Re: 11 Questions to answer

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

On Wed, 2002-11-06 at 12:48, Ghee Seng Teo wrote:

> 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors?

There is an important need for at least some continuity in the Board
members.  Now that I am involved both in GNOME and in OpenOffice.org, I
believe I can serve as a useful bridge between these two important
projects.

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

I have some experience.  I have coordinated some parts of GNOME and the
GIMP at some time or other. 

> 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 read the main development mailing lists, but I have not participated
much in the discussions for the last year, I'm afraid.  I intend to be
active mainly in the documentation side of things and in standardizing
conventions for drag-and-drop of non-textual data types across
applications.

> 4) One of the primary tasks of the Board of Directors is to act as a
> liaison 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?

>From being on the Board I have gained some experience on what companies
want from GNOME; I also work for Ximian, Inc., which has an obvious
interest in GNOME and needs to balance that interest with its own
business interest; the needs of companies are familiar to me

> 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 committees, and act as liaisons
> 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?

I don't think the Board's job is to organize the workings of GNOME
development overall; that happens naturally from the work of the GNOME
community itself.  One of the Board's tasks is to help organize teams
that are not directly involved in development, like the marketing and
fundraising groups.

Our weakest point is perhaps fundraising.  Every year we have the same
issues related to raising money for GUADEC, our annual conference. 
Currently the Board has an ongoing discussion about what to do with
respect to this, but volunteers would of course be very useful and they
could take action in their location, which is the place they know best.

> 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 consensus on each item for
> discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very
> differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions?

I believe I am.

> 7) Often Directors have to draft policies, form committees, find
> weaknesses or approaching problems of GNOME and work on solutions, and act
> as liaison 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 liaison between the Board and any other committees, groups, or
> companies if relevant.

1. Fundraising is a weak area right now and I do not have much
experience in it, but I would like to participate in this effort.

2. It is important that we make a useful web site for GNOME users in
general.  Right now our developer's site is pretty good, but the user's
site is rather stagnant; fortunately the new web team is doing a good
job in updating it.  I would enjoy contributing with content for the new
site.

3. It is important that GNOME communicates with external projects, in
particular OpenOffice.org --- this is the first time a functionally
complete office suite has been made available as free software, and we
need to integrate it well with our desktop.  I am working on this kind
of integration right now, so I think I can serve as a good communicator
between both teams.

> 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 have given several interviews to the media and they have been
successful.  I think I can work well with other people and
organizations.

> 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?

Indeed.

> 11) One of the ingredient for success in an Open Source project such as GNOME
> is committed and dedicated memberships. How would you propose to promote new 
> membership, and encourage commitment of existing membership to make the GNOME 
> desktop the desktop of choice? [ Hints: the number of Foundation members have 
> reduced from 460 in 2001 to approximately 300 in 2002 ]

The number was reduced because of the controversial change in the
membership policy.  For example, casual users can no longer
automatically be members of the GNOME foundation, and I think we lost a
good number of them.

I do not have a good answer to this problem.  Still, acquiring new
members would be useful in terms of helping new developers get started
on GNOME, so that they can help us work on the GNOME core itself.

I hope these answers are useful to the Foundation members.

Regards,

  Federico