Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

On 05/21/2013 08:16 AM, Brian Cameron wrote:

> For returning board members, what are 3 conrete accomplishments on the
> board that you are most proud of?

This is, for me at least, a tough question to answer. I see the primary
role of the Board being to facilitate the ability of Foundation members
to achieve great things for GNOME; not to achieve those great things
itself. In other words, Board work is not exciting and noteworthy as
much as it is necessary. It's the day-to-day administrative stuff that
organizations such as ours need to do. I take pride in that work, as I
do all my work, and I always strive for excellence. But as a Board
member, I feel that I'm "just doing my job." And doing that job well is
an expectation to be held; not an accomplishment to be achieved.

Mind you, I didn't feel that way last year when I first ran for the
Board. In retrospect, I was filled with that conviction of being able to
change the world one tends to find in candidates for new roles. In fact,
you may recall a very lengthy proposal I wrote in response to one of
Richard's questions for candidates [1]. Back then I saw this as a
concrete accomplishment to achieve as a Board member; now I don't. That
doesn't mean I didn't do work towards achieving it; on the contrary, I
launched a pilot/proof-of-concept version of it through the GNOME
Accessibility Team. Our team is now collaborating with a new NSF-funded
initiative called foss2serve. I introduced the pilot last year at fOSSa
[2] and two of the professors will be presenting it via a poster session
at ITiCSE 2013 [3]. Am I proud of this? Absolutely! Is this something
one could call an "accomplishment on the Board"? No. Running for the
Board merely prompted me to move forward on that work sooner than I
might have otherwise done.

Similarly, while serving on the Board this past year, I became aware
that Foundation members were having various and sundry issues with
respect to travel sponsorship. The issues struck me as interfering with
our members' ability to do the work they wish to do, so I dug into the
problem by joining the Travel Committee and doing the work that
committee does in order to fully understand it and find ways to improve
it. Having done so, I made a proposal which is still being discussed on
the Board and Travel Committee. Once all the wrinkles get ironed out and
the proposal accepted, I think we'll have a much more streamlined travel
sponsorship process. And I'll be proud of that. But I don't see that as
an "accomplishment on the Board" either. Serving on the Board made the
problems more visible to me, but the work needed to solve them is not
something that required being a Board member.

> How many action items did you accept over your last term
> and what percentage were completed? If things did not get
> done or tended to get done very late, please explain why.

I'd have to go through the previous minutes to find the exact number.
But when there is a task that I'm well-suited for and asked to do, I
accept it. And I complete it as timely a fashion as possible. The one
exception I can think of was related to the Freedesktop Summit [4] which
Ryan Lortie brought to my attention at GUADEC. I did my
communication-related action items (e.g. writing the KDE Board) as
expected of me. But I also had an action item which more or less boiled
down to taking the lead on the GNOME side to help make the event happen.
And the reason I ultimately declined it is that Ryan had the vision,
contacts, and motivation to make it happen; I didn't. One of the things
I think the Board needs to do is recognize when it should step out of
the way so that others can move forward quickly.

> If you were to give your own performance a grade, what
> would it be?

B. I think I've done a good job, but I wouldn't call it excellent.

> For all candidates, how do you see being on the board will enhance or
> facilitate the volunteer work you already do in the commutity?

To be honest, I no longer see being on the Board as a means to enhance
or facilitate the work I already do in the community, i.e. Accessibility
-- and also Travel. ;) Prior to my joining the Board, as issues related
to Accessibility came up which I felt needed to be brought to the
Board's attention, I raised them to you and/or our Executive Director.
If I'm not re-elected this year, I'll resume working with the Board
rather than on the Board. Having the direct connection is admittedly
convenient, but it is far from essential. Instead, I see being on the
Board as separate work that I am happy to do as an additional
contribution to our Foundation and community.

> How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to
> working on the board on a regular basis?

Most weeks 7-10.

Take care.
--joanie

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2012-May/msg00034.html
[2]
https://site.inria.fr/fossa/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/J.Diggs-Facilitating-Student-Participation-in-Free-Software.pdf
[3] http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/events/iticse2013/
[4] http://www.gnome.org/news/2013/04/report-from-the-freedesktop-summit