Re: Suggestion about providing more value to Foundation members

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Stormy:

> What if we had a "thank you GNOME" mailing list or page. People could
> send in their thanks for specific features or work and we could match it
> up with the right person.

Yes, I think the GNOME community really needs more forums for making
sure that people get recognition for the work that they do.  Mailing
lists and Wiki's seem obvious choices.  Also, highlighting people who
go above-and-beyond in periodic forums that we publish, such as GNOME
Journal is a good idea.

> The recommendations on LinkedIn or profile pages could then come from me
> or the board (or anyone from this list that would like some practice at
> writing recommendations or who is already good at it.)

Yes, I think it would be good if there were a few people in the GNOME
Community who made an extra effort to make sure that Recommendations
get written.  It would make sense for people on the board to be expected
to do this sort of thing, for example.  Having a "thank you" mailing
list would be a good forum for people who have an interest in writing
recommendations to keep track of people that they should consider
writing up.

> For example, we get three people writing in to say the new bugzilla is
> awesome and it saves them 30 minutes a day finding bugs to work on, so
> the board writes a recommendation on Max/Olav/sys admin team member page
> saying "Mike's work on bugzilla was extremely helpful to GNOME users.
> Several users wrote into say that they save 30 minutes at a time during
> their work day because of the improvements that Mike made. Mike's work
> exemplifies the GNOME mission of making computing accessible and easy
> for everyone."

It might be cool to have a "Thank You" Wiki on live.gnome.org
where we archive these sorts of recommendations or "thank yous".  Aside
from making our community more friendly and personal, it would have
other benefits too.  This way people who are written up as being great
community members can refer to the GNOME Wiki as a testament of their
work in addition to whatever recommendations they may get on social
networking sites.

Most people in the GNOME community have their own private
live.gnome.org Wiki page, so the "Thank You" Wiki could have links
to each person's personal page.  If people make sure to include a link
to their favorite social networking sites on their private
live.gnome.org Wiki page, then people can use those links to recommend
them.  The "Thank You" Wiki itself could encourage people to add links
to such networking sites for this purpose.

Then we could also refer to this "Thank You" Wiki page in various
communication (weekly status reports, GNOME Journal, etc.) to encourage
people to go there and read about those people who have done the most
for the community.

I think having a process like this would help to encourage people to
actually consider writing more recommendations.  Especially if we also
encourage people to do the same in various forums.

I think a process like this would help to encourage people to get
better recognition and to encourage the community to be more thoughtful
about writing up recommendations for people on social networking sites
without making people feel uncomfortable (like they are fishing for
people to write recommendations for them or whatever).

Brian