Re: More questions for Board candidates

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your questions. Responses inline:

Have you ever done any fundraising?

 

Yes, although not on such a scale as I would expect a GNOME director will have to take on. More like a few small fundraisers for various charities and perhaps more recently, some of you may remember that I managed to raise funds to attend the GSoC summit in San Jose from Edinburgh. I had initially accepted that invitation with absolutely no idea whatsoever how I would be able finance any of it, but I never doubted for a second that things would fall to place - which they did :D

I am fairly confident that the demands of fundraising for GNOME are not likely to be a big a learning curve, as long there is a strong team of motivated people involved. Overall, I am very keen to work with others to develop fundraising strategies, so we can better support the work of the GNOME community and I would be keen to do my bit to ensure we make measurable progress on this front.

Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money?

 

Absolutely. We at GNOME all work hard, collectively investing the skills and ideas which build this project into something which sponsors are desperate to be associated with. If elected, then I feel it would be my duty to work on behalf of those contributing members who form GNOME and I would feel very comfortable negotiating favourable terms on behalf of the community.

Have you ever been in a manager role?

 

I won't list out my CV ;-) but the short answer is: in various ways, yes… Mostly through charity, campaigns and advocacy volunteer work, but I also freelanced professionally in events before I came to Edinburgh which had me supervising others at times, as well as going through all the fun of having to be responsible for my own accounts.

I could probably go on about this but I am reluctant to overdo it without further prompting. Just to say, I have a fair understanding of where my skills, abilities and interests lie. Please free to ask me to elaborate or clarify anything if you are particularly interested in finding out about, though!

Do you have any experience talking to reporters?

 

A little bit: I was interviewed by the BBC for news at 6 when Nicola Sturgeon was elected leader of the SNP and also recently quoted in the student newspaper regarding wellbeing at the College of Science and Engineering. Overall, I probably still need to polish up for this sort of thing but I am quite lucky in that I am able to access some relevant training, where I am.

Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important?

 

Yes, a quite few times now. The most recent one was a presentation at EdLUG about GNOME accessibility. Again, I still feel like I need to practice but that last talk went pretty well by all accounts and people seemed to be really engaged, asking lots more questions than I had expected they might, which was very encouraging.

Thanks again for these questions!

Magdalen