Re: Board of Directors Elections 2019 - Candidacy - Benjamin Berg

[philip chimento gmail com]

On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 7:32 AM Benjamin Berg <benjamin sipsolutions net> wrote:

Name: Benjamin Berg
Affiliation: Red Hat
E-Mail: bberg gnome org
IRC: benzea

Hello,

I would like to run for the Board of Directors of the GNOME Foundation.

I have been contributing to GNOME since 2006. In addition to
development work I have regularly helped with events and also organised
GUADEC 2016 in Karlsruhe.

The Foundation is still undergoing deeper changes with the hiring of
multiple employees. This is an interesting challenge as the role of the
Board continues to change and it may have a large impact on the
Foundation and the GNOME community. I expect that shaping this future
will be an important part of the Boards work and I would like to be
part of this. Both by reflecting on whether we are moving in the right
direction and constructively working with everyone to get there.

Apart from that I keep wondering about how to enable more collaboration
between the Board and the membership. An example on how I think the
situation can be improved is to move some tasks like the ongoing work
to develop 5 and 10-year goals into focused working groups. Doing so is
associated with an overhead but it guarantees that the work happens in
a transparent manner and that everyone can join the conversation.

That is just one idea. As a Director I would like to work on creating
such opportunities for members to take on responsibilities inside the
Foundation. I believe that this is important so that members can grow
into new roles, creating a path from being an active member of the
community to joining a committee or serving as a Director.

Hi Benjamin,

It's public knowledge that you've disagreed with decisions made by the currently sitting board of directors. Different points of view, disagreement, and debate within the board are normal, healthy, and expected, but I believe that so are collaboration, respect, and trust while engaging in debate.

On several occasions you've insinuated publicly that the current directors are untrustworthy or involved in something shady, without making any overt accusations that could be responded to factually. https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/issues/60 is an example of this. I can't speak for any of the other candidates, but I would find an atmosphere where people operate out of distrust, if it existed on the board, detrimental to a good working relationship.

If elected to the board, how would you help to build trust and collaborative working relationships among the directors, and encourage healthy debate?

Regards,
Philip C