam
>
> 
> [0]:
> http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2012/10/08/reducing-our-core-apps-software-inventory/
> [1]: see also my GUADEC 2013 talk
>
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Re: Question for candidates

[Andre Klapper]

On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 15:20 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
> Many of the applicants for GSoC and OPW are already from Asia and
> especially from India. I think that the split is largely related to
> English being a commonly spoken language in India, but not so
> prominent in other Asian countries.

[This comment is not targeted to anybody specifically.]

Apart from knowledge of English language I'm curious how much cultural
dimensions come into play (see [1] for a short intro). 
For those who don't know, some examples:
  * Uncertainty avoidance - I need to join this IRC chat thingy and
talk to a room full of strangers? That's scary!
  * Individualism - I'm supposed to actively apply for this
competition instead of being asked by recruiters at my
university, as usual?
  * Power distance - I expect my mentor to tell me what to do vs. I
discuss and argue with mentors/devs about potential solutions.
  * High-level communication - telling me in public (mailing list,
IRC) that my proposed solution could be improved makes me feel
like being criticized and losing my face/reputation.

And probably more. I believe some of our workflows and communications we
are used to feel very uncomfortable to some cultures.

andre

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory
-- 
Andre Klapper  |  ak...@gmx.net
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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Question for candidates

[Emily Chen]

Hi,

I would like to ask below questions to future board:

1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your
plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ?

2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your
opinion ?

3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ?

4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week?

Thanks!

Emily Chen
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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Sriram Ramkrishna

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Sri,

On 14 May 2014 01:16, Sriram Ramkrishna  wrote:
> Affiliation: Intel Corporation
>
> I'm running for a second term as Director of the GNOME Foundation.  I
> plan on continuing my efforts in outreach both inside of GNOME
> Foundation and to external.  There is still many things to do in order
> to make our platform and desktop attractive to everyone and I wish to
> continue talking about our story.  I can continue to be effective in
> leveraging what I've learned as Director as well as the extensive set
> of contacts I have as part of my day job and the open source project I
> am involved there as well.

Could you give us a few example of what you would like do to make the
GNOME desktop more attractive?

> During my tenure as Director, I have organized a hackfest, help start
> a QA team, and worked to get many people involved in GNOME as
> contributors. Long hours and days were spend engaging the Free and
> Open Source community.  I find myself continuing to be energized in
> being part of this organization of which I am proud of.  I ask for
> your vote and confidence to continue working on the board.

Hackfest organisation, team management/contribution/organisation and
outreach are some of the core tasks that many of our community members
do as part of their contributions to GNOME. In what ways did your
board membership affect your ability to do these and what can be done
to make it easier for other community members to do these without
joining the board?

> Thank you!
> sri
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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Emily,

On 17 May 2014 19:42, Emily Gonyer  wrote:
> Name: Emily Gonyer
> Email: emilyyr...@gmail.com
> Affiliation: None
>
> Dear Foundation,
>
> I'm interested in serving on GNOME's board of directors for the first
> time, in order to help steer GNOME in a more open and community led
> direction. It is my opinion that GNOME has strode too far towards a
> corporate-driven project and away from its community-led roots. As of
> now, GNOME is, in my opinion too beholden to a small handful of large
> corporations which forces the project to ignore large swaths of our
> users in preference to them. The end result being that GNOME has lost
> a tremendous portion of its respect and goodwill in the wider free
> software community. As a member of the GNOME board of directors I will
> actively work against this tide and towards the more open,
> community-driven project that GNOME once was and I hope will be again.

I understand your concerns with regards to corporate involvement in
the project direction.

Based on the available financial information, the corporate
sponsorship enables the Foundation to employ an executive director and
an administrative assistant. Without this sponsorship, much of the
administrative work would need to be taken over by the Foundation
membership and the current board is already facing the challenges
resulting from having only one employee at this time.

How do you aim to achieve your goals without alienating the companies
that enable the Foundation to have employees to do the administrative
work and offer financial support to our membership?

GNOME is Free software, with a broad base of unpaid and paid
contributors. It seems that you wish to change the proportions of
GNOME contributors from the two backgrounds, how do you aim to achieve
this?

> I have been a long time user of GNOME since the 1.x days, and an
> active contributor for the last 2+ years, primarily in
> Marketing/Engagement with limited development and design
> contributions. I actively promote free
> software whenever and wherever I can, and feel strongly that it is
> only through free software that we will be able to keep the freedoms
> that we all cherish both online and off. Those freedoms are being
> actively obstructed and eroded by corporations and governments around
> the world. As a member of the board of directors I will actively work
> against these forces, in order to ensure a free and open internet for
> everyone.
>
> Good luck to all!
>
> --
> Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
> power and magic in it. -  Goethe
>
> Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't
> matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss
>
> Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
> counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein
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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Tobias Mueller

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Tobi,

On 8 May 2014 09:15, Tobias Mueller  wrote:
>
> Name: Tobias Mueller
> EMail: tobiasmue@gnome org
> Affiliation: SAP
>
>
> Dear Foundation,
>
> I am throwing my hat in the ring for serving another term on the Foundation's
> Board of Directors.
>
> I have served on the Board of the GNOME Foundation for two years now and as I
> enjoy my duties I would like to continue doing so. I promote Free Software and
> GNOME wherever I can. I am regularly speaking at conferences and making 
> contact
> with new users, contributors, or other organisations that help us to advance
> GNOME, spread the word about Free Software, and ultimately make the world a
> better place.
>
> I am running for the Board because I think I can be an asset in making GNOME
> better. I think we need to restructure our Friends of GNOME programme to make 
> it
> cost us much less time or upgrade our Bugzilla instance. If elected, I would 
> try
> to steer resources towards those goals.

In what ways would you seek to restructure it? How would being a board
member help you with restructuring the Friends of GNOME programme?
What resources would you steer towards this?

As the board minutes show from a few weeks ago, the board has been in
touch with some advisory board members to find out if they could
donate some person time towards the upgrade. Since then, the sysadmin
team has also been in touch with someone who may be able to port the
only customisation that we really need. What resources would you steer
towards the goal?

> Happy voting,
>   Tobi
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Re: Question for candidates

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Max!

On 19 May 2014 02:18, Max  wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Thanks for run the board.
> This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go).
> GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit.
>
> My question to all of you:
>
> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia"
> -- GNOME.Asia summit ?
>  Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?(  I saw
> it last GUADEC but not start to use)
>  Other idea?

One of the core duties of the board is to enable our members to
promote GNOME. To this effect, I will aim to ensure that the
Foundation has more to spend on events and outreach in the upcoming
year and to make sure that funding for our conferences is secured as
early as possible, making it easier for organisers to plan ahead and
maximise attendance. The latter is something that I already started to
work on in 2013 through my involvement in GUADEC organisation and this
is something that the local teams can help with.

With this in mind, if the community is not aware that the board can
offer them support in promoting GNOME in their local areas, then this
is something that the Foundation should improve on. I will cover what
I do personally in the rest of my reply as I feel that that is more
relevant to the questions.

> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women
>  What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia?
>  How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote
> it with more country in Asia?

Many of the applicants for GSoC and OPW are already from Asia and
especially from India. I think that the split is largely related to
English being a commonly spoken language in India, but not so
prominent in other Asian countries. While many of the GNOME core
developers are located in Europe and North America, the number of
contributors in Asia is on a par with those in Europe and North
America as we have many translators there.

I have mentored in a number of OPW rounds, taking on interns from
Asia, who have gone on to do outreach in their local areas. This has
helped raise awareness of the contribution opportunities in GNOME and
the documentation team have seen people come to the team saying that
that was how they found out about us. I think that helping past
interns become part of the community and encouraging them to reach out
to others in their areas and in turn to mentor future interns is
essential for the programs to succeed in the long term.

Everyone is welcome to promote both internship opportunities in their
local areas and the organising teams would be happy to help with
information. Incidentally, the OPW organising team is looking for more
people to join it right now, which is a good way to become involved in
outreach.

> -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia?
>  How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if
> they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new )
>  How do we get these member / resource together?
>
> -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve?
>
> -- Anything you plan with Asia.

I will be attending GNOME.Asia this weekend where the documentation
team will be running a training session to teach newcomers how to make
a contribution. I will make sure that all of the materials are
publicly available for others to learn from them.

I have also encouraged a number of the translation teams to organise
hackfests when there was funding available last year, and to involve
newcomers as well as to take on interns.

I am hoping to be able to talk to GNOME contributors at GNOME.Asia and
to encourage those who are not Foundation members to apply for
membership.


Looking forward to GNOME.Asia,
Kat

> GNOME.Asia team member
>
>
> Max Huang
>
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Re: Travel assistance for GUADEC 2014

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi all, please make sure to download a new copy of the sponsorship
application form before you apply. It has changed since last year and
is now available as an ODT and in plain text for your convenience.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that
sponsored attendees are highly encouraged to volunteer during GUADEC:
https://wiki.gnome.org/GUADEC/2014/Volunteers

Thanks,
Kat

On 17 May 2014 09:37, Ekaterina Gerasimova  wrote:
> The GNOME Foundation can offer travel sponsorship to individuals who
> want to attend GUADEC and need financial assistance.
>
> We are happy to announce that the Travel Committee is ready to receive
> applications for sponsorships to attend to GUADEC 2014.
>
> Application deadline: 2014-05-31. Please send in your applications
> now, do not wait until the deadline.
>
> The instructions are detailed at https://wiki.gnome.org/Travel
> Please read them carefully.
>
> Some additional comments:
> * Any information you send to the Travel Committee will be private.
> * Asking for sponsorship *does not* guarantee that you will be sponsored.
> * A good application with good information will be processed faster.
> * If you are offered help with accommodation, the Travel Committee
> will book your accommodation. You should state that you need
> accommodation, and leave the cost blank.
> * Always choose the most economical option whenever possible. People
> who need travel sponsorship should look for the best price (i.e.
> through a service like kayak.com). If the Travel Committee finds a
> cheaper price, that will be the price considered during the
> evaluation.
> * No personal emails. Keep travel-committee CCed on all of your replies.
>   Neglecting to do this will delay your application.
> * There are direct flights to Strasbourg available, including through
> budget airlines. Other close airports are Frankfurt (Germany), Charles
> de Gaulle (Paris) and Baden-Baden (Germany).
> * If you are a Foundation member, you should mention it in your
> application. Preference will be given to Foundation members.
> * If your abstract was accepted to be presented at GUADEC, you should
> mention it in your application.  Preference will be given to people
> giving presentations at GUADEC.
> * If you are in the Google Summer of Code program or Outreach Program
> for Women (as student or mentor) you must mention it in your
> application. Preference will be given to GSoC or OPW interns and
> mentors. OPW and GSoC students usually get a percentage of their
> GUADEC expenses covered by their sponsoring organisation.
> * The Travel committee should confirm that we have received your
> application within 2-3 days. After that, we will process them
> together. So please do not panic (and have any butterflies in your
> stomach) if we take some time to respond with the status. Regardless
> of whether your application is accepted or rejected, you will always
> receive a response.
>
> You can find us in the #travel channel at irc.gnome.org.
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Minutes of the Board Meeting of May 6th, 2014

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20140506

= Minutes for Tuesday, May 6th, 2014, 16:00 UTC =

== Next meeting ==
 * Tuesday, May 20th, 2014, 16:00 UTC

== Attending ==
 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Marina Zhurakhinskaya
 * Tobias Mueller
 * Joanmarie Diggs
 * Ekaterina Gerasimova
 * Emmanuele Bassi
 * Rosanna Yuen
 * Sriram Ramkrishna

== Board Meeting Agenda ==

 * Conference sponsorship
  * Marina, Tobi, and the GNOME.Asia local team have been hard at work
to find sponsors
  * Kat proposes that GUADEC and GNOME.Asia discounted sponsorship is
by default split proportionately and that it's officially recorded for
future reference
   * For instance: GUADEC sponsorship is 10k, GNOME.Asia is 5k; if the
combined donation is 12k, we split at 8k/4k, maintaining the same
proportion
   * The proportion depends on the sponsorship levels between the two
conferences
  * Improve ability to plan a conference budget
  * The board can still override this on a case by case basis
  * Can this be left to the board discretion?
   * Better to document this as part of the process for organising our
conferences
  * '''ACTION''': Kat to document the GUADEC/GNOME.Asia combined
sponsorship on the wiki

 * Finances
  * Kat sent a to-date budget/account summary to review on board-list
  * USD ~160k reserves
   * Removing the funds that are earmarked for reimbursements,
GNOME.Asia, expected invoices and OPW we have around USD 30k to spend
on operational costs
  * GUADEC is also coming up and required a travel budget
  * Publish up-to-date projected budget on the wiki
   * We usually publish only the account summary as part of the annual report
   * We don't publish the operating budget for the current year
* We used to do that with a fairly complicated spreadsheet
   * It could lead to more PR issue because people will not take the
time to properly understand it
   * Once we unfreeze the expenses we could summarise our budget
   * We should revisit publishing a summarised budget monthly,
quarterly, or yearly
   * The board should have access to more financial updates
   * Increase accountability of the financials for board, advisory
board, and membership
   * Consider doing from the new financial year so that there's a clean break

 * Receiving Donations in the EU via the Wau Holland Stiftung (WHS)
  * Went through various rounds of reviews
  * Comments on the board mailing list
  * Tobi, Karen had a meeting with WHS last year
  * Advantages for the foundation
   * Allow bank transfer in the EU
  * Disadvantages
   * Administrative fees
  * Does it impact GUADEC?
   * Not really
   * We have local organizations that handle the money closer to the local team
  * '''ACTION''': Tobi to draft a new agreement after the feedback
from the board
  * We will vote as soon as we have a reply

 * Travel sponsorship processing and reimbursements
  * New process has been in place for 9 to 10 months
  * Has not been very successful
  * Burden imposed on the event organisers and the board
  * Vetting by the board has not been up to par
  * Board assigned more funds than the travel committee used to, and
to fewer people
  * Re-evaluate the travel sponsorship process
  * The travel committee is now four people strong (soon to be five)
  * Options
   * Allocate a fixed budget every year/quarter
   * Have the travel committee ask for a budget for each event
   * Mix between the two
* Allocate a fixed budget and allow for extensions on a case by case basis
   * We need to properly document the whole process
  * '''ACTION''': Kat to draft a new policy for the travel committee
and send it to the board for review

 * Handling Friends of GNOME gifts
  * We should investigate having gift vouchers or print-on-demand from
online printing web services
  * '''ACTION''': Andreas to investigate the GNOME gifts situation

 * Visa fees reimbursements
  * We usually did not reimburse visa costs
  * We want to reassess this situation
  * Visa costs can be fairly expensive, especially for students
  * If we're willing to expense travel we should probably expense the
visa cost in case it was rejected
  * The Foundation does not benefit directly from reimbursing visa
costs, so they cannot be treated the same as travel
  * In some cases, we invited attendees
  * Travel committee guidance rules say that the visa will not be
reimbursed after the fact
  * [Discussion of this item was not finished in this meeting, will be
continued at a later time…]

 * Upcoming events
  * GUADEC 2014
   * We will need to decide how much resources should be allocated for
the travel expenses
* EUR 30k (42K USD) is the usual budget
   * We should wait until we receive more payments

== Discussed on the mailing list ==

== Completed Actions ==
 * Kat and board to review the tax return form
 * Tobi to follow up the GNOME.Asia budget issue with the local organisers
 * Board will review the agreement for collecting funds in Europe

== Pending action items ==
 * Andreas to put

Re: Question for candidates

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi Dave,

On 18 May 2014 17:58, Dave Neary  wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to
> Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation.
>
> So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you
> will be looking for in the next executive director?
>
> when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle:
> * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free
> software cultural alignment
> * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a
> direction for GNOME
> * Administrative and organizational experience
> * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem
> * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience
> * Cost
>
> Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now,
> and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I
> didn't list?

In recent years, the executive director has been our highest expense
which is partially covered by adboard fees and also by individual
donations. You will be able to see this more clearly on the 990 tax
return form for the 2013 financial year once it becomes available, as
the 2013 tax return also lists "compensation" such as reimbursements
for travel, which previous tax returns did not. I think that the
Foundation should not have to rely on personal donations to cover the
cost of an executive director, so it is very important that we are
confident that any candidate can do a good job at fundraising. To be
an effective fundraiser, the applicant would also need to be aligned
with GNOME's goals and interests and have some technical overview of
the project so that they are able to talk to potential sponsors about
the project but also to be able to do some organisational tasks.
Growing our income would also involve exploring potential new sources
which will include promoting GNOME at events.

I realise that it is very unlikely that a candidate who excels in all
areas will come along and the Foundation is unlikely to be able to
offer a wage which will be on a par with similar positions in larger
projects, so one of the options that I want the board to investigate
is to tie in the executive director's wage and travel budget with
adboard fees in such a way that the executive director will only be
compensated up to a maximum of what the Foundation receives in adboard
fees. This would free up some of the donations to be spent on
sponsoring the Foundation members to attend events and do outreach.

It has also become more difficult to find GUADEC and GNOME.Asia
sponsorship in recent years, so it is important that an executive
director is able to work towards acquiring more long term partners in
the future.

It is also vital that any employee that the Foundation was to hire
would be able to do some administrative work as well. This is
something that I have been helping Rosanna with over the last couple
of months, but it's not sustainable for me to keep doing this in the
long term.

Hiring a new employee is a complex task, which the board members in
general do not have much experience with. As a result, I have proposed
that the board should draw on the experience of our community and form
a committee to handle of people who are involved with GNOME and have
overseen hiring processes before. This will also provide continuity
between the current board and the next board as it is unlikely that
the Foundation will be able to hire someone before the changeover.

> Thanks!
> Dave.
> --
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> Email: dne...@gnome.org
> Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Anish Patil

[David King]

Hi Anish

On 2014-05-18 21:22, anish patil  wrote:

I did try to run hackfest in India couple of times but real problem is fund
raising, i did reach few Indian companies to sponsor for
events/hackfestsbut unfortunately that did not go that well.Being a
board director i wоuld
get better insight for board's financial status and i used to be an account
and project manager for one of the Bank in South Africa and i hope i could
utilize that experience.
And for fund raising, i am working on it(in-fact i tried to get sponsership
for GNOME.ASIA but it was on a short notice)


The largest cost for hackfests is travel and accommodation. Travel to 
India can often be expensive for those in Europe and the US, which is 
traditionally where a large number of GNOME contributors are based. Have 
you considered drawing on the experience of the Foundation's Indian 
members in calling for hackfest participation?


There are several documentation team members who have participated in 
the Outreach Program for Women, who I am sure would be able to organise 
an excellent hackfest on user help. If this hackfest was in a location 
where some Indian GNOME hackers could also reach it, you could attract 
newcomers to both documentation and development. You might want to 
invite 1 or 2 prominent GNOME contributors to the hackfest from outside 
of India, to demonstrate the diversity of contributors. This would help 
to keep costs low, and make the event better value for the Foundation.


While investigating GNOME outreach efforts in India, I came across 
gnome-in-list:


https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-in-list/

The mailing list seems dormant, but maybe it could be resurrected with a 
new focus on regional event planning. With an enthusiastic coordinator 
such as yourself, I think you would be able to attract a lot of 
interest.


--
http://amigadave.com/


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Re: Question for candidates

[David King]

Hi Max

On 2014-05-19 09:18, Max  wrote:

* What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia"
-- GNOME.Asia summit ?
 Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?(  I
saw it last GUADEC but not start to use)
 Other idea?


I will be attending GNOME.Asia this year (as long as my visa is 
accepted, which I will find out today), and giving a training session 
for newcomers as well as a talk for more experienced developers. I hope 
to make an impression on the attendees by demonstrating the GNOME 
developer experience, and hope that this helps in attracting new 
developers.



-- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women
 What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia?
 How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote
it with more country in Asia?


I am mentoring a GSoC student from India this summer, but it is evident 
that there are not many GSoC applicants from students in south-east 
Asia. Is this because the GSoC timeline does not align well with 
universities in those areas, or are we simply doing a bad job at 
attracting those students? I do not know the answer, but I would like to 
hear any thoughts from Foundation members in Asia about what they see as 
a problem, and how the Foundation can work to solve any problems.



-- GNOME Foundation member in Asia?
 How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if
they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new )
 How do we get these member / resource together?


The only way that we have of doing this is by looking at names and email 
addresses of Foundation members. That gives us a rough idea of the 
location of members, but we could ask them directly when renewing. There 
are regional mailing lists hosted at gnome.org, but maybe there is a 
better way of contacting and organising Asian Foundation members (and 
potential new members).



-- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve?

-- Anything you plan with Asia.


As an idea, maybe a director could have a role to communicate with Asian 
Foundation members to drive outreach in those areas. I know that there 
are representatives who report to the board about GNOME.Asia and GUADEC, 
but maybe regional outreach could be delegated to members in those 
regions, and communicated back to the board so that funding could be 
directed appropriately. The Foundation could direct funding for 
promotion at Asian events, by sponsoring the travel of Asian Foundation 
members, or possibly by purchasing a local events box. 

As I will be attending GNOME.Asia, I hope to engage with many Asian 
attendees, and to learn their perspectives on GNOME, as well as how we 
can increase membership and participation in Asia.


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Re: Question for candidates

[David King]

Hi Dave

On 2014-05-18 12:58, Dave Neary  wrote:

* Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free
software cultural alignment
* Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a
direction for GNOME
* Administrative and organizational experience
* Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem
* Communication/marketing/evangelism experience
* Cost

Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now,
and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I
didn't list?


Right now (taking into account the poor financial situation that the 
Foundation is facing), I think that a candidate for the executive 
director position would be someone who has experience of raising funds 
for not-for-profit organisations. For GNOME, the board does not exert 
strong control over the project, but tries to steer it in the right 
direction by ensuring that funding is directed appropriately, making the 
executive director role particularly challenging.


With the increased administrative load that the Outreach Program for 
Women has brought to GNOME, the Foundation's administrative assistant 
will need support from the executive director. I do not think that 
technical proficiency is an essential quality for an executive director, 
if by that you mean ability to code. For example, I think that a 
talented hacker with no fundraising experience might be a bad candidate 
for the executive director role. I think that a more important quality 
is that of understanding the position of GNOME in Free Software and the 
wider software community, with the ability to use that knowledge to 
raise funds effectively.


Due to the challenging nature of the executive director role, especially 
with the declining revenues of the Foundation, it may be difficult to 
offer a generous salary. I think that the board should investigate 
offering a lower base salary, which would then be supplemented with 
performance-related bonuses, such as if more fee-paying advisory board 
members were acquired. Done correctly, this would help to manage the 
cost of the executive director position, and encourage good performance.


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