Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 8 January 2015 at 14:29, Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com> wrote:

> I would like to ask the board
> to consider discussing establishing democratically elected formal roles so
> that those with specific interests can support the BoD carry out their work
> more effectively and strengthen the infrastructure of GNOME:
>
> (I suspect these roles may already exist but I am not sure whether they are
> elected roles or not or who currently manages them)
>
> Secretary
> Treasurer

these roles already exist, and are generally assigned to the elected
directors during the first board meeting.

currently, Andrea Veri is the secretary (hence why he sends the
minutes of the board meetings), and the treasurer is Ekaterina
Gerasimova.

you can see the various roles and who holds them on the wiki:
https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/

> (Although I am aware that there are teams who focus on some of these areas
> already, I am not sure if the following formal roles exist to manage those
> teams, at this time:)
>
> Publicity and Campaigns
> Events and Socials
> Research and Development
> Diversity and Equality
> Outreach and Engagement

most of these roles are covered by the Engagement (née Marketing team)
and by local teams. I'm not sure what "Research & Development" means.
if it's a technological role, then everything we do is, broadly
speaking, "research and development". if you mean research and
development as exploring fund raising options and venues, then it
would be the primary role of an executive director. I'd very much like
to see a team devoted to event planning and sponsoring, working with
local teams where necessary, but mostly driving the organization of
conferences like GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, and the GNOME Summit.

I'm not entirely sure why these should be "democratically elected". I
personally prefer very much a culture of do-ocracy, where those who
show up and do the work get to decide what and how to do it, as
opposed to various instances of backseat driving that we've all
experienced on various mailing lists.

we have various teams that operate as emanations of the Foundation
itself, but they tend to work as special interest groups or as
infrastructure-related groups.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
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