Re: A question to candidates

["Diego Escalante Urrelo" <diegoe gnome org>]

Hi,

On 11/22/07, Dave Neary <dneary free fr> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open,
> and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask...
>
> The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the
> GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two
> major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation
> has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove
> roadblocks or encourage productive contribution.
>

I agree with Andrew's post. The Linux Australia idea sounds quite cool
to me: facilitate the enthusiasm.
I see the Board exactly as that, the group of people in charge of
deploying the Foundation resources to facilitate initiatives, events,
meetings, etc.

> After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances
> are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2].
>
> What do you see as the best way to spend this money? In terms of hiring,
> do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive director? What other
> priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside of our usual
> cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)?
>

If it's really critical to have more manpower for doing sysadmin
tasks, that should be the priority I think, after all we are supposed
to give good and enough infrastructure for the projects.
Besides usual things like GUADEC, I would like to see some money
passed to local groups for marketing things and events. In particular
for my dear side of the world (Latin America) where stuff is mega
cheap to do. I would support expending money on supporting initiatives
that can produce new users and developers in places where we don't
have much of them.

> A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points
> of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points?
>

Improvement, mmm, as I mentioned earlier I would like to continue
making the Board work more transparent so people know not only the
outcome but the process, this would be positive to prospective
candidates I think.

Another thing I feel I could help with is in communication with
people, as I said on earlier emails I think my age and personality
makes people see me as someone quite accesible and open, this -I
think- would help me be a good entry point for people trying to
communicate but still a bit shy to do it by other means like mailing
the entire Board, of course the idea would be to destroy that shyness
and make quite clear that the Board is happy to receive comments and
ideas no matter how silly they can sound.

greetings


Diego