Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer

[Karen Sandler <karen gnome org>]

I'm not going to quote the emails about company control and Red Hat's 
contributions in particular as I think it's gotten fairly heated and my 
thoughts are more easily generally expressed.

I think we need both to be successful - companies that are invested in 
GNOME technologies who are users and contributors and who care about it 
because it is useful to their business and individual contributors who 
are here because they are jazzed about our awesome mission.

We need to work on both now to try to figure out how to get wider 
adoption of GNOME and how to show that we're an important project that 
is worth a hobbyist's time and is fun to be a part of.

As Emily and Sri have mentioned, we really need to put a premium on 
encouraging people when they first show an interest, something I think 
we've gotten better at but still need a lot of improvement on.  We need 
to go out of our way to take an interest and to be advocates for GNOME 
to new individuals and new companies. I've been scratching my head over 
this for a while. Speaking at conferences and being present where people 
meet and talk about important technologies have been the approaches I've 
pursued but I think there's a lot more that can be done. A lot of it 
involves promoting culture that is welcoming, which I think we were 
leaders of once upon a time and have gotten much better with more 
recently. We definitely want to make the companies already invested in 
our space feel good about their contributions while making sure the 
infrastructure is in place for no corporate control.

I'd love it if we could do something like put together a team of 
volunteers who are ready to help companies adopt GNOME, whether it's to 
go and talk to decision makers or to go and give an occasional demo or 
training session. I recognize that this is a lot of work and nontrivial 
to organize (we have to make sure the right people are representing us) 
but it's part of what I think GNOME has been missing. With the right 
enthusiasm from the membership this is something that can be done.

I also will say that the boards and foundation memberships that I've 
worked with have been more productive when everyone has a positive 
attitude. Being critical of the way things are and what other people say 
is necessary for insightful discussion and change but finding the core 
of what someone is saying and helping to find positive ideas for that 
change is essential. In general positive communicators are more 
persuasive and create a better collaborative environment. I've been a 
bit dismayed about the negative tone of a lot of the emails regarding 
candidacy, not just this thread. I want to be on a board that has 
differing views but can communicate in a way that inspires cooperation.

karen