Re: A few questions for the candidates

[Diego Escalante Urrelo <diegoe gnome org>]

:)

El mar, 01-06-2010 a las 23:30 +0200, Vincent Untz escribió:
> 1) Why are those tasks/ideas things you cannot work on while not being
>    on the board?
> 

>From experience I know that being in the Board opens a lot of small
and/or unseen opportunities to help in the topics of your interest. But
for the ideas I mention in my motivation I wouldn't really need to
be /in/ the Board, but of course that helps a lot.

> 2) What are your non-usual (ie, not code, not translations, not
>    documentation, etc.) contributions as a GNOME Foundation member?
>    (organizing events, pushing people to do things, finding sponsors,
>    etc. are all possible answers)

I give talks sporadically and try to push new contributors into the
project, this one has turned out to be harder than I thought ;).

> 3) What is your opinion on the co-location of Akademy and GUADEC in
>    2011? And if you think it was not the best choice, will you still be
>    able to help it happen?

It's an interesting opportunity, but we should try to have better
integration in the conference.
I wouldn't agree to do it yearly though, I think GUADEC (separately)
serves as a way to foster a closer community.

> 4) How much free time per week do you think you will be able to allocate
>    for the board? (I'm very well aware that this could be 0 for some
>    weeks, and 100% of your time for other weeks; I'm just asking in
>    general)
> 

I'm bad with hour numbers, but I think I can keep my fluxing 10~20h a
week. I estimate I usually do between 10 and 15 hours weekly, but that's
hard to tell. Sometimes just chatting with a friend is related to the
Board, for example when trying to get feedback on ideas.

> 5) Are you okay giving up some of your current GNOME
>    responsabilities/activities to join the board? (give up a maintainer
>    hat, or hack less, or participate less in a specific team) Or do you
>    think it won't be necessary and why?
>    (I know it's a bit related to the previous question :-))

I gave up some hats time ago already ;). Currently I only do sporadic
promotion (talks, mini booths) that doesn't take much time and code for
Igalia, mainly Epiphany, Epiphany Extensions and some WebKitGTK+.

Luckily none of this tasks would break the stack if I stop for a day or
two to focus full time on Board work or something, so I feel it's all
cool on this topic :).

> 6) Will you be interested in being treasurer, president or secretary if
>    elected? If yes, which role and why?

Not at first thought at least.

> 7) What do you think of the current GNOME Foundation budget? Had you
>    read it at least once before reading this mail?
>    (it's okay if you didn't look at it before, btw)

We have a much better financial situation, we should look forward to
improve it even further! We could try to promote hackfests a bit more
perhaps, maybe suggesting some of them to the teams and not just waiting
passively.

> 8) What do you think our next fundraising campaign should be about?
>    (I'd love to not read 11 times the same answer, thanks :-))

I'd like to finish defining roles for companies acting as donors
(happening on marketing list), the so called "FoG for companies". I
think with that in place we could reach a lot more companies that could
donate yearly and sum up a considerable amount.

For a specific topic, I'm wondering about some kind of "mosaic", like a
one-time big gnome-mosaic with pictures of our donors for that campaign.
I think more visual things like these could be attractive for casual
donors. That said, our thematic campaigns have worked nicely.

> 9) Will you be at GUADEC this year? (there's a board meeting and an
>    advisory board meeting there)

Yes, I only have to apply for my visa, which will happen next week
probably.

> 10) Make or break question: what's your favorite french expression?

The old about:epiphany:
        Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a
        plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
        
                Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I've always assumed this is French, although it's not strictly an
expression but a quote.