Candidates for the GNOME Foundation 2012 Elections

Below you will find a list of candidates who are running for the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors. A short summary statement from each candidate and a link to their full candidacy announcement is provided to help you learn more about them. We encourage all voters to read the full candidacy statements and related discussions on foundation-list@gnome.org.

When deciding who you should vote for, please carefully consider the various tasks the Board of Directors must perform. This overview may be helpful. Keep in mind that the board will make a number of important decisions and will also have to perform many tasks which require a significant amount of time and effort and the ability to work and communicate with other people, companies, and the media. The board of directors will represent GNOME to companies and the world in a very real way. It is a good idea to strive for a well-balanced board consisting of people with various backgrounds, skills, and perspectives.

Additional elections details can be found on the GNOME Foundation Web Site.

If you have any questions, please send them to either foundation-list@gnome.org or to us at elections@gnome.org.

Candidates for the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors

David Nielsen

Affiliation: None

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00000.html I have been part of GNOME in various roles since the early 2.x days and I think it is time together volunteer for an organizational role. I have already arranged 2 hackfests under GNOME and found that I enjoy the work and that I have a talent for the required fundraising as well as drumming up excitement. I have plenty of sparetime as I am retired on medical grounds and I would love to dedicate some of it towards dragging GNOME kicking and screaming into the 21th century. I have plenty of ideas for how to raise funds and for where GNOME can (and should) go in the future. Bastien Nocera

Affiliation: Red Hat UK Ltd

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00001.html I intend to carry on being a point of contact for developer relations, and a technical advisor within the Board itself. I'm also the one asking naive questions about US employment law and accountancy rules. Emmanuele Bassi

Affiliation: Intel Corporation

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00002.html I have contributed to GNOME for the past 10 years as a developer and maintainer; I served on the GUADEC papers committee multiple times, as well as a Director of the Foundation's Board for the past year in the role of Secretary. Andreas Nilsson

Affiliation: None

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00003.html I've been involved in GNOME since 2005 doing a variety of things. Mainly graphics and websites. I served on the Board of Directors between 2010 and 2011. If I get elected, I want to primary focus on two things. Fundraising and getting new developers. I want to make our fundraising campaigns really effective and make it as fun and rewarding to make donations to the GNOME project as possible. I'm happy that we have now been able to release the new, more effective Friends of GNOME site, but there is more we can do in this area. For new developers, I'm happy with the outcome of the GSOC and WOP's we've been running, and we should continue to do these, but I also want to make sure the inroads for potential contributors who visit our website is as clear as possible. I'm sure I will get very much tangled up in whatever pops up during the way for the board (as things tend to do), but I will keep these two items in mind as goals for the term. Joanmarie Diggs

Affiliation: Igalia, S.L.

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00004.html I have contributed to GNOME for the past five+ years as a developer and maintainer of the Orca screen reader and as a member of the GNOME Accessibility Team. For most of those years, my GNOME-related work had to be done evenings, weekends, and holidays as a community contributor. Joining Igalia in October 2011 has made it possible for GNOME Accessibility to become part of my DayJob, which in turn has given me a very precious commodity: spare time. I would like to spend some of that time serving on the GNOME Foundation Board. Tobias Mueller

Affiliation: None

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00005.html I am a Free Software enthusiast and GNOME activist for about 5 years now. I mainly worked in the Bugsquad and the Membership Committee. Now, I want to do something new and help making GNOME a successful Free Software project. I have experience with working with people, i.e. by organising events like a GNOME party, various booths at conferences or by hosting a (mid-size) conference at our university. I want to improve the Bylaws and the visibility of Teams within GNOME. Max Huang

Affiliation: None

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00006.html I am a freelancer who teach linux in the training center, also a Novell CNI instructor. I have contributed to GNOME for the past 2 years for GNOME.Asia. Teaching linux at school and have workshop with open source and linux at school. Shaun McCance

Affiliation: Syllogist LLC (freelance)

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00007.html If elected, I want to work to make our treasurer duties simpler and more understandable, whether as the treasurer again or as an advisor to a new treasurer. The treasurer role is inevitably difficult for somebody without a background in accounting. We need to make sure we can smoothly transition year to year, because handling GNOME's money is one of the most important things the Foundation does. Seif Lotfy

Affiliation: Collabora Ltd.

Full statement at https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00008.html Currently, I spend nearly 50% of my working time on GNOME-related projects, thanks to Collabora. I also spend a lot of my time working on deploying Zeitgeist into some smaller projects like Gedit (the dashboard plugin), which greatly benefited from design collaboration with Hylke Bons and Garrett LeSage. Sometimes misunderstandings and miscommunication happen in the community, especially between different teams who may share similar goals but different viewpoints. This blurred vision was evident in mailing-lists over the past few weeks. (Thankfully Olav did a great job moderating the lists to not let it get too out-of-hand.)

Additional Elections-related Information

Note, that according to the Bylaws Article VIII Section 2d there is a 2-person maximum on the number of people affiliated with any one company that can be on the board: if more than 2 persons from one company get elected, only the top 2 vote getters will get on. You will be able to vote for up to 7 candidates of your choice, with no restrictions, except that you cannot vote more than once for the same candidate.

If you have any futher question, please consult the Rules for this election or write to elections@gnome.org.