Re: Question for candidates

[Karen Sandler <karen gnome org>]

On 2014-05-21 13:04, Jeff Fortin wrote:
> Le dimanche 18 mai 2014 à 12:58 -0400, Dave Neary a écrit :
>
> 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
>
>
> I think that expecting an ED candidate to have all of those
> qualities/skills nailed down simultaneously would be a difficult
> proposition to entertain. It's basically asking for a
> 20-years-experienced C*O to lift mountains at non-profit compensation
> rates and very high risk.
>
> Let's be honest: whoever that person might be, there's a heck of a
> challenge in terms of fundraising; we're far from the situation we were
> in back in 2009 or so. Karen et al have my respect for weathering the
> very harsh times GNOME has gone through in recent years.
>
> The board, too, requires diversity in the skillset of its members. It's
> a team effort. I hope my skills and interest in 
> biz/mkt/mngt/design/etc.
> will be good complements to those of other board members.
>
>
> So in my eyes, in our current circumstances, I would say these are what
> are valuable traits: business acumen/experience growing a commercial
> ecosystem; communication skill (I consider that to be a side-effect of
> the previous item), admin/org experience.
>
> Maybe cost in theory, but in practice, what I just described is kind of
> a biz dev/salesperson... good luck finding an experimented person to
> fill that role in a cost-constrained scenario!

I agree that it's hard to find the right person on our budget but I 
think there are a lot of different ways that it can play out, as others 
suggest. To me, understanding the GNOME community (and thus being able 
to work with all of us to accomplish GNOME's goals) and being passionate 
about free software (to understand and be able to advocate for adoption 
and funding) are at a premium. I think we should not be too rigid about 
our expectations and see who responds to a call for applicants - there 
are a lot of different ways to do the job right. We need someone to keep 
convincing our current donors to give (when I joined as ED we'd already 
lost adboard members and some of our current ones were threatening to 
leave), to build the connections with our allies to get to the donation 
level and to help steer GNOME in a direction that individuals and others 
will want to give. I personally wished many times that I was more 
technical in my role so I could dive in and help on things that were in 
the public interest or of concern to one of our partners, rather than 
agitate for those fixes to be made by others (I haven't really coded in 
a decade). One thing- it would be great to have someone who is a good 
public speaker, in order to advocate for GNOME, but also to get invited 
to the places where people and companies are meeting. With the exception 
of GNOME's events, the vast majority of my travel was funded by the 
conferences and having keynotes meant that I could reach more people. 
Then again as someone else said, traveling takes away time from other 
things. It is indeed a balancing act :)

karen

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