Candidacy: Malcolm Tredinnick

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

Name:		Malcolm Tredinnick
Email:		malcolm commsecure com au
Affiliation:	CommSecure

So why me....

The past twelve months has seen GNOME gain some serious traction in the
world at large. That is something it is encouraging to see. I would like
to help push that further. In particular, I would like to help assist
more developers to build applications using the GNOME platform. More
third party applications that Just Work is good for everybody. Sometimes
I think the GNOME developers' group put less priority on that goal than
may be necessary.

The board has already made great steps towards involving large
corporations. It would be nice to take that to the smaller groups as
well; the sort of people who cannot necessarily go to GUADEC each year
or spend a lot of time reading GNOME development lists.

Looking over the minutes for the past twelve months, I am alternately
disappointed and pleased with the work that is public enough to announce
in the minutes. It seems the loose group of people that create GNOME
(developers, administrators, artists, the works...) are on the verge of
becoming very coordinated in the face presented to the outside world.
But not quite there yet. A few things got dropped, some publicity
opportunities were missed. Hopefully with a few different agitators on
the board, combined with some of the experienced members, the new
enthusiasm can help push a few more of these things into action.

I started playing with GNOME as a user back in early 1999 (just before
1.0 came out, from memory) and began to contribute as a bug fixer and
general nuisance on mailing lists and IRC in mid-2000. In my day-to-day
job, I work with a bunch of people who are generic GNOME users -- they
are comfortable using their computers and they want things to work in a
way that helps them get things done. They don't care about what happens
under the covers to make this happen.  They do care (and apparently
expect me to care as well) when things are unpleasant for them. The
motivational issues for me here are strong and I believe I have a
realistic awareness of how our products are perceived by general users.
My day job does not involve any GNOME development at all -- it is all a
free-time gig for me. 

I have experience serving on large and small committees, including those
that influence events at a national level.

Oh, and one more point: being on a board with both the Lambada King and
somebody who wants us to use more Heavy Metal is a motivational factor:
Heavy Lambada is a dance crazy whose time has come, I think.