Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 2 persons



El dl 05 de 06 del 2006 a les 15:42 +0200, en/na Anne Østergaard va
escriure:

> The Board would like to propose to you a temporary enlargement of the
> board with two persons: Behdad Esfahbod and Germán Poó-Caamaño. 

I wasn't in the board when this issue was discussed, and as a new board
board I'm unsure what should I do now if I disagree. Transparency is
always a good path, I guess. 


- Consequent with the past

Increasing now the board size seems inappropriate after the referendum
discussions and result and without having made an extended use of asking
explicitly for help and delegating within the GNOME community.


- Size is not the problem

We seem to agree that the problem is not the size of the board but the
current circumstances that make many board members have less time than
expected. If size is not the problem, the enlargement is probably not
the solution. It's like having unsatisfactory sexual live and going to
the doctor to enlarge your breast or your penis. At the beginning it
might look like a change and a progress, but the root of the problem is
still there, and possibly larger now.


- Delegating and collaborating with people out of the board

There was a lot of discussion about the few time required to be a good
board member, let things happen, stay out of the way... We simply need
to put in practice all that. For instance, invite someone to pick the
Boston Yellow Pages, make some calls and come up with 3 companies we
could hire for our accountancy and representation. Delegations like this
might originate some crisis situations but since we are already in a
crisis situation... what can we loose? And what can we learn. Adding 2
people to the board might be methadone to keep the problem of not
sharing and delegating with less pain.


- Too busy to delegate and hire

We know the paradox of not having time to delegate or hire, making an
overwhelming situation deeper. A solution is to stop the machine
consciously (many times is already stopped, unconsciously) and
concentrate in delegating. An intermediate option is simply do less
things or not letting new tasks start before the delegation/hiring
problem is solved. We missed something because of this? Yes, but how
many thing are we missing by not delegating/hiring.


- The quest of finding the magic full time profile
 
No wonder we didn't find the magic profile: a yin accountant &
administrator + a yang fundraiser + based in Boston + competent and
available + of course familiar with free software and GNOME (discussed
at
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-April/msg00023.html ). It is probably better and easier to hire the services of a mercenary business representation based in Boston + hiring one or more part time people we know and trust, based wherever and able to travel when it's needed. 


- Boston (Massachusetts, USA)

It is a danger to have a board elected with candidates from everywhere
that needs to have at least one member in a specific city: Boston. What
if jrb wasn't elected, didn't want  to renew or decides to leave some
day? This is per se a reason to hire the services of a company
(something theoretically more stable than an individual) and visit them
every three months, either picking the Boston metro or a flight. 


- Conclusion

The board is overwhelmed and needs help. The fact that the board didn't
share the discussion since the earliest stage but came up with a
pre-conclusion is, I think, already a symptom of how overwhelmed the
board members are and how far we all still are from opening the board
and start sharing and delegating with the GNOME community. Many tasks
the board can't delegate easily are related to services that can be
hired. Let's concentrate on that, while we review publicly the list of
priorities and see who can help on what inside / outside the board.


Of course nothing of this has to do with the capabilities of Behdad and
Germán, who could be without doubt good board members. It has not to do
either with the fact that I joined the board as a first patch for this
problem. I had these opinions months ago, when I couldn't imagine I
would join the board during this year.


-- 
Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org

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