The following elections will take place in May/June 2012:
- Fedora Project Board (three seats)
- FESCo (Engineering) (five seats)
- FAmSCo (Ambassadors) (seven seats)
- Fedora 18 Name (separate schedule from the committee elections)
All dates and times noted are UTC time.
Board 2012 F18 Elections Run-off
This is the nomination page for Fedora Board elections. There is a separate page for the history of Board seats.
In May 2012 there are three seats up for election. The seats open are seat E3 (currently held by Rex Dieter), E4 (currently held by Jon Stanley), and E5 (currently held by Peter Robinson). In the F18 election Peter Robinson re-elected and Eric Christensen was elected. The thrid seat resulted in a tie between Nick Bebout and Robert 'Bob' Jensen.
Introduction
- Goal statement:
- Past work summary:
- Future plans:
- Anything else you want to add:
Questionnaire
The community has submitted the questions that it wants you to answer. The list of questions is here: F18_elections_questionnaire#Fedora_Project_Board
Please do not answer them on the wiki. Please email your answers to Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD" at ankursinha AT fedoraproject.org by May 22 2012. All the candidates' answers will be collected and put up together before the town halls.
- What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor? Why this post?
- What are your goals for your term on the board (in more detail)?
- What do you think are the problems and challenges Fedora is currently facing? Do you have solutions for these issues?
- What do you think can be done to attract more people to join the Fedora community as contributors? Do you think Fedora's visibility needs improvement? If yes, do you have any ideas on how?
- Do you think the issues the Board discusses and the decisions the Board makes are effectively and efficiently communicated throughout the Fedora community? If you believe communication between the Board, the Fedora community, and even the public at large can be enhanced, what first steps or ideas would you propose?
Candidates
Nick Bebout (nb)
Introduction
- Goal statement:
- I don't have a lot of specific goals. I want to continue the current good work that the Fedora board is doing, and help in any way I can.
- Past work summary:
- I'm a member of the infrastructure, ambassador, docs, irc-support-sig and website teams. I'm also a packager and a member of provenpackager.
- Future plans:
- I plan to use my knowledge of how different teams in Fedora work and what could help them to better help the board help others. I think the board's role is planning and empowerment, not micromanaging.
- Anything else you want to add:
- Not that I can think of.
nb 03:30, 24 May 2012 UTC
Questionnaire
- What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor? Why this post?:
- What are your goals for your term on the board (in more detail)?:
- What do you think are the problems and challenges Fedora is currently facing? Do you have solutions for these issues?:
- What do you think can be done to attract more people to join the Fedora community as contributors? Do you think Fedora's visibility needs improvement? If yes, do you have any ideas on how?:
- Do you think the issues the Board discusses and the decisions the Board makes are effectively and efficiently communicated throughout the Fedora community? If you believe communication between the Board, the Fedora community, and even the public at large can be enhanced, what first steps or ideas would you propose?:
Robert 'Bob' Jensen (EvilBob)
Introduction
- Goal statement:
- Work with the current FPL and the others on the Fedora Board to make sure we continue to respect the Four Foundations, or return to respecting them in the opinion of some.
To make sure that the community knows they are being heard via active two way communication. To acknowledge what the community is saying by nodding your head is not enough. If the board is doing something or talking about something I want the community to know and I will want feedback from the community. The community elected Board members are your appointed voices and need to be accessable and accountable to you. Fedora is built on what I call "The Community Concept" in the recent past it seems that this concept is still failing, lets get it back on the right track.
An issue that the Board and Fedora are facing now and in the near future is the issue of Release Naming. I personally had suggested for years that naming be dropped, I have never hidden this fact. I feel BM and SC are examples of how community naming can go wrong without set specific guidelines. I now look forward to helping the community establish clear and specific guidelines making them fun for everyone and relevent to Fedora in general.
- Work with the current FPL and the others on the Fedora Board to make sure we continue to respect the Four Foundations, or return to respecting them in the opinion of some.
- Past work summary:
- In the past eight and a half years I have been involved in many parts of the Fedora Project and the Fedora Community.
- Most know I am one of the founders of the Fedora Unity Project, this project has given to the community things like FedoraSolved.org, Re-Spins of Fedora releases, and the first LiveCDs.
- As part of Fedora Unity I was named as a Fedora Award winner in 2007.
- Fedora Documentation Project including sitting on it's Steering Committee and being the Editor-In-Chief of the Release Notes.
- Fedora Ambassadors including sitting on FAMSCo, early on I was involved in Fedora Marketing and Websites.
- In the past eight and a half years I have been involved in many parts of the Fedora Project and the Fedora Community.
- Current work:
- I started the Fedora Amateur Radio SIG by helping package ham radio apps for Fedora.
- I am actively involved in the "IRC Support SIG" trying to improve the user experience and change how we have done things wrong in the past and in some cases still are.
- I also have two projects on Fedora Hosted, Reflector and Multiboot Media Creator. Honestly development of both of these has stalled but hopes are high that things can get rolling again.
- Future plans:
- This is the hardest question for me to answer, it forces me to look at things that I may have done wrong in the past... My passionate approach to this community has previously led to misunderstandings. I have been and will continue to work on my communication skills to prevent misunderstandings in the community. I will strive to use a restrained passion to bring the community closer to the board.
- Anything else you want to add:
- Some suggest that I am unpopular, In the past I asked the community to step up and endorce me before I would run they did so I am clearly not unpopular with everyone. Why am I unpopular with some? Because I asked people to endorce me, I was attacked by some for doing this. I speak the truth as I see it, some disagree with me, some think I am too brutal... some can't handle the truth. I have been known to say the right things the wrong way, I'm human.
The Fedora Board is not about popularity, it's about making Fedora better, stronger, the best community in the sea of many distros. We do not have to be "First" in the market (the most popular on distrowatch or any other metric), Fedora's First is about innovation, First to market if you will. That innovation like it or not is what brought most of us to Fedora and now we complain about new things in each release... We have to work together, splintering Fedora as a distro does us no good as a community. - Something I think we have to acknowledge is the fact Red Hat has a huge investment in Fedora, how does that impact what we do in the future? I think Red Hat needs to be respected, they do a lot for us, some even think that without Red Hat there is no Fedora. How does respecting Red Hat's needs impact our foundation of First? Red Hat has to deal with many internal and external pressures to do their best to fit their client's needs, how do these fit with Fedora's needs? I am not sure at this time how I feel about it as there are so many questions to think about, if elected I expect you to tell me how you feel about them and essentially how you want me to vote on topics that come up. I want to be your voice, anyone that knows me well knows I can play "devil's advocate" sticking up for something even if I personally disagree with it.
- Some suggest that I am unpopular, In the past I asked the community to step up and endorce me before I would run they did so I am clearly not unpopular with everyone. Why am I unpopular with some? Because I asked people to endorce me, I was attacked by some for doing this. I speak the truth as I see it, some disagree with me, some think I am too brutal... some can't handle the truth. I have been known to say the right things the wrong way, I'm human.
-- Bob
Bjensen 23:56, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Questionnaire
- What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an un-elected contributor? Why this post?:
- This is a question that belongs in other elections as I don't believe the board or it's members should have an agenda but to deal with issues as they come up in the community. I will be better empowered to represent the community and its issues, making sure that the issues are heard, and acted on.
- What are your goals for your term on the board (in more detail)?:
- A goal for me has always been to increase communication between the board and the community as a whole. How can this be done? Well some ideas I have are neutral blog posts on behalf of the board, Facebook postings, IRC, perhaps twitter. Not everyone reads the mailing lists, not everyone follows Fedora Planet, the board needs to reach out beyond those two mediums alone.
- What do you think are the problems and challenges Fedora is currently facing? Do you have solutions for these issues?:
- Contributor retention is an issue, the "naming fiasco" is another I see on the surface. The issue of revising the naming process is vital, it is polarizing the community and this needs to be resolved. The contributor retention issue is covered below.
- What do you think can be done to attract more people to join the Fedora community as contributors? Do you think Fedora's visibility needs improvement? If yes, do you have any ideas on how?:
- Before we can draw in new contributors we need to retain and engage the current contributors by making the board accessable so we don't lose them for reasons related to the project. Fedora the community needs to encourage input and involvement from the upstream projects that are part of Fedora the distro. These people need to be approached directly to make this happen. I would also like to be in a position to gather suggestions from both the community, and the relevant SIGs in order to push forward and act on the issue of low contributor recruitment rather than sit back and whine about low contributor recruitment.
- Do you think the issues the Board discusses and the decisions the Board makes are effectively and efficiently communicated throughout the Fedora community? If you believe communication between the Board, the Fedora community, and even the public at large can be enhanced, what first steps or ideas would you propose?:
- I already covered this in my goals statement in my bio and in the above question. I will reitterate that there are many more, and more effective means of communication than merely mailing lists. Facebook, Twitter and Blogging are all up-to-date, real-time information and feedback delivery formats. I'd like to see (and be a part of) their deployment as board communication strategies.