GNOME Foundation:
Over the past several weeks, the board has been working to put together
a more formal set of GNOME Foundation goals. Aside from the obvious
benefit of having goals better enumerated, these goals are needed in
order to compute the bonus that the GNOME Foundation CEO receives.
When the GNOME Foundation hired Stormy to act as the GNOME Foundation
CEO, it was agreed that she could receive up to $24,000 as a bonus per
year, and that this money would be tied to specific goals as incentive
to accomplish important tasks.
Over the past year, the process of defining goals and calculating
Stormy's bonus has been managed internally by The GNOME Foundation board
of directors. However, moving forward we would like this process to be
more open and transparent. It would be ideal if the GNOME Foundation
community could be more involved with both defining the goals and
determining how Stormy should be rewarded when goals are achieved.
So, our hope is to create a document that accurately enumerates the
GNOME Foundation's overall goals, and to list metrics by which the CEO
bonus will be computed over the upcoming (2010) fiscal year. To make
this happen, we would like GNOME Foundation members to help by doing
the following:
1) Review the attached goals-goals-2010.txt document and provide
feedback about how well we have captured the goals of the GNOME
Foundation. Note that this document has already been reviewed by
the GNOME Advisory Board and includes feedback from that review.
2) Since Stormy's goals should be tied to the general GNOME Foundation
goals, we would like the attached document to be enhanced to include
more concrete and measurable metrics by which her bonus can be
computed over the upcoming (2010) fiscal year. Some metrics are
suggested in parenthesis; however, they are currently very vague.
We are hoping that these metrics can be made more concrete based
on community feedback and discussion.
To provide background and transparency to the process that has been
used to date, I also wanted to share the following information to
highlight how this process has worked so far. The attached
"gnome-goals-2009.odt" document enumerates the goals and metrics that
were used in the previous (2009) fiscal year. This document also
contains some information to help justify what activities were done to
meet various metrics.
Considering the economic situation over the past year and the additional
expenses relating to increasing the GNOME Foundation staff, the board
felt that it made sense to be conservative and focus a larger
percentage of the bonus towards fund raising in 2009. Thanks largely
to Stormy's efforts, the GNOME Foundation is now in a much more
sustainable financial state going forwards. So, we anticipate that in
the next year that we will rework Stormy's goals so that there is more
focus on community building and less on fund raising.
As you can see in the gnome-goals-2009.odt document, in the past fiscal
year the $24,000 total was split into two categories: $18,000 towards
Fund Raising and $6,000 towards Discretionary goals. Fund Raising goals
were based on percentage while the Discretionary goals are further
broken down into three categories:
- Eyes & Ears
- Marketing
- Housekeeping
When Stormy was first hired, reviews were done on a quarterly basis. As
Stormy became more familiar with the job, reviews switched to being
done bi-annually since the last review. For the past fiscal year
Stormy received $14,650 (or ~58% of the possible $24,000 bonus). Also,
note that Stormy received a $1,750 bonus for the last quarter of the
2008 fiscal year. The following breaks down how much bonus Stormy was
paid for each review cycle and details the reasoning behind awarding
the bonus.
Bonus Summary
=============
Discretionary (Jul-Sep 2008) $ 1,750
=======
Total for 2008 fiscal year $ 1,750
Discretionary (Oct-Dec 2008) $ 600
Fund Raising (Oct-Dec 2008) $ 2,000
Discretionary (Jan-Apr 2009) $ 750
Discretionary (Apr-Sep 2009) $ 1,800
Fund Raising (Apr-Sep 2009) $ 9,500
=======
Total for 2009 fiscal year $14,650
Bonus History Detail
====================
Jul-Sep 2008
------------
$500 - Improving relations with the advisory board, starting
regular 1-on-1 meetings with them, etc.
$250 - Improving relations with the community (keynotes, blogs)
$500 - Working with the board.
$250 - Organized mobile team.
$250 - Working to develop additional advisory board partners (BMC,
Motorola, Adobe, etc.)
Oct-Dec 2008
------------
$500 - FoG launch
$100 - Working with Asus/Xandros to consider switching to GNOME on
their netbook software.
$2,000 - Fund Raising - Motorola and Google joining the advisory
board.
Jan-Mar 2009
------------
$750 - Further improving relations with the advisory board,
working with Canonical to update GNOME bugzilla,
developing GNOME infrastructure (the travel committee
launched, sysadmin team is in better shape, marketing team
developments), and for representing GNOME at numerous
events.
Apr-Sep 2009
------------
$1,000 - For being the eyes & ears of GNOME. The quarterly report,
advisory board relations & meetings.
$600 - Further improving the GNOME Marketing team, Friends of
GNOME.
$200 - Improving GNOME community communications and improving
transparency.
$6,500 - Fund Raising - $65,000 additional income raised in 2009.
This breaks down as follows:
* HP $10,000
* Intel $20,000 ($20,000 over regular fees, they gave us
$30,000)
* Collabora $5,000
* $30,000 sys admin funding from Google ($5K),
Nokia ($5K), and Canonical ($20K)
$1,000 - Fund Raising - Improving funds received from Friends of
GNOME by 300% from $6,424 to $23,103 by the end of July,
2009.
$2,000 - Fund Raising - Friends of GNOME has 102 subscribers for an
annual renewable income of $12,240.
Proposed GNOME Foundation 2010 goals
1. Provide GNOME 3.0 for everyone - a more usable, accessible and modern
desktop.
1. Show leadership in the desktop space.
* Become a desktop thought leader
* Show people the possibilities of a desktop
* Become a user experience thought leader
2. Release GNOME 3.0 in September
* Get corporate cooperation for the GNOME 3.0 release
* Get partner cooperation for GNOME 3.0 release
3. Deliver a product that has been well tested for usability and
accessibility needs.
* Make sure the usability and accessibility hackfests are a
success. That they are well attended by a diverse group of
individuals and corporations and that their activities are
seen in the community afterwards.
* Ensure hackfests have corporate participation
* Ensure hackfests are well funded
* Find resources and funding for accessibility
4. Make a successful launch, with a good marketing campaign.
* Make sure there is a GNOME 3.0 marketing plan that is
executed on. A good marketing plan will include outreach
activities from the community working in close connection
with our partners.
* Position GNOME as a thought leader around user experience
* Grow the GNOME brand in a way that can be used by downstream
partners.
* Make sure GNOME 3.0 has a launch (from a marketing
perspective)
* Number of speaking opportunities and published articles about
GNOME 3.0
* Make sure press is involved ? GNOME 3.0 should bring at least
a 50% increase in press articles from the previous year.
* Make sure GNOME applications, not just the ?desktop?, are
involved
2. Make the GNOME free desktop the desktop of choice, focusing on developing
nations for 2010.
1. Reach out to governments in developing countries
* Set up working relationships with developing country
governments (Someone from GNOME with someone from the
government. A relationship can be defined as a regular set of
meetings, a memorandum of understanding or participation in
each others' events.)
* Partner with other nonprofits involved in free software or
related groups (measure number/quality of relationships)
2. Support existing local user groups, universities working with free
software and work to create new new relationships
* Increase the number of local user groups (Compare existing
number to new number)
* Support local user groups with existing resources, i.e. send
speakers from Europe to Africa (compare 2009 to 2010)
* Figure out new ways to work with developing nations.
3. Have GNOME representation at major free software events in the
developing world
* Measure number of events we participate in next year to this
year.
* Work with people that already speak at these events to
promote GNOME as well
* Sponsor events with volunteers or money
4. Start relationship with vendors and/or solution providers to help
them understand the benefits of GNOME.
* Business development activities where the GNOME Foundation
helps to make progress in increasing adoption of GNOME
technologies in the developing world. (Measured by the number
of events, meetings, or collaboration opportunities realized
compared with the previous year.)
* Measure number of conversations with vendors who provide IT
solutions (with an emphasis on developing countries)
* Measure number of relationships we establish.
* Measure number of outcomes (products, partnerships, events)
that come out of these relationships.
* Are the people we sponsor using our slide templates,
promoting Friends of GNOME, wearing tshirts we provide, etc?
* Is this having a benefit to our bottom line (such as via
Friends of GNOME donations, etc.)
3. Create a widely used free and open source ?desktop? that spans from
mobile devices to netbooks to desktops and everything in between.
* Get "desktop" developers talking to mobile company developers
* Get mobile companies actively involved upstream
* Work to get more distributors
4. Work with the companies in GNOME Mobile (and others using GNOME in the
mobile space)
1. Raise awareness of GNOME Mobile in the developer space
* Have a GNOME presence at Mobile events
* Partner with organizations that use GNOME Mobile or provide
technologies into GNOME mobile
2. Market/advertise what GNOME Mobile is
* Work with marketing team to help them understand the needs of
GNOME Mobile
* Work with partners like LiMo to market/advertise GNOME Mobile
3. Get patches upstream
* Work with GNOME Mobile partners to get their patches upstream
* Measure by number of patches (is this easy to measure?)
4. Enable collaboration between companies
* # of introductions
* # of events where companies can meet (conferences, hackfests)
* measure output of these events
5. Ensure that missing technologies are implemented
* Identify missing technologies
* Publicize them
* Measure % that are implemented
6. Enable collaboration between "desktop" and "mobile" companies in
the GNOME space
* Have a hackfest that works on a technology that spans mobile
and desktop
* Get "desktop" developers to participate in GNOME mobile
mailing list or events
5. Raise worldwide governmental awareness of the GNOME free desktop and its
importance to their citizens.
1. Work with GNOME Foundation members and supporters to set up
meetings with government groups
* # of meetings
2. Have GNOME representation at free software and government events
* Number of events in the developing world that have a GNOME
presence (compared to the number in the previous year).
3. Work with other free software groups trying to accomplish similar
goals
* # of groups we work with
* # of events we partner at, number of attendees
* measure results such as # of women that participate in Women
Outreach, products launched, etc.
6. Make the GNOME Foundation the place for companies working with
GNOME-related technologies to collaborate.
1. Provide forums for companies to collaborate at a higher level
(roadmaps, etc)
* # of events/meetings that more than one company attend
* setting up a forum
* Starting conversations, making introductions
2. Make introductions between companies where the GNOME Foundation
feels collaboration opportunities exist.
* # of introductions
* Identify companies and opportunities
3. Make sure that hackfests and events are well organized. That the
relevant companies and individuals are notified about the event
well enough in advance to ensure proper planning and
representation.
* # of hackfests sponsored by more than one company
* average number of companies represented at hackfests
(compared to previous year)
4. Work with companies to market GNOME within their product marketing
plans
* Better press and press relations, perhaps even break out into
new forms of advertisement
* Set up meeting between marketing people at different
companies
* Provide marketing materials to companies
5. Promote free software by being a model example of a free software
project.
* Advocate for free software
o Use the term free software
o Speak and blog about the principles of free software
* Be transparent
o Publish regular GNOME Foundation updates - Stormy and
Rosanna's weekly updates, Board meeting minutes,
quarterly reports, finance updates, etc.
* Be open
o Explain the reasoning behind decisions.
* Follow our Code of Conduct
o Moderate the Foundation list and Planet and call people
out on inappropriate behavior.
* Encourage new people to join our project.
o Bring in people with expertise but new to the project.
o Develop ways for people to easily join our project.
Invest in GNOME Love, partner with other organizations,
develop a working on mailing lists guide, etc.
* Market free software and GNOME
o (Covered in other areas here.)
7. Provide web services for GNOME projects like Tomboy/Snowy
1. Identify projects that could be web services and talk to them.
2. Enable sys admin team to provide hosting.
3. Bring web services online
* Measure by number of services online!
8. Infrastructure
* Raise money for a sys admin
* Hire a sys admin
* Help the infrastructure team to grow
9. Fundraising
1. Increase overall budget by 30%.
2. Increase contributions from Friends of GNOME by 30%.
3. Diversify funding by expanding into merchandising and other
business development opportunities such as ad revenue on support
forums, web services, training, etc.
Attachment:
gnome-goals-2009.odt
Description: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text