Stormy’s Update: Week of June 8th

This was a crazy week with a ton of meetings but I asked for it!

I set up one on one (phone) meetings with (almost) all the advisory board members. I wanted to talk about their GUADEC plans, what they’d like to see at GUADEC (especially with regards to the advisory board meeting) and to get their feedback about how things have gone with the Foundation in the past year. Met with 15 of the advisory board representatives this week representing 12 companies. (Got stood up a few times too.) Have five companies that I didn’t meet with – two are not being responsive, the rest are working on scheduling. I will be sending my notes to the board of directors and summaries to the board of advisors and the Foundation List.

As a side note, several of the advisors will be having others from their company represent them at the advisory board meeting at GUADEC. At least two will try to attend by phone – hopefully that will work better this year. (Many of them are not happy with this year’s GUADEC location because it is expensive and inconvenient to get to and because of the expense and the perceived vacation-location, it’s hard to ask for travel approval. Although I think the time it takes to get there was the real impediment for the ones not able to make it.) When this year’s bids for hosting GUADEC come in, I’ll be sure to alert the advisory board that it’s time to give input.

Karen Sandler will represent the SFLC (our attorneys) and she’ll hold a legal BOF if anyone in the community has questions for her.

Voted in the GNOME Foundation directors election.

Took a look at the Friends of GNOME survey data which is looking really interesting. We had 234 people respond! Off the top of my head, this stands out:

• Only 5% of those that donated money are GNOME Foundation members and less than 20% are GNOME contributors. Several mentioned in the comments that they give money because they don’t have time/skills to give code.
• A good third use GNOME projects on Windows. (In addition to the GNOME desktop – almost everyone used that.)
• The “what would you like to see” question is a ranking one but it looks like at least half of all respondents ranked “exactly what you are doing now” and “usability studies” in the top half.
• Of the 230 people that answered the gender question, only one was a woman.
• Someone suggested the survey was a good idea and we should do it regularly.
• Someone suggested pinging people if they have donated in the past but not in the past year.
• There were some great comments in the free form fields.

Announced Nokia as the platinum sponsor for the Desktop Summit and announced the keynote speakers. (I wrote the keynote one and I sent both to my press contacts. Other people wrote the other one and got them all posted in the right places.)

Did a few other logistical things for the Desktop Summit like remind all of the sponsors who qualify for displaying banners that they can bring banners, bugged travel agency about meeting room for advisory board (and Chema called them for me), sent a bunch of invitation letters to GNOME folks for visa purposes, gave quick input on several issues, etc.

Reviewed accessibility contract and Willie Walker now has it to use as appropriate to contract with people to do GNOME accessibility work. He’s already drafted the first statement of work and is working on getting everything signed in a way that makes our attorney happy.

GNOME Board Meeting was cancelled/postponed as we didn’t have any issues to discuss.

Next week:

• Out June 13th-June 23rd visiting my parents and setting up a Kids on Computers lab in Huajuapan de Leon.
• For the following week: (Looks like too much for a week so I’ll have to decide what to postpone until after GUADEC.)
  • Meet with the remaining advisors that I haven’t met with.
  • Send out summaries of the meetings with Board of Advisor folks.
  • Finalize agenda for advisory board meeting at GUADEC.
  • Work on 2009 finances with nonprofit workshop and Jaap’s feedback in mind.
  • Think about how GNOME projects, committees like the travel committee and teams like the sys admin team work with the nonprofit workshop in mind.
  • Work on the new GNOME Foundation sponsorship plan, like premium sponsorship.
  • Work with marketing list to figure out how best to report and act on Friends of GNOME survey data.