Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, I first want to thank you for your question, as it is a very valid point. I agree with Carlos that we already have better collaboration (GitLab) and communication (Discourse) tools which we should look into instead of a plain-text email. For the rest, I think it's wise to consider a few things before making conclusions: 1) This is a question that is a bit hard to give a good answer to as someone who hasn't served a term yet (as Tristan mentioned). This might explain why 3 out of 4 people at the bottom of your list are would-be first-termers. ;) 2) Extrapolating how busy someone's life is by looking at a period of 2 days might not be really representative. For a personal example: I'm actually moving to a new place this month, which means it's harder to get a response out as soon as possible. That does not mean I don't have time allocated for the board in the rest of the year. I think we can safely assume the latter also applies to the other people who haven't answered yet. Thanks again for your feedback! Kind regards, Niels On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 3:27 AM Max via foundation-list wrote: > > Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert > > Thanks for the quick response. > Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. > GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. > > During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to the > team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". > We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and life. > So we will do community task at rest time of real life. > It's good to do community task in reasonable time. > I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might be > see how busy they are in real life. > To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. > If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, she / > he might be have no time to help. > > The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. > > * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 > * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 > * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 > * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 > * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 > * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 > * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 > > * Britt Yazel > * Niels De Graef > * Federico Mena Quintero > * Christopher Davis > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: >> >> Hi Max, >> >> For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The community >> seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear from or >> understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and Federico as >> Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as could >> reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process running and >> making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks rather than >> months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've seen it during >> the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of volunteers, I don't >> think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise that the preparation >> of minutes will change significantly. >> >> That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but really >> - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or >> conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good >> way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more >> intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This >> is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from >> our hackfest last year. >> >> I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe >> there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA >> things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more >> frequently than the big Q "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact >> time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - >> at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but >> very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. >> >> (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other >> panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would >> also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved from >> weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, but >> ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the board >> should ideally have to meet less often.) >> >> As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should move >> away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business as >> usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement moves >> from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very >> existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very >> important. As the ED line
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert Thanks for the quick response. Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to the team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. It's good to do community task in reasonable time. I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might be see how busy they are in real life. To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, she / he might be have no time to help. The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 * Britt Yazel * Niels De Graef * Federico Mena Quintero * Christopher Davis On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: > Hi Max, > > For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The > community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear > from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and > Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as > could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process > running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks > rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've > seen it during the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of > volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise > that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. > > That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but > really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or > conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good > way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more > intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This > is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from > our hackfest last year. > > I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe > there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA > things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more > frequently than the big Q "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact > time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - > at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but > very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. > > (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other > panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would > also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved > from weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, > but ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the > board should ideally have to meet less often.) > > As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should > move away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business > as usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement > moves from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very > existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very > important. As the ED line manager, I think we've made some progress during > this term and have converted some of Neil's reporting to the board into eg > a blog post visible to the community, but clearer and more frequent updates > on "what is the foundation doing" particularly through the activities of > staff is something I would hope to be able to continue working on with Neil > and his team over the coming year. > > Thanks, > Rob > > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:22 +0200, Carlos Soriano wrote: > > Hi Max, > > Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with you > that we need to improve participation of the community on board topics, and > it's specially difficult if the information is delayed for too long. > > This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board discusses > are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether parts of it are > private or not, so that requires consensus and therefore delays happen. As > you can imagine, we rely on volunteer time to discuss and process them, and > the availability of each director and secretaries is limited. In all > honesty, while this can always be improved with our current processes, I > think Philip Chimento and Federico made an excellent job with minutes. > > However, let me
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've seen it during the past few years, and as a time- starved collection of volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from our hackfest last year. I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more frequently than the big Q "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved from weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, but ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the board should ideally have to meet less often.) As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should move away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business as usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement moves from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very important. As the ED line manager, I think we've made some progress during this term and have converted some of Neil's reporting to the board into eg a blog post visible to the community, but clearer and more frequent updates on "what is the foundation doing" particularly through the activities of staff is something I would hope to be able to continue working on with Neil and his team over the coming year. Thanks,Rob On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:22 +0200, Carlos Soriano wrote: > Hi Max, > Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with > you that we need to improve participation of the community on board > topics, and it's specially difficult if the information is delayed > for too long. > > This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board > discusses are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether > parts of it are private or not, so that requires consensus and > therefore delays happen. As you can imagine, we rely on volunteer > time to discuss and process them, and the availability of each > director and secretaries is limited. In all honesty, while this can > always be improved with our current processes, I think Philip > Chimento and Federico made an excellent job with minutes. > > However, let me comment about the lack of participation. I think one > of the reasons is that minutes are simply not the best tool for this. > Minutes feel to me too much of a one way communication, and on top of > that they are over email, which is not the most encouraging tool to > manage and track discussions. They are good for keeping a record, but > not so good for much else. Improving this situation was one of the > reasons we moved our key conversations to GitLab issues, so community > members could closely follow them and chime in directly if wanted. > > My vision to encourage more participation would be around using more > tooling such as GitLab and Discourse for board discussions, and on > top of that, keep pushing on our goal to put as early as possible key > initiatives there to allow members to actually participate. I believe > we have a big room to improve, specially with initiatives that are > not time sensible. > > Lastly, an interesting idea I think we could do is a round of > questions to the membership to know what topics they were interested > in and that we could have done better with their minutes. Although I > believe the board is always open to feedback, I personally look > forward to know about those. > > Thanks, > Carlos Soriano > > On Tue, 4
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with you that we need to improve participation of the community on board topics, and it's specially difficult if the information is delayed for too long. This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board discusses are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether parts of it are private or not, so that requires consensus and therefore delays happen. As you can imagine, we rely on volunteer time to discuss and process them, and the availability of each director and secretaries is limited. In all honesty, while this can always be improved with our current processes, I think Philip Chimento and Federico made an excellent job with minutes. However, let me comment about the lack of participation. I think one of the reasons is that minutes are simply not the best tool for this. Minutes feel to me too much of a one way communication, and on top of that they are over email, which is not the most encouraging tool to manage and track discussions. They are good for keeping a record, but not so good for much else. Improving this situation was one of the reasons we moved our key conversations to GitLab issues, so community members could closely follow them and chime in directly if wanted. My vision to encourage more participation would be around using more tooling such as GitLab and Discourse for board discussions, and on top of that, keep pushing on our goal to put as early as possible key initiatives there to allow members to actually participate. I believe we have a big room to improve, specially with initiatives that are not time sensible. Lastly, an interesting idea I think we could do is a round of questions to the membership to know what topics they were interested in and that we could have done better with their minutes. Although I believe the board is always open to feedback, I personally look forward to know about those. Thanks, Carlos Soriano On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 02:43, Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board. > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss with > board and reply. > > Here is the question > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board > meeting" in a very close time? > > Here is my suggestion. > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" > announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > > > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > | > > > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > | > > > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No > | > > > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > | > > > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we want > to get from all GNOME Board member. > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > Max > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, Thanks for your question. The other candidates responded with lot of good ideas, I just want to say that they all look quite good to me and that If implementing some of those is helpful for the environment and increases mindshare about environment impact, that sounds like a win-win for all of us. So I won't add more on that side, the others already answered excellently. Let me try however to give another point of vision, as is not about what we can do to reduce our environmental impact, but rather what can we do to reduce it overall. As an organization, I think GNOME is already on the lowest environmental impact range already, we don't travel every day to an office in contrast with other organizations/companies as Jeremy very well pointed out. While we can lead by example, and we should, we have a greater power. That's our political reach. On the past I have been in doubt whether GNOME as an organization should take sides on certain possible political matters. This one however could be a good case. I believe we have the capacity to do a great social impact here by doing public statements, coordinating those with other FOSS organizations or contacting with companies that might be interested in this topic. From my studies in environmental science (I did one year at university, before switching to CS) what I learnt that we need most to reduce environmental impact is mindshare, social pressure and political impact, and that's what we excel at doing. I'm not sure how much is in our scope to do, but if we believe this is important for the community and helps with our mission I think it worth to try. Thanks, Carlos Soriano On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 19:11, Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, Hi Philip, > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? Great question! Keeping us on our toes... :) As others have suggested, I think our ecological impact as a Foundation is most acute in travel, then after a significant gap, energy usage of our services, then probably anything else. As Allan pointed out, we've been pushing for increasing travel to hackfests etc as after our staff, hosting and organising events is the most significant and impactful way we can add momentum to project initiatives, giving something of an "opposing force" to any initiative to reduce travel. We've also (with only modest success) been trying to rotate the location of some of the conferences so that we're able to provide more local face to face events, potentially alleviating some of the requirement to travel larger distances. In terms of where the Board "legislates" I see two main places which we've looked at over the past year and could make some changes to what is required - the travel sponsorship policy, and the templates (and requirements) for evaluating hackfests and conference bids. Both seem very feasible to improve the consideration of environmental factors. In the travel policy, we could go ways potentially place requirements there, such as taking ground transfer when it is safe to do so and does not increase the journey time / cost more than a certain percentage - and/or (IRS permitting) making ground travel more comfortable/pleasant (eg allowing a first class upgrade etc) so we have both carrot and stick. The travel committee might have some more insight here. In the event approval processes, simply updating the templates to add a requirement to assess and then ameliorate the environmental impact means we can engage the ingenuity of the volunteers who are helping us to set up these events. Monitoring something changes the behaviour. Best practices or requirements could emerge from this (ie, if we see good ideas, we could roll them out as something we ask/look for specifically). In terms of energy usage, Andrea & team are already using cloud technology (OpenShift) to make more effective/dynamic use of our donated computing resources, which is a good way to get more "bang for buck" versus having statically scheduled machines idling away. Generally dynamic scaling for CI and other "intensive" workloads is a best-practice we do and should continue to follow. We should never use any crypto currencies. I think providing some "gold standard" real-time audio/video infrastructure for the use of the project would be a superb investment in time/infrastructure to allow more effective collaboration outside of events. We certainly practice this in the Board and make extensive use of Bluejeans and Uberconference for effective voice and video collaboration. It would be great to have a self-hosted and FOSS system we can use and make available for the project. There is quite a lot of other "cute stuff" like avoiding single-use plastics at conferences, un-necessary swag, having non-meat-eating days during events that are catered to reduce the carbon impact of food preparation, etc, but I suspect that one person taking a single transatlantic flight would obliterate the cumulative benefit from all of that. I think these things can and should be done "at the leaves" as everything helps, but the policy changes outlined above would be more impactful in effecting that change in a more persistent manner. > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who > haven’t > already served on the board. My decision to "sleep on this" has made my answer look significantly less original. C'est la vie - however I think it's clear that there is some good alignment between candidates and we should be able to make concrete moves on at least high-level policy changes so that some of these factors are considered in the board's day to day activities. > Ta, > Philip Thanks, Rob > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 08:42 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board. > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. Thanks for expressing your concern about getting timely reports from the board, I understand that this is important for transparency and helps people to feel confident and well represented. In the past, I can recall going without any updates for many months and this can be frustrating, and I think the last few years have been much better by comparison. I would love to be able to promise to do better if elected, but as I have never served on the GNOME board before I am honestly not familiar with the obstacles to getting the minutes out in a timely manner. On the other hand, I am very familiar with circumstance of being suddenly swamped with urgent responsibilities, and I can understand that situations arise which cause one to fall behind on reporting ones activities. I think the most that we can expect of any board is that they do their best, and I am thankful that in times when their efforts as volunteers has been stretched thin, they have been able to prioritize on getting things done, even if we do not always get timely reports as a result. In all honesty I can only promise that we will do our best to be transparent and report in a timely manner, as I am sure other boards have made efforts, and have not always been as successful in this as recent boards have. Best Regards, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2019 - Candidacy - Jeremy Allison
On Sat, Jun 01, 2019 at 07:08:12PM -0700, Jeremy Allison via foundation-list wrote: > Yes, thanks for the correction Karen. Not being a lawyer means I'm often > not very precise about these things (I'm very precise about my technical > terminology instead :-). > > [...] > > > > I don't currently contribute other than helping the > > > gnome-vfs maintainers use one of the libraries (libsmbclient) of > > > my primary project, Samba to access SMB1/2/3 servers. Then allow me to nitpick and point out that it's GVfs, not gnome-vfs. :) It's been a while since GnomeVFS [1] has been deprecated and replaced by GVfs [2,3] and the application-facing API is fronted by GIO [4]. Either way, I appreciate your help maintaining the Samba backend, and your interest in running for the board! [1] https://developer.gnome.org/gnome-vfs/ [2] https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs [3] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gvfs/ [4] https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, Max via foundation-list wrote: ... > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board > meeting" in a very close time? Thanks for the question and for raising this issue. It's really helpful for the board to know what the ongoing concerns of the membership are. I agree that fast publishing of the minutes is a good thing, and is something that we should improve on. In the past I did a short stint as secretary, and during that time I made it a priority to get the minutes out quickly, which I think I did, and I seem to recall that people reacted positively. The challenge is that speed of publishing depends on the board's capacity. To be blunt: we're busy there often aren't people queuing up to do the job. For example, Philip Chimento is our current secretary, but he's been tied up with some urgent, fairly time-consuming work for the Foundation (thanks Philip!), and no one has been able to take up the slack. But I do think that the board should work on this issue, and I can think of some options for what to do: 1. When the officers and responsibilities for the new board are decided, the board could opt to reduce the workload on the secretary. For example, they could be exempt from committee liaison responsibilities. 2. We can create a mechanism so that the board is updated about which minutes have been published. This could be an update from the secretary at the beginning of each meeting, or it could be an issue to which the board is subscribed. 3. The secretary doesn't have to be a director, so if there's no one on the board who is able to perform the role adequately, we could ask for volunteers and appoint someone from the community. The first point is something to consider when the new board takes over, the second is something that the board should look at as soon as its able, and the third is probably a fallback option to consider if things aren't going well. Thanks agin, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Christel and Benjamin Thanks reply my question. I think people ask question -- Because they want to improve or resolve some problem, maybe the status is optimization. Thanks both of you give some suggestions. I remember there are few questions for Board candidates and not sure every candidates answer all of the question. Here is my thinking, I want to know. * Is there any way to improve Minutes of the board meeting? or something happen in GNOME. * What is the logic -- the board candidates will do? " Because it is a rule in wiki so keep it? " " I have an idea xx " " Do nothing or just vote because " I think maybe now is the best status or way to minutes of board meeting. But if no one say that " Now is the optimization the best one, there is no way to improve ", how could we know? I will ask the question because I meaning to me, If not every candidates answer most the question or no one ask question, how could we know if there are something happen, what will they do with them? Thanks again to Christel, Benjamin and Philip Max On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 5:16 PM Benjamin Berg wrote: > Hi, > > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 08:42 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > So, with the publication of the guidelines by the current board, the > expected time frame appears to be that minutes will usually be > published at the earliest 2 weeks after the meeting (I don't expect > minute approval to happen during a "working session"[1]). To be honest, > I not think that this is a time frame that allows Foundation members to > closely follow what is happening and to engage with the Board if there > is a topic of interest to them. > > I remember that in the student-council we generally published draft > minutes immediately after the meeting. This publication was posted on a > board (inside the university building), had to happen within three days > and would be signed by the secretary and session chair. The formal > approval would only happen in the next meeting (usually one week > later). > > Now, I don't expect that we can do exactly the same thing for the GNOME > Board. On the one hand there because are likely more topics that are of > a sensitive nature, on the other hand because it does not seem like a > good idea to post such preliminary minutes to a public mailing list. > > But maybe it is possible to create a faster path for information to > reach the membership. One thing I can imagine is to create a members > only mailing list specifically for posting preliminary minutes. But I > am really not sure whether such changes are at all feasible. > That said, this seems like a topic that may be worth exploring further, > for example by talking about it as part of a public "working session" > of the Board. > > Benjamin > > [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard#Meetings > > > Data and information might be different. > > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks > > after. > > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 > > days. > > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss > > with board and reply. > > > > Here is the question > > > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the > > board meeting" in a very close time? > > > > Here is my suggestion. > > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board > > meeting" announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > > > --- > > - > > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > > | > > --- > > - > > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > > | > > --- > > - > > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No > >| > > --- > > - > > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > > | > > --- > > - > > > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to > > announce. > > > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we > > want to get from all GNOME Board member. > > > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > > > > Max > > > > > > > > ___ > > foundation-list mailing list > > foundation-list@gnome.org > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list >
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi, On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 08:42 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. So, with the publication of the guidelines by the current board, the expected time frame appears to be that minutes will usually be published at the earliest 2 weeks after the meeting (I don't expect minute approval to happen during a "working session"[1]). To be honest, I not think that this is a time frame that allows Foundation members to closely follow what is happening and to engage with the Board if there is a topic of interest to them. I remember that in the student-council we generally published draft minutes immediately after the meeting. This publication was posted on a board (inside the university building), had to happen within three days and would be signed by the secretary and session chair. The formal approval would only happen in the next meeting (usually one week later). Now, I don't expect that we can do exactly the same thing for the GNOME Board. On the one hand there because are likely more topics that are of a sensitive nature, on the other hand because it does not seem like a good idea to post such preliminary minutes to a public mailing list. But maybe it is possible to create a faster path for information to reach the membership. One thing I can imagine is to create a members only mailing list specifically for posting preliminary minutes. But I am really not sure whether such changes are at all feasible. That said, this seems like a topic that may be worth exploring further, for example by talking about it as part of a public "working session" of the Board. Benjamin [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard#Meetings > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks > after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 > days. > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss > with board and reply. > > Here is the question > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the > board meeting" in a very close time? > > Here is my suggestion. > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board > meeting" announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > --- > - > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > | > --- > - > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > | > --- > - > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No >| > --- > - > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > | > --- > - > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to > announce. > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we > want to get from all GNOME Board member. > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > Max > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip! Philip Withnall wrote: ... > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? I composed this in my head before seeing the other responses to your mail, so you'll have to forgive me if I repeat any of the points that have already been made First, thank you for raising this issue - we haven't seriously looked at the Foundation's environmental impact, and given the climate crisis we ought to look at this. Maybe the Foundation could even take a lead on this issue, which other free/open source projects could follow. I suspect that the biggest environmental impact that the Foundation has is through travel. The one concrete idea I've had for this in the past would be to amend the travel policy, to allow people to take ground transportation rather than flying, even if it comes at additional cost (within certain limits, of course). This would have to be discussed with the Travel Committee but it seems like a fairly straightforward, practical step. Outside of this, it gets a bit trickier. One of the Foundation's goals has actually been to facilitate *more* travel: we want more hackfests, greater attendance at our conferences, and so on. The other factor that makes it tricky is that the Foundation can only influence behaviour to a certain degree: we can encourage the community to hold certain types of events, and we can decide whether to support plans that are brought to us or not, but we can't independently decide which events will be held or where they will be held. That said, I think we should investigate all the options for both our travel policy and our events strategy. This might include some of the following: - Have hackfest organisers consider the carbon footprint of their event, particularly when it comes to picking a location - Encourage regional (ie. continental) events rather than global ones, and take steps to reduce the amount of intercontinental travel to these events - this might mean things like flying fewer people from Europe to GNOME.Asia and to our North American events (self-sustaining regional events are something that the Foundation should push to support anyway, I think) - Work to increase the number of local keynote speakers at our conferences, rather than those from other continents - Come up with innovative ways to avoid or limit travel. Ideas for this: - Remote "sprints" could replace hackfests in some cases. - Have linked events happen simultaneously in multiple-locations; for example, you could have a hackfest happen in one location in Europe and another in South America, and link them using video conferencing, or organise the work into location-specific streams. - Work to provide a reliable video conferencing solution for all Foundation members This is just a preliminary list of ideas and I think that we should ask the community to provide their own suggestions. The board should then consider the ideas we have, and ensure that any agreed changes are implemented. This is something that I'd be enthusiastic about and would certainly support, if I were re-elected. Thanks again, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
El mar, 4 de jun 2019 a las 8:12 AM, Philip Chimento via foundation-list escribió: I think it would be interesting to experiment with all-remote hackfests, where we try to build an experience in between the normal "type text, hit submit, wait for text in return" interaction, and the resource- and time-intensive hackfest/conference experience. Not to replace either of them, but to supplement them. The board can't dictate that community members do this, but I would be interested in seeing how we could facilitate it. I think this is a great proposal. I've the same feeling, I want to participate more in some gnome hackfests but I don't have the time or energy to be travelling around the world, so this kind of remote hackfests sounds really interesting. There are tools that can help a lot with this, I think that we don't need *video*, something like mumble [1] will works for that kind of hackfests, with a room, or multiple rooms, and people working together and talking to each other. I hope this kind of hackfests will become a reality so we can collaborate from all around the world with people in real time and maybe we are able to find a mixed solution to have people in place and remote. Thanks a lot [1] https://www.flathub.org/apps/details/info.mumble.Mumble ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > Thanks for raising this interesting and unexpected question. I do think that the limited resources we have at our disposal, such as compute resources for our infrastructure and CI and travel to conferences and hackfests are quite crucial to our mission, and it is probably in our interest as an organization to increase rather than decrease. However, we could see more efforts in being conscientious about how we use the resources we do use, and in our choices in terms of travel options and compute resources. Unfortunately having a limited budget implies reduced freedom of choice, it might make more environmental sense for attendees to a conference who live on the same continent to travel by train, but if that is more expensive, this would mean that we sponsor less contributors overall. Asides from how we use our own resources, we may be able to make some impact as a publicly visible organization with sponsors. For instance, if there were some way for us to commend or endorse some of our more environmentally friendly sponsors via the friends of GNOME programme (or similar), it may at least contribute to a trend of incentivizing companies to be more environmentally friendly, at the same time as being good publicity for sponsors who may choose to participate in such a "clean computing" campaign for instance. Of course a campaign like this would require a lot more thinking and work than my brief brainstorm reply here, just trying to throw something creative out there to chew on. Perhaps this could be material for a focus group to consider too, I'm sure that if some volunteers were to create such a group to focus on this, the GNOME board will be happy to discuss and support initiatives they come up with for environmental friendliness. Cheers, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 10:11 AM Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > I tend to think it's more likely to disadvantage those who answer later, since the candidates who responded already have mentioned a number of ideas that I wish I had thought of first. So I had better get my response in now :-P I am trying to think what I can contribute to this discussion that others haven't already, and what I've come up with that I'm personally interested in, is figuring out how it might be possible to change the GNOME culture to make it easier to participate in hackfests remotely. I have tried remote participation with a few GNOME hackfests and it's difficult. That may sound odd coming from me since I have worked 100% remote for the last 6 years but I do have to say it's a lot harder to do it in GNOME than in a work environment. We tend to go either fully text-based/asynchronous, or fully face-to-face. Either we send our merge requests and our blog posts, and most of the time we don't pay too much attention to the human side, or we go to the other extreme and travel to a hackfest or conference where we spend 16 hours a day hacking, presenting, and celebrating in each others' company for a short, intense time. There is no in between. In fact I believe this is problematic for other reasons than the environment, as I've seen a number of instances of flame-first-ask-questions-later on GNOME mailing lists in the past year, that I hope would not have escalated so badly if people were actually talking out loud with their voices to another person's face on their screen. I see a few reasons for these extremes, first of all it's difficult to get human connection outside of the face-to-face events. People don't have time (e.g. I personally am okay to write this email to foundation-list at 11 PM whereas I would not get on a video call at that time). Also people have varying levels of comfort with video calls which we need to respect. Second, we don't really have much precedent for remote participants in hackfests. On the occasions when I've tried it, I've been the only one. Third, the free software tools for video calling and remote collaboration are quite far behind the proprietary tools. Furthermore I'm not sure that fixing this is where the expertise of the GNOME community lies. I think it would be interesting to experiment with all-remote hackfests, where we try to build an experience in between the normal "type text, hit submit, wait for text in return" interaction, and the resource- and time-intensive hackfest/conference experience. Not to replace either of them, but to supplement them. The board can't dictate that community members do this, but I would be interested in seeing how we could facilitate it. Regards, -- Other Philip ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, First of all, thanks for awareness on this issue. As the board, I think we can make 2 areas of impact here: to add (hard/soft) requirements to the travel policy and to give guidelines for events. Whether the decisions we make should be considered as rules/guidelines or hints will of course depend on how strictly we enforce them. Hence, these shouldn't be too restrictive (or no-one will follow them) nor without exceptions (because every situation is different in its own right). The first and most obvious aspect is to give extra requirements/guidelines for the travel policy. One example is to ask people to take public transport (train/bus/...) if the event is within a fixed distance -decided by the board- of their home. As sponsors, we should consider the possible extra cost of the train over other modes of transportation. Valid motivations for the contrary exist (little to no public transport available; big increases in travel time or expenses; ...), but should become more of an exception than the rule. For organisers of sponsored events, we can publish some useful guidelines, such as always having to post online on how to get there using public transport. Exceptions can exist here also, but we should consider if we really want to go somewhere that requires everyone to take a car. For attendees of events/hackfests, we can make a small set of "reminders" that can be used as a basis on events. As an example, we can ask attendees to bring their own refillable cups/bottles (which is useful when the venue provides a way of washing them). It might even be nice to sell some GNOME-themed cups/bottles, which gives us a small stream of revenue and gives people a cool accessoire. Kind regards, Niels On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 7:11 PM Philip Withnall wrote: > > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, and thank you for the question, Generally speaking I tend to be of the opinion that meetings should be efficient and expedient, and for a large distributed community where meetings are generally held behind closed doors I believe communication should be expedient too so as to ensure transparency and foster engagement; I appreciate that all members of the Board of Directors will be volunteering their time and that sometimes an agenda item might not get closed during the meeting at which the item is raised due to outstanding action points and the need to follow up on information. That said, the board meets weekly and while not all of these meetings result in public minutes, I cannot see any reason why a future board couldn't look at (considering the frequency of meetings) the fairly standardised approach of having the approval of the previous meeting minutes be a fixed agenda item to ensure that the minutes are published no later than around one week after the meeting in question. Any ongoing action items, etc., could and should be noted as such and revisited in the agenda for subsequent meetings and updates provided in relevant later minutes. Cheers, Christel On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 6:15 AM Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi Philip and all > > Thanks for reply the mail. > Yes, I know the guidelines for meeting minutes. > I know the 2 weeks and I want to say 10 days just an example not a real > number. ( So my question is ask Board to think a way, I just suggestion ) > During the my role of GNOME.Asia team, I wrote some minutes [1] too. > > For your question: > "I would also like to ask you: what do you think would help encourage the > kind of discussion you are looking for, other than minutes published after > 7 or 10 days?" > I want to encourage more discussion with GNOME Board, in the other > hands, how many discussion with Minutes of Board meetings or directly to > GNOME board last year? > So my thinking is -- if the minutes cloud mail in more close time ( 2 > weeks is a good time ), I think people might be more discuss with others > or GNOME board ( Or maybe not? ) > > I know the correct information is also important, but I just want to know > if the minutes is more close -- maybe people would discuss more or want to > do more. > for example: some minutes about GNOME.Asia --- when I see it with > Board minutes -- it already over and I just know what discuss in the board. > --- and that's the reason I want to ask the question. > > Thanks again to Philips work hard and reply my e-mail, and sorry for my > poor English :p > > > [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/Minutes > > > Max > > On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 11:57 AM wrote: > >> On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 5:43 PM Max via foundation-list < >> foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Thanks for running for the board. >>> >>> Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. >>> Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. >>> >>> Data and information might be different. >>> For me - a GNOME foundation member >>> >>> Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. >>> Because maybe the event is already close or over. >>> >>> Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. >>> Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss >>> with board and reply. >>> >>> Here is the question >>> >>> Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board >>> meeting" in a very close time? >>> >>> Here is my suggestion. >>> Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" >>> announcement time and does it announce in short time? >>> >>> >>> >>> | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? >>> | >>> >>> >>> | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No >>> | >>> >>> >>> | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No >>>| >>> >>> >>> | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No >>>| >>> >>> >>> >>> Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ >>> There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. >>> >>> I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we >>> want to get from all GNOME Board member. >>> >>> Thanks again for all who take time to running the board >>> >> >> Hi Max, >> >> This question seems quite relevant and timely, and as I'm sure you know >> publishing the minutes has been my responsibility over the last year.
