Candidacy (Kjartan Maraas)

[Kjartan Maraas <kmaraas online no>]

Hi. (First mail sent with the upcoming Evolution release -
hopefully  not in HTML)

I hereby announce my candidacy for the GNOME Foundation's Board of
Directors.

I joined the GNOME project late 1997, doing Norwegian translations and
have since been involved on a daily basis with various tasks within the
project including, but not limited to:

- Adding I18N support to several applications/libraries including
nautilus and bonobo
- Maintaining the GNOME I18n status pages
- Working on the web site(s) :)
- Maintenance of bugs.gnome.org
- Answering mail, requests for CVS accounts etc
- Q&A, occacional bugfixes, testing and preparing packages for release
- Coordinating the I18N project.
- I did a talk on GNOME and have done some work to "spread the gospel"
in my workplace, which    is one of Norway's biggest employers (City of
Oslo)

When the steering commitee was created in March, I was asked to join it
as coordinator of the GNOME i18n project and I have since spent much
time helping other teams/individuals get started with their i18n work in
GNOME.

My goals if I were to be elected for the board:

- Work closely together with other projects to ensure that GNOME has
i18n and l10n support of high    quality. Sun/OpenOffice, KDE, and
others come to mind.
- Recruit more translators and increase the number of languages
supported by GNOME
- Generally help GNOME reach new audiences by representing the project
and promoting it's    acceptance in various places like learning
institutions, local LUGs, Government, schools etc.
- Keep everyone's spirit up and make people smile :-)

My reasons for staying with GNOME and my motivation is that I feel we
have something unique here. I feel a kind of community and spirit I have
not experienced elsewhere. In "the early days" I was reminded of the
linux-kernel community feeling, and that's what made me feel at home,
since my first exposures to the Free Software world was through an
interest for Linux and the thrill of keeping up with rapid development
of the kernel.

After reading kernel patches for a couple of years I remember seeing a
GNOME directory on ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx while getting my Midnight
Commander patch fix, I entered and have stayed since. I really believe
in GNOME, and I will do what I can to make it succeed, in as many
languages as humanly possible :)

Enough rant...

Sincerely
Kjartan Maraas

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