On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 12:53 +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: > [1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last > GUADEC about "Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation" ? This is one of my preferred GNOME topics. My answer is so long that I have decided to move it at the bottom so people hopefully read the other answers. :) > [2] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda > right now ? What will you do more or better than the previous boards ? Many teams contribute to the evolution of GNOME everyday but it's the board responsibility to improve the board itself. This is why my candidacy statement this year is so... non_cool. I want to concentrate my efforts optimizing the efficiency, transparency and usefulness of the board AND the advisory board. This is probably not the most important item of GNOME's agenda, but I think it's one of the most important items in the board's agenda - and the GNOME project will benefit. It's not about doing more or better than previous boards, but about continuing, digging and completing ongoing processes. Although well, the generation change in the board helps because it's easier to suggest and apply changes when you are new/fresh in an organization more than if you are a vet with 1001 battles and a stable inertia. > [3] How do you manage your time and that of others ? Are you good at > working with others including those who might have a differing opinion > than yours and try to reach consensus and agree on actions ? 36 years, family and generally busy at work. I can't waste much time and I don't want to make others waste theirs. I think I have proven to be flexible, pragmatical and focused on consensus and resolution coordinating GUADEC, the www.gnome.org revamp and taking part in debates such as the GNU/Linux thing (trying to provide a solution equally good or not-bad for everybody) or the Code of Conduct (disagreeing but stepping aside when seeing that I'm in a minority position). Apart from reaching consensus, I think I'm not bad at *building* consensus in situations in which there is no plan at all (and therefore no progress) or when everybody is discussing but nobody comes up with a proposal to move forth. > [4] How are you going to manage your current contributions to GNOME once > you become a Board Member ? I have been managing them quite decently until now, I think. Right, in the last weeks I'm sometimes missing and not pushing goals/actions as usual but it's because my second son was born and, you know. In January the family situation will be quite normal again. > [5] What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the > coming year and what do you feel you can do to help GNOME achieve better > presence ? The embedded stuff is very important in terms of market and we need to keep backing the meetings and common efforts done this year. The One Laptop Per Child Project is going to reach the big media and we need to explain to the world that GNOME is an essential part of it. Someone inside the European Union is pushing white papers, recommendations and similar documents since years. We need to be part of this effort and position ourselves in order to be in the right place when the reports lead to planning processes, design and implementation of real policies and migrations in the public sector. Keeping the conversations with distros in order to find better sinergies will help as well, but I feel we are sometimes too obsessed with the distros and the final users. > [6] What are your plans to encourage and mentor contributions to GNOME > from Latin America, Africa and Asia ? How would you increase community > participation ? Go to the translation teams already working for GNOME and ask them how can we help them to get a better presence and attraction in their countries. Of course do the same with the local groups. Another aspect to investigate, contact the advisory board members that have people and teams in these continents to see how can we collaborate. At the end they also benefit from having passionate GNOME developers involved in the global community, based in the countries of these continents where they have offices and (potential) clients. > [7] What areas do you see lacking currently in a complete Free Software > Desktop ? What would your role be (should you be elected) in addressing > the issues ? Seductive website(s). I'm coordinating the wgo revamp and being in the board helps in order to find consensus and progress in areas where many people and teams have a say. Impressing documentation for users and developers. I'm currently in the process of understanding what are the problems of the Documentation team. See the ongoing thoughts at http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/free-software-and-its-writers Good collaboration with companies and anybody making a living from GNOME, directly or indirectly. Starting with a better workflow with the advisory board companies. Seductive website and impressive documentation will help. Technical roadmap and marketing strategy integrated. Developers and marketers need to talk more and earlier in the release cycle. As an example, I think Ubuntu is successful for many reasons, but I believe a key aspect is this good deal they have between technical focus and marketing strategy in the beginning of each release cycle. There must be a way of doing this successfully without a development dictator. I had a role in the coordination of the 2.16 release notes and I'm one of the persons trying to help building that bridge between the Release Team & developers and the Marketing Team. Again, being in the board is helpful finding common agreements and push common actions. > [8] What are your planned activities to promote use of GNOME in small > and medium business environments which potentially deliver many users to > GNOME ? See the comments above about collaboration with advisory board companies, some of them providing services to SMBs. See also the comments about collaboration with distros and specially with the public sector, from where perhaps the bigger % of users will come in the following years. Said that, I insist that I don't think we need to focus that much on getting more final users. GNOME is an important piece in a free and complex engine, we need to collaborate more and better with the organizations building the other parts of the engine. If the engine rocks, people will run to get it. > [9] What sources of funds do you as a Board Member (should you be > elected) try to establish ? What areas do you think require most fund-love ? Advisory board companies and public sector. At a smaller, local level sponsorship and events can provide funds as well. But careful, we shouldn't concentrate on getting money only but in getting resources, that can be money and many other things. In many cases we need money to pay people, and we can find organizations providing the people/human resources directly. For instance the universities. As GUADEC coordinator i recommended to spend the money we got in helping people meeting together and getting cool merchandising, two aspects that I would keep as a general GNOME policy, not only for GUADEC but for other local events and local groups (a trend that the current board has been doing). But for 2007 I would put a lot of resources in the Impressive Documentation effort, since nobody is really pushing this although many players need it - and some of them would be happy to contribute funds. Hiring a sysadmin is also needed. And other profiles, but this would depend on the resources available. > [10] Please rank your interests: > > * GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business and > individual > * GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items (nationally and > internationally) > * GNOME legal issues like Copyright and Patents > * GNOME finances and fund raising > * Alliance with other organisations From my point of view marketing, evangelization and fund raising are corners of the same triangle, and this triangle represents my main interest. OK to follwing the finances and work with money-related stuff, but not without our administrator and our accountant. I'm proven not to be a good treasurer. The legal issues are well handled by the legal team to be formalized one of these days. It's great to see that Luis Villa puts in well thought words all my messy feeling about trademarks etc. :) About alliances etc, being based in the periphery of the Empire has its inconveniences. There is many people in the GNOME project very well connected and really good at opening dialogs. I'm not bad at continuing those dialogs and getting tangible results from them. > [11] How much familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME ? > How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists ? Mainly active in marketing-list and gnome-web-list, following also the infrastructure list and trying to be not too far from the sysadmins. I follow Planet GNOME, where my blog is aggregated and where I have been reporting regularly to the community about GUADEC and the wgo revamp. I'm in the guadec lists as well, although I haven't decided yet my involvement in Birmingham 2007. Will depend of the GNOME compromises I get in the following weeks/months. Active in the foundation-list as well, I have taken part in most of the debates here. > [12] Can you elaborate about your plans to provide the Board with a > focus that steers development choices and works with allied > organisations in order to define and adapt (and or adopt) standards ? This is not my main field of action or expertise. However, for what is worth I have been supporting the dialog with KDE etc in the context of freedesktop.org (modestly in its marketing list) and I have promoted the Tango palette (in the GUADEC design artifacts and the revamped wgo). Out of the desktop, I come from the web industry and I have always been adopting W3C standards - which are a policy in the new wgo. I'm also aware of the OSDL efforts done around the Portland project and I have sent my +1 every time we have been requested at the board to send someone to an architects meeting, or bringing Waldo Bastian to GUADEC to explain the initiative. I mean, I'm above all a freedom love but such love can only be well exercised in a context ruled by common standards. GNOME rocks but there are many other cool projects out there and we need to build a common engine with common standards. > [1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last > GUADEC about "Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation" ? Getting the condition of member of the GNOME Foundation should be seen as a recognition for a regular contribution to the project. People concerned about the present and future of GNOME should be participating in the Foundation. Also, if you are spending time and part of you life in the GNOME context you will get other benefits being a member (see below). The community needs to understand that GNOME with Foundation is better than GNOME without Foundation (and why), that a GNOME Foundation with lots of contributors and new ones joining every months is much better than a GNOME Foundation without a real representation of the community, stalled, ill. We have been failing communicating this and inviting explicitly the people. More at a recent blog post: A good moment to join the GNOME Foundation - http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/310 > Would you be in a position to elaborate on your plans/projects to make > membership more interesting for the GNOME Community ? We should tell to all the GNOME contributors So Where The Bloody Hell Are You? This is mainly a p2p task, but there are some actions we can push better with board backing i.e. - You want a CVS account. Are you Foundation member? - You want sponsorship for GUADEC or etc. Are you Foundation member? - You want to be aggregated in the Planet. Are you Foundation member? - + other examples of services we offer also - You have more than n points in bugzilla. Aren't you Foundation member? - You have translated n strings. Aren't you Foundation member? - You are ruling in your local group. Aren't you Foundation member? - + other examples of visible involvement in teams also There are plans to have more information about the Foundation and why join at the revamped wgo (that btw I'm coordinating). I'd like to see in future release cycles user profiles where people can see if Peter or Mary are foundation members, and even create special services for members i.e. discounts or free shipping when buying GNOME merchandising. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org
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