Re: 10 Questions for All Candidates

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu> writes: 
> 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors?

I spend lots of time on GNOME, care where it's going, know what the
board has been doing the past year, have some good perspective (have
worked on Red Hat and on Debian, and worked on Guppi at a financial
company before working at Red Hat). I think I have a good
understanding of what we need to do to succeed and how the board fits
in to that.

> 2) Do you have leadership and committee experience? If so, please
> explain.

I've been on the board for the past year, and the ad hoc steering
committee before that. I did various leadership-type things in
college, but feel a bit silly listing them.

> 3) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME?  How much
> do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists?

I participate in them excessively, by most accounts.

> 4) One of the primary tasks of the Board of Directors is to act as a
> liason between the GNOME Foundation and other organizations and companies
> to find out how the two groups can work together to their mutual benefit.
> Do you feel you would be good at understanding other people and companies
> and finding ways that GNOME can collaborate with other companies and
> organizations to benefit both groups and their users?

Yes.

> 5) One of the responsibilities and powers of the Board of Directors is to
> identify organizational weaknesses and needs of GNOME and to create
> committees, appoint coordinators of these committess, and act as liasons
> with them.  What do you believe are the current weak points of GNOME as an
> organization, and if you were able to, how would you change the GNOME
> organization?

IMO we've been doing very well lately, relative to the past. I would
like to see all projects be a bit more consistent about code review
and keeping active development discussions in public forums such as
mailing lists and bugzilla. In general though I think we're doing very
well - we have solid teams handling various problem areas such as
usability and release schedules, and they're doing a good job in their
domains.

I'm guessing we'll need to adjust the organization as we get larger,
since more volunteers mean more coordination and also more ability to
be thorough about things, but for the current number of contributors
things are going pretty well.

> 6) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of
> issues.  Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and
> concisely discuss each topic and come to concensus on each item for
> discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very
> differing opinions than you do, to reach concensus and agree on
> actions?

Most of the time anyway. ;-)

> 7) Often Directors have to draft policies, form committees, find
> weaknesses or approaching problems of GNOME and work on solutions,
> and act as liason with various groups (both within and outside
> GNOME) and companies.  Please name three or more areas which you
> feel are important for the Board to address over the next year and
> which you would enjoy contributing some of your time to help get
> things started and possibly act as a liason between the Board and
> any other committees, groups, or companies if relevant.

 - working on GNOME hacking events
 - interoperability
 - licensing/patent issues

> 8) Do you consider yourself diplomatic?  Would you make a good
> representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public,
> and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with?

I can be diplomatic, I think there's a place for being undiplomatic
and direct from time to time as well - otherwise needed changes aren't
made, the trick is knowing when to do what - I try to get the balance
right. ;-)

> 9) Will you represent the interests of GNOME and the GNOME Foundation over
> all other personal or corporate interests you may represent?

Yes.

> 10) Will you be willing and have the available time to take on and
> complete various tasks that the Board needs accomplished?

Yes.

Havoc