Stormy’s Update: Month of May 2010

Attended the fantastic GNOME Marketing Hackfest. Got there and back – on the way home we took a six hour detour – making it a more than 24 hour trip home – and flew by the volcano. For something that has caused so much trouble, it’s not very impressive from an airplane.

Put together a survey after the hackfest for attendees in order to help the GNOME Foundation and travel committee to make more informed decisions.

Attended board meetings. Met regularly with Rosanna. Met regularly with Brian.

Encouraged people to apply for the GNOME Board of Directors. Thanks to everyone who applied. Although it’s a lot of work, it’s an interesting and rewarding job!

Had GNOME Advisory Board meeting on finances.

Helped German update the budget. Discussed 2H (second half) budget plan.

Talked to Marina about launching the Outreach Program for Women in the southern hemisphere.

Worked with Orbitz to see if they have an account or processes that could help the GNOME Travel Committee.

Continued to ping GUADEC sponsors and work out details. Almost all finalized. Kept up on a few GUADEC details and issues, including sponsored travel plans.

Met with Jonathan Markow from Jasig and discussed how we do things and if there were opportunities to work together. Jasig makes open source software projects for higher education.

Booked travel for most of my trips this summer. Still missing a few that will be paid for by the events. Bummed that tickets to Europe are so expensive this summer as it will make it much harder for us adn companies to sponsor all the folks we’d like to see at GUADEC.

Submitted title and abstract for LinuxCon keynote.

Attended a couple of the GNOME.Asia planning meetings. It’s coming along nicely this year. You should plan on attending. 🙂

Met with James Vasile, our attorney from the SFLC, to talk about a few things.

Met with a few advisory board members to discuss projects, GUADEC, issues, etc.

Met with a potential sponsor.

Pushed for a GNOME technologies roadmap process.

Put together the list of 2009 donors for the Friends of GNOME page! Due to a Paypal “feature” this was a very manual process. Thanks to Vincent Untz for posting them. If your name should be there and it’s missing, let me know. Thanks to all our Friends both known and anonymous!

Kept the conversation moving about how best to use the Nokia money to sponsor GNOME apps on Maemo/MeeGo.

Worked with Brian Cameron and the sys admin team to launch the GNOME Developing World mailing list. If you are interested in how we can promote GNOME, the free desktop, in the developing world, please join the list.

Talked to AEGIS and the GNOME Accessibility team about having a GNOME A11y Hackfest atAEGIS conference.

Changed Amazon Affiliate accounts to pay out less often as the international checks cost quite a bit of money to deposit.

Worked at finding people to represent GNOME at events. It was more difficult than I expected and after several conversations (including some at the marketing hackfest) we will be launching a GNOME Ambassadors program to try to improve this process and get better GNOME representation.

May 31st is a US holiday.

(Remembered why I normally do these weekly and not monthly! It’s hard to go back and remember all the things you did and discussed for an entire month.)

Stormy’s Update: Week of April 26, 2010

GNOME Asia meeting. The GNOME Asia team is planning GNOME Asia 2010. While the exact event hasn’t been announced, I can tell you it will most likely be in Taiwan and they are already looking for potential speakers.

I attended several GNOME A11y & HFOSS meetings. We are working with several universities this summer that will have students working on GNOME a11y projects. The GNOME a11y team is coming up with potential projects and mentors for the students to pick from.

Board meeting. The board met. The minutes will come out soon. Brian’s doing a great job of taking minutes and making sure we all track and update our action items.

Rosanna. Met with Rosanna for our regular weekly meeting but the meeting was eclipsed by our discussion of the fake check that someone tried to cash against the GNOME Foundation. Everything’s fine but we are working with our bank to make things as secure and safe as possible.

Silicon Flatirons Patents and Free and Open Source Software event. Spent Thursday afternoon and evening at the CU law school at a legal event about patents and free and open source software. I was on a panel that talked about some interesting data that shows most startup software companies don’t pursue patents but they think VCs value them. The VC on our panel, Jason Mendelson, said he didn’t.

1:1 with adboard member concerned about GNOME 3.

Wrapped up a few last minute details around the marketing hackfest. Many thanks to Agustín Benito Bethencourt, Ignacio Correas, Alberto Capella for organizing it. Thanks to the Zaragoza Municipality, Aragon Regional Governmen, Technological Institute of Aragon (ITA), ASOLIF, CESLA and the GNOME Foundation for sponsoring.

Travel to Zaragoza for the marketing hackfest.

Collabora Joins the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board

UK software consultants to help in mission to create a free software computing platform.

May 5, 2010 — UK-based open source software consultancy Collabora is joining the GNOME Foundation advisory board today. A long time supporter of GNOME and member of the GNOME community, Collabora contributes directly to GNOME projects like Empathy, PiTiVi, Totem and Epiphany.

The GNOME Foundation works to further the goal of the GNOME project — to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free software. On the advisory board, Collabora will work with the GNOME Board of Directors to help set vision and direction for the GNOME Foundation.

“We are proud of the work we’ve done in the past on GNOME projects and are happy to join the advisory board and contribute to the GNOME Foundation as well,” said Robert McQueen, director and co-founder at Collabora Ltd. “We’re passionate about open source and we look forward to the chance to help shape the future direction of the GNOME project alongside the other advisory board participants.”

“As a member of the GNOME community and the employer of key GNOME contributors, we are delighted to welcome Collabora to our advisory board,” said Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. “They are already a key part of the GNOME community and their perspective on the advisory board will be of huge benefit to both the GNOME project and the other companies represented on the board.”

Collabora was a founding member of GNOME Mobile in 2007 and their technologies form key parts of the GNOME Mobile stack. In addition they work on many technologies that benefit the GNOME project like GStreamer, Telepathy, Farsight, D-Bus, X.Org and Webkit Gtk+. Their work is key in realising the GNOME vision of a free, accessible desktop and mobile platform for everyone.

“I’ve enjoyed working with Collabora since they joined the GNOME community, and they’ve made some significant contributions over the past few years, so it’s great to see them joining the GNOME Foundation too.” says Michael Meeks, Linux Desktop Architect at Novell, Inc. “Their frank insight and dynamism will be most welcome in the advisory board.”

GNOME technology forms a key part of mobile platforms such as Nokia’s Maemo, Intel’s Moblin and their merger to form the Linux Foundation’s MeeGo platform, launched at Mobile World Congress 2010. Companies like Collabora work with the GNOME community and the platform companies to deliver free and open source solutions. Members of the GNOME Advisory Board help the GNOME Foundation work with partner companies effectively and get the chance to collaborate with each other on their use of GNOME technologies.

About Collabora Ltd

Headquartered in Cambridge, UK with a network of developers worldwide, Collabora Ltd. is a software consultancy specializing in delivering the benefits of open source to the commercial world. Collabora combines years of open source software expertise with hard-won experience from working in the mobile and consumer electronics industries. They help clients effectively take open source technologies from the community to real-world consumers, re-using existing components to reduce time to market and focus on product differentiation.

For more information please visit www.collabora.co.uk.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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