Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)]

Hi Max,

On 26 May 2017 at 18:13, Max  wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> First, thanks to all candidates for volunteering to the Foundation Board.
> Max come from GNOME.Asia team and thanks GNOME and board support Asia.
>
>
> I know there will be more people ask questions about all domain with
> GNOME, so I ask 1 question with Asia first.
> I have 3 questions to all candidates ( sorry for my poor English )
>
> 1)  How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate
> to working on the board on a regular basis?

It's my first time so I don't know how much would suffice but I'm
hopeful I'll be able to give at least 2-3 hours every week, sometimes
more.

> 2)  What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think
> about grow GNOME in Asia?

Although I have never been fortunate enough to attend GNOME Asia[1],
I've been informed by participants that GNOME is pretty big in Asia so
I think we should definitely continue to have a presence in that part
of the world. While I do not have any suggestion as to how we can grow
in Asia, I'll be very glad to listen to any suggestion/ideas on that
and try my best to execute them if they are worth pursuing.

> 3)  How do you make GNOME great again? ( Sorry for my poor English again )
>  Any idea about let everyone say " Wow!! it's GNOME " " I know GNOME :) "

I think GNOME is pretty great already but of course there is a long
way to perfection and we should strive for perfection but I believe
most of the work towards that is accomplished by awesome contributors
like yourself and a lot of it is through coding.

What foundation can do IMO is to (try to) ensure that conferences and
hackfests are sponsored and advertised. AFAIK foundation has already
been doing a great job at that so we just need to continue that. We
have GUADEC as our biggest event, then we have GNOME Asia and then
Boston summit too. We have plenty of hackfests too. We also try to
sponsor all our GSoC student to attend GUADEC. So again, I think we
just need to keep doing what we are already doing.

Of course if we realize that we have the budget to do more, we should
consider the possibility of arranging more events. Personally, I would
be more inclined to arrange more hackfests than conferences as you can
get a lot done in a few days than you'd get done in months with
hackfests.

Many folks have dayjobs that doesn't pay them to work on GNOME so
while they have a desire to contribute, they never managed to
contribute enough because it's difficult for them to focus on GNOME
work. Hackfests give these contributors the escape they need from
daily routine/work to contribute.

What I can do personally is to arrange hackfests where we feel there
is a need for focused hacking/work together in one room. As you might
know, I've arranged a hackfest in the past[2] and participated in a
few so I've some experience there that should help me.

> Thanks again for all candidates volunteering to the Foundation Board.

You're most welcome and thanks a lot for your contributions as well.

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali

[1] Although I was born and raised in Pakistan, which is logically a
part of Asia, the software industry in there seems more connected with
Europe and US than rest of Asia.

[2] https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/Location2014
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Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[Allan Day]

Hey Max!

Max  wrote:
...
> I have 3 questions to all candidates ( sorry for my poor English )
>
> 1)  How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate
> to working on the board on a regular basis?
>
>  for 2nd or 3rd ( or more ) term candidacy:
>  last year,  every one plan 5-10 or 5-15 hours per week,
> what's average hours per week when you become board? do you think it's
> good hours for life and work balance with you?( I think it might be
> good reference for fist term candidacy and let us know your loading )(
> Thanks again work and make GNOME forward )

The number of hours that I've put into board work has fluctuated,
depending on what needs doing. At quiet times it's possible to just
spend a couple of hours a week. There are other times when it has
taken a lot more time, such as when we were hiring Neil, or preparing
for Advisory Board meetings. That works well for me, since my other
work also fluctuates in how much time it requires, and I'm generally
able to fit my different roles around each other.

> 2)  What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think
> about grow GNOME in Asia?

There are a lot of areas of the world where it would be good to grow
the GNOME community. One thing that I'd like to see the Foundation do
more is actively promote the use of funds for small local events, for
distributing GNOME merchandise, and to allow people to have GNOME
booths at conferences.

In terms of Asia specifically, GNOME.Asia is obviously a great thing,
and I'd like the Foundation to support that effort as much as
possible. That means helping to coordinate between the different
events, including GNOME.Asia in our sponsorship-raising efforts, and
having our staff do support work where possible.

The Foundation can only do so much to promote GNOME in Asia, of
course. The Engagement Team also has a crucial role to play, and is a
good place to discuss promotion.

> 3)  How do you make GNOME great again? ( Sorry for my poor English again )
>  Any idea about let everyone say " Wow!! it's GNOME " " I know GNOME :) "

That's a big question! In my view, the Foundation doesn't really do
things on its own. Instead, it's primary role is as an enabler for the
rest of the GNOME community, as well as a contact point for partners.
Regarding the former, it's important that, when opportunities come
along, the community has the resources to take advantage of them. One
critical thing is therefore that the community knows what support is
available, knows how to get it, and feels comfortable approaching the
Foundation for assistance. I think that's something we can improve and
is something I'd like to work on if I'm reelected.

The other thing that the Board of Directors can do is make more active
interventions in how the project is running, so that weaknesses are
addressed. This isn't something that the board has traditionally done,
and our capacity to act is often limited, but it is something that
we've started to try and do a bit in the past 12 months. It's still
not entirely clear what the outcome of these efforts will be, but I do
think that it's a worthwhile experiment. I'm particularly interested
to see how the board can help to plug any gaps around continuous
integration, QA, bug triage and translation.

Allan
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Re: GNOME Board of Directors Foundation Elections 2017 - Candidates

[Allan Day]

Michael Catanzaro  wrote:
...
> Here's another question: what do the candidates think about switching to
> using two-year terms?

My immediate thought is that it could put some people off running,
since it's a greater commitment. However, I'd be interested to hear
what you think about it.

Allan
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