Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)

[Susana Pereira <susana pereira gmail com>]

Hello,

The final list of candidates for the upcoming elections is available here:

http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2009/candidates.html

We will now start a series of discussions amongst the candidates.
Thanks to all the people who participated by submitting their questions!

This year's list of questions is a bit longer than in previous
elections. However, with a longer list, we hope to cover all of the
questions our community has in just one thread and one list. We ask
you to answer as many as you can.

Without further ado, let's begin the discussion.

Questions:
----------

 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things
from your previous stint at the Board which you would  like to see
carried forward into this term ?

 2. For outgoing board members: What achievement can you point to
during your term that you're proud of, and why?

 3. For outgoing board members: What can you point to in your own
performance that you are unhappy with? Can you give details?

 4. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would
you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like
to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ?

 5. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at
non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected
in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good
board member? What single change do you want to affect during your
term?

 6. Can you give an example of a time when you had trouble working
with individuals in the community in the past? What were the
circumstances, what did you do to resolve the situation, were you
happy with the outcome?

 7. Can you describe a team project that you successfully started and
led? How did you handle it when people thought something should be
done a different way?

 8. Can you describe a time when someone promised you they'd do
something and they didn't deliver on time? How did you handle it?

 9. Often life gets in the way of some of our responsibilities. In the
past, have you signed up for something and then not had time to do it?
How did you handle that situation?

 10. One of the board's roles is to interact with the advisory board
and the sponsoring companies. Do you have experience giving regular
updates to management or outside people? Do you have experience asking
for money or sponsors for an event? Can you describe those
experiences?

 11. What part of being a board member do you think will be most
difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that?

 12. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and
strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ?

 13. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation
feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would
you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members.

 14. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring the GNOME
platform and desktop in the top of opensource desktop and mobile
application development?

 15. Many governments offer electronic services to citizens and
companies that require the use of non-free software (like IE for web
services, or the use of a bundled MS Access runtime database, etc.) My
particular peeve is with the Canadian government, which is terrible
for this. Do you plan any advocacy for getting governments to accept
Gnome (and FOSS in general) users as first-class citizens?

 16. Bugzilla is very slow at times. How will you address this
infrastructure problem?

 17. What level of transparency do you believe the board should have
in its inner workings regarding the members? How much financial
transparency should the foundation have? How much procedural and
administrative transparency?

 18. Are you happy with the Foundation's current budget? If not, how
would you change it?

 19. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get
enough representation at events? If not, how would you fix that?

 20. Do you think GNOME has a good relationship with the
distributions? If not, how would you change it?

 21. Do you think GNOME has enough events (hackfests, GUADEC and local
events)? If not, how would you get funding and volunteers to have
more?

 22. It is the nature of Board(s) to be seen by the members as an
"overlord" figure for strategy whereas the tactical aspect comes
across from a number of voices - do you have any plans to address this
situation ?

 23. What, in your view, are the top 5 requirements (from a strategic
perspective) for the GNOME communities world-wide ?

 24. Is there anything else you think is important to tell us but
which you feel has not been covered by the previous questions?

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We wish you all the best of luck,


GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee