Re: Meeting Minutes Published - November 11, 2010

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanied gnome org>]

On Wed, 2010-12-08 at 22:58 +0100, Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> > Aha, well, yes. For starters:
> > 
> > * Speech recognition would be useful for at least some people with print
> >   learning disabilities as well as for certain people with physical 
> >   disabilities.
> > 
> > * Caribou, especially were its functionality further expanded, would be 
> >   useful for people with physical disabilities.
> > 
> > Could we begin there? And if so, who is "we" and how do we "begin"? :-)
> 
> OK - Caribou is the gok replacement, right?

Indeed.

> I guess "we" is us - the GNOME Foundation. I'm sure the board will help,
> I'll help, I'm certain the a11y team will help... we'll figure this out.

Awesome! Thank you.

> I guess "begin" begins with "build a list of organisations we could
> contact for grants" - organisations should include non-profits,
> foundations, universities, and government agencies. We could use a wiki
> page for that, or Etherpad, or Google Docs, perhaps SugarCRM? Open to
> discussion.
> 
> Then, for each one, we try to get a good entry point.
> 
> Then, "we" contact them, with a general & informal first approach - "do
> you know GNOME? We're pretty cool. We do cool a11y stuff." and if they
> have heard of us, and are maybe using us a little, we can then pitch the
> roadmap for grants.
> 
> For sure, it's a long shot approach, and we'll probably only ever get
> 10% response to initial queries, and less than 10% of those interested
> in funding "us"

But it sounds like a good start and a sound one. And anything more than
0% will help out the development efforts of the A11y team.

>  (and there, let me turn that question around to you -
> who's "us"?

Good question. I'll defer to Piñeiro (on holiday today). 

But my opinion is that it would depend on the size of the sums we're
talking about. For now, I'm going to assume "bounties" or small grants
sufficiently large to convince qualified individuals or entities that
taking on the associated task is worth their while. In which case "us"
would either be the Foundation or the GNOME A11y team. And in either
case, the {Foundation, A11y Team} would work together with the {A11y
Team, Foundation} to ensure that such a qualified individual or entity
is sought and tasked with the job.

--joanie