Re: Question for candidates

[Andrea Veri <av gnome org>]

2014-05-18 18:58 GMT+02:00 Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>:

Hi everyone,

Hey Dave!

 

For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to
Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation.

So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you
will be looking for in the next executive director?

when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle:
* Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free
software cultural alignment
* Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a
direction for GNOME
* Administrative and organizational experience
* Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem
* Communication/marketing/evangelism experience
* Cost

Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now,
and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I
didn't list?

Hiring a new ED has never been so important to the GNOME Foundation than it is now for the reason that many have outlined already, it being the current financial status of the Foundation.

So while the "Strategy experience" would be a nice to have in the new ED (but easily delegable to the Board of Directors), I feel we should aim at other skills (like "Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem" and "Communication/marketing/evangelism experience") that might be of help to the current financial situatiation. The next ED should have great communication skills, it should help the GNOME Foundation gathering some more attention from corporate sponsors by explaining them why they should invest their money on the GNOME Project. Looking for corporate sponsors won't be easy especially during the current terribly bad economic situation. Investing your money as a company into a free software project requires you to either have strong ideals on the FOSS movement or some other sort of interest. (i.e you are developing a customized GNOME release to be of use in your company and you want to give back to the project either directly by being an Advisory Board member or indirectly by forwarding patches upstream, the latter would not be of help increasing the Foundation's finances though or you just want some publicity for your products by showing up your logo on the various organized events etc.)

Another good point you introduced is related to the stipend the next ED should earn yearly. It's clear the invested resources on this matter won't be as high as they have been in the past. Said that I'm wondering how high is our percentage to find someone capable of such position (and with such responsibilities) without promising a relatively high stipend? also is it still true that higher you pay someone higher their skills and productivity should (and will) then be?

What I would aim for is someone with great communication / marketing skills for attracting new advisory board members but most of all a strong passion and dedication for the free software movement, with these feelings being stronger than the desire to earn an high stipend. (at least until the Foundation finances are back on track again)

--
Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNOME Sysadmin,
GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av