Tag: board

GNOME Foundation welcomes newly elected Board of Directors

The GNOME foundation is happy to welcome its new GNOME Board of Directors who were recently elected
for the 2014-2015 term.

The new board consists of the following new members: Karen Sandler, Jeff Fortin Tam, Andrea Veri while Ekaterina Gerasimova, Sriram Ramkrishna, Tobias Mueller and Marina Zhurakhinskaya continues to serve. All Board members are key contributors and together represents the diversity of the GNOME community .

“The very first feelings I had when I was elected on the Board of Directors have not only been a great joy and pleasure but also a strong motivation and spirit of responsibility for what concerns the decisions and dedication every Board member should be enlightened with during his yearly commitment” -Andrea Veri

Serving on the board is very a challenging task that involve many difficult decisions, we wish the new board the best of luck in the the upcoming year.

The Foundation wants to express a special thanks to the outgoing board members: Andreas Nilsson who served as President, Joanmarie Diggs who served as Vice President and Emmanuele Bassi who served as Secretary. We also want to thank the candidates who were not elected this time, as this was a particularly heated election, with a lot of great discussion about the future of GNOME.

The new board will officially take their positions at the upcoming GUADEC conference that takes place 25 July – 01 August in Strasbourg, France.

The GNOME Board of Directors is elected annually by the foundation members, every foundation member are eligible to run for the board. More info about the board are available on the foundation website.

Interview with incoming Board Member Seif Lotfy

Today’s interview is from Seif Lotfy, one of the new GNOME Foundation board members.

Where do you live/work?
Darmstadt, 30km south of Frankfurt Germany.

Why is open source/free software important to you?
I believe open source/free software promotes innovation, due to its nature of crowd sourcing.

How/when/why did you become involved in GNOME?
I started using GNOME in 2004. I had SUSE installed at that point. Later I switched to Ubuntu. I got involved trying to fix a bug in Gimmie that was keeping me away from using it. So I sat down and looked at the python code which seemed to me like pseudo code. 3 weeks later (after learning python) I had my first patch and Alex Graveley motivated me to fix more issues.

Why did you run for the GNOME Foundation Board?
I wanted to contribute to GNOME in more ways then just code, as well as push for more visibility of the board in the community.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term on the board?
I hope to improve and find ways to make GNOME more interesting for its current (as well as potential future) sponsors. Also I am looking forward to developing initiatives to improve the communication within the community

Do you think GNOME is heading in the right direction? Why or why not?
While I think the direction (GNOME OS) is very noble, I fear that maybe it was not thought out properly. I hope to be able to assess the long and short term implications with the rest of the board this year.

Have you attended GUADEC in the past? If so, when/where?
My first GUADEC was during Desktop Summit 2009 in Gran Canaria, it was really exciting. I have been to every following GUADEC (Desktop Summit) ever since.

What are you looking forward to most at GUADEC?
Meeting up with fellow developers that I communicate mostly online. Also enjoy outings after the hackfests.

Any other thoughts on GUADEC and/or GNOME?
GUADEC has always been awesome, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon. And there wouldn’t be GUADEC without GNOME.

Interview with incoming GNOME Foundation Board Member Tobias Mueller

Our next interview comes from one of the new members of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Tobias Mueller.

Where do you live/work?
I live in Hamburg, in the lovely north of Germany.

Why is open source/free software important to you?
I believe that Free Software makes the world a better place. Also, as I am a bit of a computer security person, it is absolutely crucial to be able to see how the software in question works and be able to eventually fix issues (or have someone fix them).

How/when/why did you become involved in GNOME?
I’ve been using GNOME since I actively started using Free Software, probably back in 2002. I started to follow it more and more until I became greatly involved as a Summer of Code student in 2007.

Why did you run for the GNOME Foundation Board?
I have been around GNOME for about 5 years now and while I enjoy being in the community I also want to progress within GNOME and take on new responsibilities.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term on the board?
I hope to push the revamp of the bylaws and enable people to work together more effectively.

Do you think GNOME is heading in the right direction? Why or why not?
I think GNOME is doing well so far, but it must not rest (decadence anyone?). We have very smart people in our community and we should enable them to get awesome stuff done for both GNOME and the world of Free Software generally.

Have you attended GUADEC in the past? If so, when/where?
My first GUADEC was the one in Birmingham in 2007.

What are you looking forward to most at GUADEC?
To see friends again and have nice discussions.

Any other thoughts on GUADEC and/or GNOME?
GNOME is a great community and GUADEC is a good place to get in touch. Sometimes though, it might not be comfortable for newcomers to chime in. I still remember myself being too shy to talk to some great GNOME people. So while I recommend young GNOMErs not to be shy, maybe a “This is GNOME” introductory session for new GNOME people might be a good idea.

Welcome to a new GNOME Board of Directors

The GNOME Foundation Membership and the GNOME Elections Committee this week announced the final results for GNOME’s 2012-2013 Board of Directors. The winners are:

  • Emmanuele Bassi
  • Joanmarie Diggs
  • Seif Lotfy
  • Shaun McCance
  • Tobias Mueller
  • Andreas Nilsson
  • Bastien Nocera

The new Board will begin officially in their leadership roles next month.

Karen Sandler, the GNOME Foundation’s Executive Director commented, “All of the candidates this year were exeptional and it’s extremely exciting to have such a strong group of Directors ready to steer the Foundation. On behalf of the GNOME Community, many thanks to the outgoing Directors — Brian Cameron, Ryan Lortie, Stormy Peters, and Germán Póo-Caamaño — who have given so much to the Foundation and to the GNOME project.”

For this election, there were 375 registered voters, 186 of whom sent in valid ballots. The GNOME Board serves on an annual cycle and the Elections Committee handles the voting logistics. The detailed results and a list of all votes have been also been published.

GUADEC Feedback (we want it!)

The GNOME Board of Directors, as mentioned briefly during this year’s GUADEC closing ceremony, would like to invite you to give us your feedback about this year’s (and possibly previous year’s) GUADEC.

We’ve already received some feedback for this year, and we’ll be collating it into a Wiki page, which we’ll make public as soon as reasonably acceptable.

The feedback page on the Wiki will be editorialised, and the ideas and comments anonymous, unless you specifically request that they are not.

So tell us how good or bad this year’s GUADEC was at board@gnome.org

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