Re: Questions for all board candidates

[Diego Escalante Urrelo <diegoe gnome org>]

Hey Jeff

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Jeff Schroeder <jschroeder gnome org> wrote:
> 1.) For incumbents, have you missed any meetings? What is your % of
> missed vs attended meetings and why? For new challengers, how much
> time can you dedicate to working on the board each week? How do you
> plan on spending that time?
>

Following Germáns highly detailed report, I'll do the same:

- I joined the Board December 2008, my first meeting was December 10th

- For the half-period of December 2008 - July 2009 I missed 1 meeting
because of midterm tests, and the GUADEC meeting because I'm an idiot
and I lost my flight :)

- For the period of July 2009 - July 2010 I missed 7 meetings: 3
because of tests, 1 because of urgent family matters and 3 I was
missing

I believe Germán explains the real importance of meetings in his
email. They are important, of course, but the biggest time you should
invest in Board work is responsiveness on topics discussed on the
mailing list. Meetings are just once every two weeks, but there's
traffic on the list almost all day. Decisions usually stall there and
not in phone meetings.

> 2.) Other open source / free software projects run their meetings in
> the open via IRC (such as Fedora's FESCO I believe). Would you
> consider that, and if not, what about recording how board members vote
> on a given topic. This includes +1 / -1 / abstains and perhaps give a
> small comment on any -1 or abstain. In my opinion, as an open
> foundation, the transparency of the board is absolutely critical
> _where possible_. Leaders should always set the example for members.
>

I agree with others that recording the votes is no issue at all. But I
wouldn't make Board meetings in the open. Many issues are confidential
when they are discussed and making every meeting in the open would
make us have additional meetings anyway.
Timely minutes are great to keep the Foundation members on the loop of
what's going on, and also the eventual IRC meetings can help solve
questions and chat on some ideas.