Re: The GNOME Annual Report

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Allan/Tobias:

Great question.  The value of the Annual Report is that we provide it
to current and existing advisory board members and sponsors to
communicate the value of The GNOME Foundation, and GNOME Foundation
membership.  After reading the Advisory Report, we hope that sponsors
feel encouraged to participate and contribute to our efforts.

So, if you have made use of GNOME travel sponsorship, found a hackfest
productive, think the GNOME Women's Outreach program is great, then
you should be think about the fact that the Annual Report is an
important part of raising the funds to make these sorts of things
possible.  It is our main communication vehicle to sponsors.

Past Annual Reports have done a pretty good job of communicating this
value.  We have been talking a lot about how the foundation.gnome.org
website really lacks at communicating the values that we find in the
reports.  So, we can think of the Annual Report as a part of a larger
project focused on better communicating these values.

With GNOME 3 released, now is probably the right time to evaluate how
we need to update the GNOME Foundation image as well.  This is why I
have suggested doing a one-off Biannual Report, and then return back
to doing annual ones for future years.  This would allow us to go to
press with a report that communicates the exciting GNOME 3 work the
GNOME community has been focused on lately.

In the past, the board has done most of the work printing and
distributing the report and provides digital copies online.  I think we
could do a much more effective job of identifying potential sponsors and
sending them printed copies.  But Advisory Board members have told us
that the reports help them to justify AdBoard membership and event
sponsorship.

I think there is a lot of room for the marketing team to help in many of
these areas.

Brian


On 10/10/11 04:10 AM, Allan Day wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 6:58 PM, Tobias Mueller<muelli cryptobitch de>  wrote:
> > Hey Brian,
> >
> > On 27.09.2011 04:46, Brian Cameron wrote:
> > > Is the
> > > reason this task keeps falling to the wayside because it has become too
> > > much work?
> > Maybe. But I can imagine that the motivation to create such a report is
> > not too high, because it lacks a reason, i.e. why should we create such
> > a report in first place.
>
> Indeed. Explaining the role and benefits of the report might help to
> encourage people to work on it.
>
> Allan
> --
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