Re: Questions for the candidate

[Leslie Proctor <proctors pacbell net>]

I agree - have a president but set it up so that
there's transparency for the board and the foundation
membership (In other words, regular reporting of
activities).  This allows the board's bi-weekly
meetings to be about bigger issues - fund raising,
marketing, etc., big picture items - things we really
need to be concentrating our talents on right now.

Leslie

--- Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com> wrote:

> This overall makes sense.  However, you need a good
> trust metric
> for the person to make the decisions.  Most of us
> here (not me)
> are skeptical of centralized decision making or
> perhaps do not
> trust people with company affiliations.  How does
> one win trust
> in non-technical related matters?  Most of you are
> known for your
> technical skills not your political saavy or
> financial wizardry
> or whatever qualities that might apply.
> 
> The decisions that the board makes are all based
> mostly around the
> GNOME brand and it's marketability and influence. 
> It might work
> quite well to put someone in charge who will protect
> and shepard
> the GNOME brand without having to have a debate
> about it everytime.
> Decisions cannot be done by committee and it's
> demotivating to
> committee members when you have to do them.  It's
> why there has been
> little done the past couple of years.  The fun stuff
> is trying to
> figure out where to take this project.
> 
> One anecdote I will put forward is in the early days
> of the marketing
> team list I had asked for permission to use the
> GNOME trademark
> for some related GNOME activity that I can't
> remember right now.
> I of course needed the board's permission for this. 
> It took a very
> long time to get permission (actually I'm not sure
> if I ever got it)
> This ends up being very slow.  Asking the president
> would have been
> a lot easier in this particular case since there is
> really no need
> to debate this issue.  If a member is in a good
> standing they should
> be able to use the GNOME trademark for a GNOME
> event/promotion.
> 
> So, yes I support a president of some type in order
> to make day
> to day or month to month and let the board do
> strategy/long range
> financial decisions/legal/conference
> planning/coordination of events
> or whatever it is.  The one exception is that legal
> and financial
> commitments should be done by consensus both on the
> board and at
> least some kind of transparency for foundation
> members to be able
> to comment if the issue is of some relevance to
> them.
> 
> One side note.  I'm not for infrequent meetings. 
> Regular meetings
> are good.  However, board meetings need not be full
> board meetings.
> One could have working group board meetings instead
> for particular
> issues.  But you still need at least one meeting
> every two months
> with all members attending so that you can
> communicate whats been
> done.  The rest can be done by email.  Meetings are
> only effective
> if you have a good solid agenda.
> 
> You guys should play with what works for any
> particular set of
> board members.  Do what you need to do to make the
> board
> effective and don't be stuck on rules.  This is FOSS
> not some 
> top 500 company we're allowed to experiment. :-)
> 
> sri
> 
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 05:56:38PM -0500, Miguel de
> Icaza wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > >   If you think your time is scarce for going
> though those thing,
> > > what do you expect to do instead ?
> > >   I can't believe that you think giving one hour
> of your time every too
> > > week is too much for the good standing of the
> project. And clearly, not
> > > doing so - as this year board has shown -
> reflect badly on the project
> > > organization !
> > 
> > You are clearly not interested in understanding
> the problem, you are
> > interested in a flame war, because you clearly do
> not want to understand
> > the point am trying to make, and instead you are
> choosing to vilify and
> > twist my words.
> > 
> > If you were actually paying attention instead of
> trying to start a
> > fight, you might have realized that this year, I
> was not on the board.
> > So maybe this reflects badly on you.  I do not
> know.
> > 
> > That being said, and back to the topic from your
> gratuitous attempt at a
> > flame:
> > 
> > My proposal to have a president is to better
> utilize the time of the
> > members of the board.  Does the whole board need
> to be involved in every
> > decision?  No.
> > 
> > That is why boards elect presidents in real life,
> and that is why every
> > other organization (profit and non-profit) has
> these kinds of
> > structures: to be more efficient.
> > 
> > The every-two-weeks meeting is a drag to most
> people: only a couple
> > really participate in a discussion, because the
> topics are not of the
> > interest to everyone.
> > 
> > Miguel
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-list mailing list
> > foundation-list gnome org
> >
>
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
> 
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