Re: Question for candidates

[Karen Sandler <karen gnome org>]

On 2014-05-20 07:48, Emily Gonyer wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Emily Chen <emilychen522 gmail com> 
> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to ask below questions to future board:
>
> 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is 
> your
> plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and 
> GNOME.Asia ?
>
>
> I think it is of utmost importance that big events have numerous
> sponsors, both large and small. Local businesses ought to be
> encouraged to support events. I'm not sure what sorts of local
> business organizations exist in Europe and Asia but something similar
> to the Chambers of Commerce here in the USA likely do, and would be
> useful as primary contact points to reach out to for donations.

I think this is a great idea, local organizers have always tried to do 
this, with differing degrees of success. One of the biggest challenges 
has been getting the materials organized in a timely way - we really 
want to get the materials ready at least six months in advance. I was 
hoping that the extra lead time this past year with announcing the 
GUADEC location so early would have helped with this but invariably the 
team is always later than we should be. Having volunteers help with this 
for next year would surely help. So if anyone is reading this and 
wondering how to help out...

> 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in 
> your
> opinion ?
>
> I think that it will be extremely important in the next year to reach
> out to related projects. Since the advent of GNOME 3 we have seen a
> severe fracturing in the ecosystem, which is not benefiting anyone.
> Reaching out to related projects (Unity, Cinnamon, Mate, ElementaryOS,
> XFCE, etc) and asking them to participate in GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, the
> Boston Summit is vitally important. GNOME is about more than just the
> shell and recognizing that everyone who uses GNOME technologies is, or
> should be welcomed into the project.

We have tried to do some of this already, as I indicated in the other 
email but we can always do better :) Specifically though, we've reached 
out to Unity, Cinnamon, Mate and XFCE.

I think the biggest goal is getting a handle GNOME's admin and financial 
situation, much of which is already being done.

There are too many financial related emails for me to respond to at this 
point but I'll just say here that a great deal of my work on the 
financial side was keeping our existing corporate donors. I was glad It 
was a bit of a triumph to expand the advisory board as we have done 
recently but it's was much tougher to just keep status quo than I 
understand it was in the past. I think companies are tighter with their 
budgets and also GNOME technologies were in a state of transition, at 
least in perception by our donors.

Kat has been very encouraging of people to step up while not being on 
the board in these emails and I think this is awesome. If every member 
(or a lot of the members) of the GNOME foundation recommended 
sponsorship of GNOME events and advisory board to the companies they 
have relationships with it would be an easier effort for the board and 
Executive Director. Similarly, just being an advocate of GNOME 
technologies is very helpful. If companies aren't using our stuff 
they're going to be much less likely to give.

There was a thread asking about the skills needed by an Executive 
Director, where many were saying that fundraising was our top priority. 
I don't disagree with this per se, but the ability to fundraise (as 
somebody else already said) comes from a technical understanding of the 
value of GNOME. I think having a commitment to GNOME's ideals and being 
able to bring attention to GNOME as a good communicator is of utmost 
importance.

Stormy's blog about being an ED is helpful to see what the job is and 
you can also see some of the reports of the work I did (sorry I wasn't 
always consistent with this format or tagging): 
http://blogs.gnome.org/gnomg/category/stuffdone/


> 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ?
>
> I've touched on this elsewhere, so I'll be brief: We need to increase
> individual and small-business donations. There are many ways to do so
> which we have left untapped including Facebook & Google Wallet
> donations, encouraging the use of AmazonSmile and similar programs,
> etc.

I think we should explore having GTK+ sponsorship or something similar, 
which would engage users of GNOME technologies, many of which are 
smaller companies.

> 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week?

In the last month I've probably worked about 5 hours per week on GNOME 
related matters.

karen

> Thanks!
>
> Emily Chen
>
>
>
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