Re: internal engagement

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me>]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Fabiana Simões
<fabianapsimoes gmail com> wrote:
> Quite honestly, I never expected broader discussions about the project
> to take place in this list. I believe those should welcome anyone
> interested, and not only Foundation members.

Ah I see, so people feel this is primarily a way for members to talk
to the board and vice versa.

> To a large extent, I always expected this to be an active
> communication channel between Foundation members and the board. The
> meeting notes and agenda are great, but they give very little insight
> about the milestones and major accomplishments we're hitting (and
> aiming to hit) as a Foundation.

Unfortunately, previous boards have many attempts to have IRC meetings
and it's been poorly attended.  So I'm not sure what would generate
interest in talking to the board?  What about status reports from the
other teams?

For instance, people may not know but we started a QA team around
gnome-continuous to increae the quality of our software.  Potentially,
we would centralize our testing to GNOME instead of each distro doing
the testing individually.  We could try to get the engagement team to
write these kind of things weekly?  For board matters, you already
have the minutes.

> To answer your question: I do care, but I know little about what the
> Board is doing or should be doing to initiate any discussions I find
> pertinent to this mailing list. It also strikes me that the Board
> never has anything to ask or communicate to us besides the elections
> announcements. I think more openness and dialogue would give us some
> food for thought, and seed discussions.

Well I can certainly start discussions.  But I worry that apathy has
set in on this list and I'm interested to know if that is the case.

I will do an experiment, I will talk about some of the things the
board is doing and if I see some positive feedback I will continue.
How do people feel about that?

sri

> On 1 March 2014 17:52, Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
> > Greetings, foundation members!
> >
> > This list has been pretty quiet and I'm wondering how best to talk
> > about things going on in GNOME internally that would capture people's
> > imagination.
> >
> > For the most part, we've been talking mostly about new members and
> > welcoming them.
> >
> > But, I feel that we don't really talk much about the project here from
> > a general perspective.  There is a lot going on, but this list doesn't
> > really reflect the work going on within GNOME.
> >
> > So, let me ask all of you a question.  When you signed on as
> > Foundation members, what kind of discussions or involvement did you
> > hope to see?  What should the various team communicate with you?
> >
> > We've tried a lot of things to help communicate out ot the project,
> > but it's been met mostly with silence and participation has been low
> > with irc meetings that the board has come up with.  So something is
> > going on.  Are you busy?  Do you not care?  What is your enthusiasm
> > level?
> >
> > I'm being blunt because we should have a blunt conversation.  If you
> > don't want to tell me on-list, you can tell me off list.  I think most
> > of you know that I take a soft touch both internally and externally in
> > GNOME.  You should not be afraid to tell me what you are feeling.
> >
> > The engagement team has spent a lot of time working on our external
> > engagement, but I think it's time we focused on internal engagement.
> > Organizational health so to speak.
> >
> > My goal is to have an engaged foundation.  I  want and need your
> > active participation.
> >
> > If you have a hostile response, or something fairly controversial I
> > would prefer that you email me off list, and I will summarize it on
> > the list.  One thing I want to do is control the conversation without
> > it going into the hinterlands.  We need to have effective
> > communication.  Whatever we can't solve we will take it up at GUADEC
> > as a BOF or as part of the general GUADEC meeting.  Whatever problems
> > we have, we will solve it as one team. Together.  So use your
> > judgement, as we are all adults.
> >
> > So, let's spend the weekend and casually talk about GNOME!!
> >
> > sri
> > (speaking as an engagement team member, not board btw)
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