Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[josh joshtriplett org]

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 08:41:32AM +0800, Max wrote:
> First, thanks to all candidates for volunteering to the Foundation Board.
> Max come from GNOME.Asia team and thanks GNOME and board support Asia.
>
> I have 2 questions to all candidates
>
> 1)  How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to
> working on the board on a regular basis?

As much as is needed.  I'm not limited to evenings and weekends; I can
work on the GNOME board during work, too.

Under normal circumstances, I'd expect to spend 5-10 hours or so a week
working on GNOME board activities.  However, if some major issue comes
up, like the Groupon issue (which I worked on with Sri and Andrea), I
will dedicate significantly more time to getting that issue taken care
of.

At the moment, for instance, I'm working on the Executive Director
search committee, which will increase the amount of time I'm spending
per week.

> 2)  What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think
> about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor /
> volunteer ...  )
>
> * Maybe you already notice -- there start to have sponsors from Asia
> with GUADEC.( There are 2 in 2015 and 1 in 2014 )
> * There are some open source events related and co-work with GNOME
> Users Group or Members in Asia.
> For example
> ** Hong Kong Open Source Conference  ( http://opensource.hk/event )
> ---- After GNOME.Asia Summit 2012, there are more GNOME and  open
> source related activities in Hong Kong. They start Hong Kong Open
> Source Conference at 2013.
>
> ** openSUSE.Asia Summit ( https://events.opensuse.org/conference/summitasia14 )
>
> ** FUDCon ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon?rd=Fudcon )
> ---- We held GNOME.Asia Summit 2014 together with FUDCon.

While I have a few ideas in this area, in large part I think the board
should be primarily focused on helping people in the GNOME community
enact their ideas and get support from the GNOME Foundation in doing so.
For most problems like this, the first resort should be talking to
involved community members and seeking a consensus solution (perhaps
with suggestions from the board), rather than having the board propose
and enact a solution.

So, first and foremost, I'd ask: what do you and GNOME Asia see as the
biggest barriers to adoption or improved community engagement within
Asia?  Events?  Contact within local developer communities?  Contact
with local industry, and local universities?  Are there any specific
areas you could use help with?

For my part, I would suggest that building a strong community in an area
needs more than just events and local developers.  Developers have to
come from somewhere, and events need a strong base of local support.

So, I'd suggest working with local universities to establish strong
support for GNOME and Open Source technologies, both within their
curriculum, and through projects/research/outreach/etc.  Universities
often foster a FOSS environment already for a variety of reasons; is
GNOME part of that environment?  What do classes or programs doing UI/UX
design use?  What technologies do students use when writing GUI
software?  What types of plumbing technologies do students hack on?

For that matter, do we have contacts with CS professors at various local
universities, through which we could promote programs like GSoC and
Outreachy, as well as partnering on research projects?  Can you or
others within GNOME Asia establish such contacts, and do you need help
from the board in doing so?

I'd also suggest working with local industry, especially companies
making significant use of GNOME and GNOME technologies, and building a
support base there.  That's in addition to existing efforts to establish
events and volunteer contributors.

- Josh Triplett