Candidacy Announcement GNOME Board 2007: Anne Østergaard

[Anne Østergaard <anne oestergaard nu>]

Candidacy Announcement

Name: Anne �tergaard
Mail: aoe AT gnome DOT org
Affl: Easterbridge.dk
Nationality: Danish

I run for the Gnome Foundation Board of Directors.

Things I will work for as board member:

* Explaining the mission, the values, and the goals of the GNOME
  foundation more clearly to the general public. Visitors of
  the GNOME website should be well informed in order to attract new
  and active members and help visitors make new contacts.

* Work for the GNOME website to be a natural place to find clear
  information about the goals and direction of both the positions
  of our organization and our new initiatives.

* Building an including community where everyone regardless of gender,
  race, abilities, age, religion etc. feels welcomed and a place
  where the tone is polite and "flaming" is not accepted.

* More "teach" and "hands-on" parties / demonstrations in connection
  with conferences world wide to make it easier for newcomers both
  females and males, to get involved. Seeing is believing.

* Make sure "GNOME is for everyone and ready for the desktop" becomes a
  reality through out all parts of the world.

Background for my candidacy:

* I believe that GNOME needs to improve the way it works on the social
  level and I have much experience in implementing change in volunteer
  organizations.

* I have experience with leadership in real life from board work in
  commercial business and government, and also in volunteer/FOSS
  projects.

* I have experience in legislative and administrative matters, drafting
  statutes etc.

* I have a track record of being a good organizer and of finding
  sustainable solutions.

* I have worked actively this year for a more friendly tone on our
  mailing lists, and for a GNOME Code of Conduct, which I think would
  result in us getting more women involved in our projects.

* I have helped GNOME to get new Foundation members:)

Greater diversity will make GNOME more attractive both to women and men
from all cultures.

I have given presentations and interviews this year on how to get more
women interested in the Free Software: http://www.easterbridge.com/

These steps would make GNOME a more enjoyable place to participate and
donate time and efforts to. At the same time I feel the need for
scalability also in the social part of our world wide project.

Implementing those changes as a one-shot measure is sure to fail and
will do more harm than good. Social change needs to be implemented
gradually and gently. None the less it is important to start as soon as
possible, and even though we won't see instant results, it is important
to continue steadily and patiently.

We need to be able to appoint project leads, give the project a clear
written mandate, estimated time frame to be negotiated and regulated and
let the project lead choose the people they feel they can work with in
the core team. We need to have both skills, diversity, and positive
chemistry in the group for it to be able to deliver good results. With
conflicting goals it just doesn't work in a group and the persons
consume each others time and energy, and are less innovative and
constructive.

What I would like to accomplish:

* Having a more friendly and helpful environment on mailing lists.

* Making people aware of their leadership role in the project and
  encouraging them to accept it more consciously and confidently.

* Emphasize the need for diversity and respect for other persons work.

My GNOME background:

I was a volunteer at the 2nd GUADEC in Copenhagen in 2001. - I was
"sold" to GNOME and the GNOME Community because of the passionate,
motivated, warm and dedicated atmosphere among the developers, and in
fact everyone. We had a full house on user day.

Since that time I have followed the foot prints and contributed to the
conferences and the community. In the past year I have served as board
member.

I was in Seville learning. In Dublin, Kristiansand, Stuttgart, and
Vilanova i La Geltru� to try to make a difference by starting a dialogue
between decision makers, developers, businesses, and users.

I invited the EU Commission and civil servants from state
administrations in the European Union, who uses Free Software as
pioneers, to get acquainted with GNOME. The first time was in Dublin.
They liked it and came again to Kristiansand and to Stuttgart. Other
European conferences followed the example.

Question:

What has GNOME developers and -users for interest in meeting and having
a dialogue with the persons that draft our regulations and state
examples of good practices and are huge trend setting software users
themselves?

Answer:

We need to be on the fore front and help the government employees to be
able to help us in our future common interest. I see possibilities for
GNOME Foundation members and others to get future employment and impact
in local administrations when governments decide to use open standards
and file formats - which again is especially well suited for Free- and
Open Source Software.

Who Am I?

I am from Denmark and have a law degree from The University of
Copenhagen and have studied organization and administration at the
Copenhagen Business School. In 1998 I heard about Free Software and
became a member of one of the largest LUG's in the world: SSLUG.dk where
I was a member of the board for a couple of years.
I have also served as the vice chairman of the board of IT-Pol.dk, an
IT-Political Association. I am at the moment vice chair of The GNOME
Board of Directors.

I like to use my international expertise and experience to work for
spreading the news of the advantages of using the GNOME desktop because
it is a cutting edge developer platform that more governments and others
should consider getting acquainted with.

I have been working for the Danish State Administration for a decade and
in international organizations and a private multinational business.

I know the decision making processes of several member countries in the
EU and I speak Danish, Swedish, English, French, and German.

With my work and administrative experience I hope to help achieve a
healthy and growing GNOME Community with many prosperous projects going
on. Both technical - and people and community building skills. I think
it is time to have more GNOME events in other parts of the world than
Europe and North America, because we have left remarkable foot prints
where ever we go.

In my spare time I attend all kinds of educational conferences on IT and
other inspiring subjects. I am proud to have represented GNOME at a
number of EU conferences, at aKademy, the KDE conference 2006 in Dublin,
and at the EU- IDABC Conference 2006 in Prague. I think it would be an
advantage to FOSS if we could agree on appointing a person to follow the
meetings in EU, mainly Brussels. Similar representation from GNOME could
attend similar working groups in other regions provided that we have a
policy which I think that we have, but need to express more clearly.

For 5 years I have been a member of the GUADEC- Planning Committee-
mainly making the program for "user day " to try to raise key
subjects such as Free & Open standards and formats, and No Software
Patents in Europe.

Both topics are still extremely important to work and fight for.

I also am a firm supporter of the use of Free Software in education,
health care, and everywere where tax payers money are spent. This
includes information kiosks with open wireless access anywhere in the
public space. I fight for freedom aspects especially where IT is
involved.

The OLPC program where GNOME is involved is so exiting to follow.


Best wishes

Anne �tergaard