Name: Philip Chimento
Email: philip chimento at gmail com
Corporate affiliation: Endless
I'd like to announce my candidacy for a second term on the GNOME Foundation board of directors.
I've been a GNOME user since 2002. Since 2006 I have used some GNOME-related technologies to develop software, but I did not really join the community of GNOME contributors until I started working more directly on GNOME at Endless. This led into becoming a GNOME Foundation member and the maintainer of a core GNOME module (GJS) in 2016. I was first elected to the board of directors in 2018 and have served one term.
First of all in this past board term I got more familiar with the role of a director being primarily one of oversight, rather than implementation, and some of the policy themes I described last year in my candidacy statement [1] in hindsight seem like they belong more to the community than in the board's domain. I have helped push the board even farther in this direction over the past year.
Of the themes I intended to work on last year, "Welcoming environment" was the one that I primarily worked on during this term. I realized last year around the time I was elected, that our travel sponsorship application process can be intimidating and frustrating, and improving it could make a real difference in making contributors feel like they belong to the community [2]. I have advocated for changes in the travel sponsorship guidelines and together with Nuritzi I drafted a new application process. I would like to continue improving that process with the travel committee this coming year.
Other achievements in the past year include raising the quality of the board meeting minutes. I am currently working with my fellow secretary Federico on some guidelines to share the burden of writing and approving the minutes more equally among the directors so that it doesn't always block on the secretary's available free time, and we intend to implement these before the end of the term.
I feel that I have served effectively and made positive contributions on the board of directors this past year, but I could accomplish more in a second term than in the first, due to being already familiar with the responsibilities.
Thank you for your consideration. I will be happy to answer any follow up questions on this mailing list.
Philip
[1]
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2018-May/msg00003.html[2]
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/issues/90