GNOME Foundation

Month: August 2009

  • Stormy’s Update: Week of August 10th, 17th and 24th

    This update is actually for three weeks, the week of August 10th when I was at OpenSource World, the week of August 17th when I was on vacation and the week of August 24th when I caught up with all the email I got in the previous two weeks!

    During the weeks of August 10th and August 24th, in no particular order:

    I met with existing sponsor to discuss how to get payment for their GNOME Foundation dues.

    I met with a potential new sponsor and pinged a potential sponsor that I’ve spoken to a couple of times.

    Sent out the feedback from the interviews with the advisory board members. (Sent it out to the advisory board and to the GNOME Foundation.)

    Attended OpenSource World, ran the Desktop track and spoke. The Desktop track was very well attended with 80-100 people at every session. I really enjoyed the fact that the participants were very engaged and every speaker got lots of questions during and after their session. The opening panel was all questions from the audience. I got a lot of GNOME questions that I have passed on to the right experts.

    OSiM World arrangements. Arranged for company working with GNOME technologies to meet with Vincent Untz and Dave Neary while they are there. Several GNOME companies will have booths. Igalia offered to display GNOME Mobile information in their booth. Checking with the others.

    Drafted mail with marketing team about raising advisory board fees.

    Met with one of the advisory board members who’s offered to mentor us on
    finances and got feedback on how to display our financial data. Worked
    with Germán Póo-Caamaño to create a waterfall summary of our fiscal year 2009
    finances. (Will share soon.)

    Did a short interview on women in opensource with Rikki Kite for her series on women in open source – suggested some more GNOME women for her to interview too.

    In general I’ve been working on attending and giving less talks myself and getting more GNOME folks involved. I’ve passed on several speaking opportunities to other GNOME people. If you are available to speak on GNOME topics please add yourself to GNOME speakers page so people can find you. (Feel free to nominate other people you think should be on that page – at least their name and what talk you saw them give.) If you are speaking about GNOME technologies or attending a talk on GNOME, please make sure it’s in our calendars, both the wiki and the Google calendar.

    GNOME press team was announced.

    Took a week of vacation. We went camping for a few days (climbed the biggest sand hill ever and slid down it with my 9 year old), had my parents over for a few days (still trying to talk them into moving to Colorado), threw a couple of parties (a wine tasting party and a kid’s birthday party – not at the same time), cleaned the fridge, freezer and bathroom cabinets, caught up on bills.

  • Stormy’s Update: Week of August 3rd

    Worked on the quarterly report.Got 11 updates out of the 15 we’d like to include. (And if I forgot a team, please let me know!!) Working on two more with the team leads. Waiting on two additional ones. Editing them and working with Paul Cutler and Vinicius Depizzol on the layout.

    Wrote final draft of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit press release. Vincent and Cornelius released it.

    Met with the GNOME Asia Summit planning committee. Good stuff happening there but I’ll wait for them to announce …

    Recruited Denise Walters to help with GNOME marketing, in particular the customer success stories. I know Denise from HP where she worked on Linux and open source marketing.

    Summarized the information I got while interviewing all the advisory board members and sent it out to the advisory board members. Will send out to the GNOME Foundation list on Tuesday.

    Created a very rough place holder of a wiki page for the new GNOME press team we’d like to create. (I realized I didn’t really know what to put in the page – hopefully people will ask questions which will make it obvious to me what’s missing.)

    Had a short interview with Todd Wiess, a free lance reporter for an article he was writing about whether the economy is affecting free software projects. What was interesting is that he thought laid off people would have less time to work on free software while they looked for a job whereas I would have thought they’d have more until they found a job. (While looking for a job is a full time job, few people who like coding like all the stuff involved with finding a job, so I’d think they’d need a coding break!)

    Finalized 401K plan! Sent signed documents off to SocialK folks.

    Booked travel for Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference and Utah Open Source Conference – both events are covering my travel.

    Sent a thank you note to all the Desktop Summit sponsors with links to press about the Desktop Summit. (Press links compiled by Dave Neary.)

    Got the Zoom2’s from Texas Instruments for our usability study! Talking to folks about how to move forward.

    Sent thank you notes to those that donated through Friends of GNOME. Personalized them where I could.

    What I’m planning on doing this week:

    This week I’ll be at OpenSource World, running the desktop track, moderating a panel and giving a talk the Desktop or the Browser: Is the Netbook Escalating the Issue? (Plus I still have to create the talk and slides.)

    The following week (August 17th) between a camping trip and my parents coming into town, I will probably take some time off.

    Here’s my list of things I’ll work on in between those events: (Things that are missing from the list have been passed on to somebody else or are in progress.)

    • Get the 2009 Q2 Quarterly report published!
    • Advisory board/sponsors work:
      • get feedback from advisory board members on advisory board meeting at GUADEC (I think I’m going to need to ping them individually.)
      • get agreement signed by GNOME folks for the work Canonical is funding on bugzilla for GNOME (Missing one signature – from the sys admin team.)
      • Amazon mp3 download uses GTK – contact them about sponsorship
      • send finance update out to advisory board (I’ll be doing this once a month.)
    • Marketing team stuff
      • Start marketing list thread about raising advisory board fees and the communication around that
      • Update GNOME marketing wiki pages with Paul Cutler
      • Get the press team created and started
      • find someone to help create a GNOME slideset template
      • write up blurbs about why companies sponsor GNOME (or find people to help) – for our website (Maybe someone would like to help with sponsors?)GNOME Foundation sponsorship plan like premium sponsorship – put in wiki
    • blog about travel committee – they did an excellent job with the Desktop Summit
    • Partnerships:
      • Talk to Jim Zemlin about Moblin & Linux Foundation and relationship to GNOME Foundation
      • follow up with OIN – they list GNOME as a partner
    • Recruit others to help:
      • Figure out how to get a team started to get GNOME working more closely with governments.
      • find someone who can help create a list of recommended desktop apps that OpenLogic would put in their library for enterprise customers
      • Follow up with someone who had ideas for a GNOME project and wanted to know how to go about it
      • Automate things. In past lives I’ve found the best way to get tedious tasks automated is to give them to someone who (a) finds them tedious and (b) has the skills to automate them. Tasks that I think could be improved somehow by automation: (Let me know if you fit (a) and (b) and would like to give them a try.
        • Getting Friends of GNOME names onto the website.
        • Sending thank you notes to Friends of GNOME. (Could be done by CRM.)
        • Getting Friends of GNOME data into gnucash. (One of the board members is looking at this.)
        • Scrubbing confidential Friends of GNOME data from gnucash so we can publish the gnucash file.
        • Reimbursing contributors whose travel we pay. (While the travel committee is helping with receipts and reminders, it still takes Rosanna 20 minutes per wire transfer to transfer money to someone. That means it takes her several weeks of work time to reimburse everyone for GUADEC travel. Every year.)
        • Putting feedback we get through Friends of GNOME onto a website.
    • follow up with sys admin team about installing a CRM system for the GNOME Foundation (It would really help the board, Rosanna, myself and others working on contacts, sponsors and finances.) Dave Neary offered to install a CRM for us, so this might be more about picking the right one now.
    • follow up with the sys admin team on setting up better analytics for gnome.org so marketing can make better plans. (They are working on this one.)
    • follow up with International Cooperation group from the university where the Desktop Summit was housed (They’d like to work with us to promote free software in developing countries.)
    • Create policies for the GNOME Foundation to comply with new US nonprofit regulations. (Things like conflict of interest, travel, whistle blower, compensation and records retention.)

  • Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

    This year’s Gran Canaria Desktop Summit represented the first time the GNOME and KDE communities have co-located their annual conferences in the same location. 852 free software advocates from 46 countries gathered together last month to discuss and enhance the free desktop experience at the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.

    “The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a milestone not only for the KDE and GNOME communities, but also for the free desktop in general.” said Cornelius Schumacher, president of KDE e.V., “New collaboration efforts were started and existing ones revitalized. We already have seen results for example in the area of the semantic desktop, and on improving the specification processes on freedesktop.org. I’m sure we’ll see more results in the near future.”

    The summit accomplished its goal of increasing co-operation between GNOME and KDE to improve the Free Desktop experience. Throughout the conference there were many examples of successful collaboration including shared technologies, community co-operation and growth of the local free software community.

    “I was really excited to see all of the energy at the conference – 800 free desktop supporters in the same building!” said Vincent Untz, Director and Chairman of the GNOME Board. “I heard conversations about search technologies, recruiting developers and marketing. Both our communities benefited and I look forward to seeing the benefits passed on to GNOME users.”

    Shared Technology

    KDE and GNOME benefit from shared technologies in multimedia, metadata storage, desktop search, application messaging and hardware integration. These shared technologies provide users with improved integration and a consistent user experience. Discussions during the summit resulted in agreements to continue to work on shared technologies, shared interfaces and shared code. In particular, several working sessions around the freedesktop.org initiative resulted in clearer processes for sharing specifications and technologies which will accelerate the ability of both projects and the greater free desktop community to collaborate and communicate with other projects.

    Community Co-operation

    In the domains where KDE and GNOME share technology, global teams came together to work on more effective ways of collaborating. Members of both communities came together to discuss issues that affected desktop projects, from recruiting and maintaining bugsquad team members to free desktop marketing efforts to kernel technologies that affect both projects. Teams in areas as diverse as the bug squad, accessibility and multimedia teams shared experiences and knowledge, and resolved to work more closely together. The projects share many values like an interest in providing free accessibility to people around the world that can be accomplished better by working together.

    Local Free Software Community

    Co-locating GUADEC and Akademy resulted in a large number of key free software developers congregating in Gran Canaria. They attracted developers from related projects world wide and invigorated the local software community. GUADEC-es and Akademy-es took also place during the event, as an effort to increase the number of spanish developers involved. The devolpment of an introductory program in spanish for local students and developers allowed the a record number of local free software supporters showed up – over 300 free software supporters from the Canary Islands showed up to listen, participate and discuss free desktop issues with the GNOME and KDE communities. The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was supported by the local free software community which includes strong GNOME and KDE presence through GNOME Hispano and KDE España, including support from The Cabildo of Gran Canaria, both local universities (ULPGC and ULL), ESLIC, ASOLIF, and GULIC, among others.

    The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a success. The conversations that started at the summit will have an impact on the upcoming release of the GNOME and KDE desktops and will continue to foster cooperation between the GNOME and KDE communities. The communities are planning cross desktop hackfests to implement the ideas discussed at the summit. Free desktop users can expect to see the results of this conference in upcoming releases of the GNOME and KDE desktops.

    GNOME and KDE plan to join together again in future years to make sure they are working effectively together to share technologies and advance the free desktop. The cooperation and conversations that began between the KDE and GNOME communities will continue into the future and in events like hackfests throughout the year, but next year the conferences will be hosted separately. GUADEC and Akademy hope to see both GNOME and KDE developers at their events as their communities work more closely together on joint technologies.

    Both projects believe that the co-location of the GNOME conference GUADEC and the KDE conference Akademy was a successful event that brought the two communities together and they look forward to more co-located events in the years to come.

    For more information on the organizations mentioned in this press release:

    FAQ

    Why did you decide to co-locate in 2009?
    The GNOME and KDE communities decided to co-locate Akademy and GUADEC so that they could build the free desktop community and cooperate on technologies that make sense for both desktops.

    Why did you decide not to co-locate in 2010?
    It’s important to us to continue to build the GNOME and KDE brands. In particular, with the release of GNOME 3.0 coming soon, the GNOME community wants to make sure they can focus on that. Both communities want to co-locate again and hope to bring even more free desktop communities.

    Will you co-locate in the future?
    Yes. We are talking about co-locating events like hackfests now and plan to co-locate Akademy and GUADEC in a Desktop Summit in the future.

    Was the conference a success?
    Absolutely. The conference was a success for a community and technology perspective and was instrumental in furthering the free desktop movement.

    You said the co-location was a success but you’ve decided not to do it again, why?
    When we decided to co-locate GUADEC and Akademy we were unsure if it was something we’d do once or every year or every x number of years. We’ve decided it was a success and we’d like to do it again in the future, but not next year. It’s important to us to continue to build the GNOME and KDE brands. In particular, with the release of GNOME 3.0 coming soon, the GNOME community wants to make sure they can focus on that. We will co-locate again in the future.

    Where will GUADEC and Akademy be next year?
    We don’t know yet but the call for bids will be going out this week.

    Media Enquiries

  • Friends of GNOME Update

    In the month of June we raised $1,530, for a total of $20,483 since January 1, 2009.

    Great news:

    • We passed the $20,000 mark which was our original goal for all of 2009!

    Good news:

    • July 2009 is much better than all other July’s in documented history.

    OK news:

    • Numbers held steady with June.

  • Stormy’s Update: Week of July 27th.

    The GNOME Accessibility team will be using some of their earmarked funds to have a booth at 2010 CSUN – set up by Eitan Isaacson. I think this is great as it’s a way to reach users who may not already be using a free desktop. Accessibility is an area we are good at and an area our sponsors are willing to invest in, so we should leverage that strength to bring the benefits of the free desktop to more people.

    Requested status reports from teams for the 2009 Q2 quarterly report and have 8 of 14 of them on time! With two more promised today. (Which considering this was the first time we’ve done this and I didn’t give them very much warning at all, is awesome!) Got updates from the Bugsquad, localization team, GNOME Marketing, web team, usability team, GNOME Accessibility, documentation team and art team. Missing updates from the release team (promised), sysadmin team (promised), GNOME Mobile, local events, membership committee and finance. (Trying to get this one out by 8/15. In the future these should go out no later than one month after the quarter.)

    Talked to Funambol about putting their GNOME related grants on the GNOME jobs wiki page and doing an interview about their experience with grants.

    Worked on recruiting someone to lead case study activity.

    Followed up with the GNOME Mobile member company looking to get more involved.

    Apologized personally to the journalists whose travel we were offered to fund to GUADEC (through the Cabildo) but never actually bought their tickets. The board will also follow up.

    Talked to one of our current sponsors about the benefit of GNOME Mobile to them.

    Talked to a different sponsor about an issue they were concerned with and wanted our input on.

    Presented/talked to the Colorado Springs Open Source group around businesses that can be created around free software. Used the GNOME ecosystem as an example. I met a lot of interesting people there including Michael Hammel who wrote a couple of GIMP books.

    Found some GNOME folks to respond to an invitation to the 2nd International Symposium on Computers and Arabic Language forwarded by Richard Stallman. (Thanks to Dave Neary for the pointers to how to find the right people.)

    Got first set of GUADEC 2008 finances this morning.

    Met with Scott Weiss who is in charge of the Symbian UI. We talked about the challenges of having a UI and allowing partners to differentiate in the UI space. He had some interesting things they’d done to get UI feedback, like submissions that had to include a screenshot, posted unattributed to a Symbian UI blog under creative commons and all advertised over twitter. The UI council then picked the top 10 and they voted on those.

    Chatted briefly with Peter Brown, the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation about FSF and GNOME Foundation and ideas for future projects we could work together on.

    Filled out the Google Adwords Grant Application – it could take six months to be approved. Thanks to Claus Schwarm who worked on the sample ads, keywords, audience and slogan!

    Found companies for the Desktop panel I am chairing at OpenSource World – now need to identify individuals.

    Figured out how to contribute to the new GNOME web pages thanks to an email from Paul Cutler but haven’t actually contributed anything yet.

    Started sending out personal thank you’s to everyone who contributes to Friends of GNOME within 48 hours. (I read that after 48 hours people see the thank you as a new solicitation.)

    Proposed a final draft for the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit press release that will hopefully go out this week.

    My priorities for this week: (Too many repeats. Hoping for bigger blocks of uninterrupted time this week to get some of them done.)

    • Meeting with GNOME Asia Summit planning committee.
    • Thank all the Desktop Summit sponsors (Dave Neary compiled a list of all the press and blogs that came out of the Desktop Summit!)
    • Continue to work on recruiting someone to lead case study activity:
      • Publish case studies/success stories from the foundation (This was an idea that came up on the marketing list and Novell has already sent us a great GNOME customer story that we can use.)
      • ask other sponsors to help Sun, Red Hat, Canonical for customer stories
    • summarize advisory board feedback for foundation list
    • summarize advisory board feedback for advisory board (close to ready)
    • get feedback from advisory board members on advisory board meeting at GUADEC (I think I’m going to need to ping them individually.)
    • create wiki page for GNOME press team
    • get agreement signed by GNOME folks for the work Canonical is funding on bugzilla for GNOME (Missing one signature – from the sys admin team.)
    • finalize 401K plan with attorneys (pinged attorney again)
    • Start marketing list thread about raising advisory board fees and the communication around that

    More stuff that needs to be done:

    • Meeting with Paul Cutler to talk about updating GNOME marketing wiki pages. (We didn’t meet in person as his trip to Colorado was canceled.)
    • blog about travel committee – they did an excellent job with the Desktop Summit
    • follow up with people who had good ideas at GUADEC that they mentioned to me
    • Talk to Jim Zemlin about Moblin & Linux Foundation and relationship to GNOME Foundation
    • GNOME 3.0 launch plans? Include advisory board companies
    • follow up with OIN – they list GNOME as a partner (Dave Neary met with them at OSCON and followed up with an email)
    • Follow up with someone who had ideas for a GNOME project and wanted to know how to go about it
    • talk to Mozilla about their  Accessibility Strategy
    • figure out how to work with Spanish government
    • Fill out paperwork for 401K insurance
    • continue to ping about automating Friends of GNOME data input process (paypal to gnucash to webpage)
    • Finance stuff (We have a treasurer and vice-treasurer now!):
      • add checks to Friends of GNOME spreadsheet
      • Work on budget with new treasurer
    • Figure out how to get product news from News Foundation blog to press and advisory board (will probably give to press team when it is created)
    • find someone to help create a GNOME slideset template
    • Amazon mp3 download uses GTK – contact them about sponsorship
    • write up blurbs about why companies sponsor GNOME (or find people to help) – for our website (Maybe someone would like to help with sponsors?)
    • find someone who can help create a list of recommended desktop apps that OpenLogic would put in their library for enterprise customers
    • GNOME Foundation sponsorship plan like premium sponsorship – put in wiki
    • follow up with sys admin team about installing a CRM system for the GNOME Foundation (It would really help the board, Rosanna, myself and others working on contacts, sponsors and finances.)
    • follow up with the sys admin team on setting up better analytics for gnome.org so marketing can make better plans. (They are working on this one.)
    • follow up with International Cooperation group from the university where the Desktop Summit was housed (They’d like to work with us to promote free software in developing countries.)
    • send finance update out to advisory board (I’ll be doing this once a month.)
    • write up notes from marketing BOF at the Desktop Summit
    • Help Rosanna recruit someone to help automate some more of the Friends’ process – like getting Friends of GNOME donor names on the website as they come in
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