Board of Directors Elections 2019 - Candidacy - Tristan Van Berkom

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristan vanberkom codethink co uk>]

Name: Tristan Van Berkom
E-Mail: tvb gnome org
Corporate affiliation: Codethink
IRC: tristan


Dear foundation,

I would like to announce my candidacy for the GNOME Foundation board of
directors in this election.

I have been a GNOME contributor for well over 15 years now in the
capacity of a developer, and have been a maintainer and core developer
on various projects including Glade, GTK, Evolution and now
BuildStream.

I have spent the larger part of my career in startup companies and have
some entrepreneurial experience, as such I hope that my spirit of
ambition and experience starting initiatives from the ground up can be
a useful addition to the board. I do not have the experience of serving
on a board for any non profit organization, so if I am elected, I
expect to lean on current and previous board members for assistance in
getting familiar with the tasks and duties expected of me.

I'd like to thank our previous boards for putting their efforts into
ironing out the necessary policies and ensuring that we are a strong
and healthy organization. Their efforts have allowed us to thrive as a
community, and to focus on the fun part of making software that works
very well and is a pleasure to use. While I have been happy with others
filling this role, after many years working within and around GNOME I
cannot help but be emotionally invested in the overall success of the
project, and would like to do my part in every way I can to help GNOME
continue as a successful project.

In my vision of GNOME, I believe that we need to recognize that while
our community remains volunteer driven, we need to maintain strong ties
with the rest of the software industry.

I believe that Free Software thrives when individuals and corporations
alike converge on a common set of goals and realize that we can create
something more resilient and powerful when working in collaboration and
in the open. We need the participation of companies who embrace our
software stack to build their own interesting products, and help us to
push our software to the limits of perfection, by both providing more
engineering work and also by providing use case scenarios we had not
considered ourselves.

If I am elected, I hope to further this vision by ensuring GNOME is
perceived as a safe place to contribute for individuals and companies,
work towards building strong ties in the software industry, and
hopefully further diversify our contributor base.

Thanks,
    -Tristan