User:Bjensen/sandbox/Board 2012-05

The nomination period is CLOSED. The nomination period ended at 23:59:59 UTC on May 15, 2012.

Board 2012 F18 elections

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).

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

Eric Christensen (Sparks)

Introduction

• Goal statement:
  • Being a contributor to Fedora has been a lot of fun. I've seen areas that needed help and tried to fill the niches. To me, one of the biggest things the Fedora Board can do is to be more open and more vocal. A niche that needs to be filled, in my opinion, is documenting and publicizing the way the Board does business including specifically their responsibilities and the responsibilities of other governing bodies. This will help contributors better understand the role of the Board and shed more sunshine on their workings.
  • I also feel it is important to make Fedora available on more platforms including for the ARM processor. Making Fedora available for more devices means more experimentation and, hopefully, more contributors!
  • Lastly, everyone should be helping to make it easier for potential contributors to become fully integrated contributors. Many hands make light work and many ideas make great releases!

• Past work summary:
  • I've been a Fedora contributor since 2007. Most of my work has been within the Docs Project helping to get the many guides ready for each release. I served as the Docs Project Leader for several releases, compiled and authored much of the Security Guide, and reworked the Accessibility Guide to include more up-to-date information for those that may need such services. I also worked with the team that released the new Docs Project website which now contains all of our documentation in a way that made it easy to use for those searching for information and easy to update for those trying to publish their bits (it's accessible too!).
  • I helped get the Fedora GPG key-server stood up to make it easier for contributors to find GPG keys and submit their own.
  • I've also worked with the Ambassadors, Admin team, Marketing team, and other teams over the years while working on projects that crossed team lines.

• Future plans:
  • I hope to be a representative of all contributors of Fedora. Trying to find ways to make life easier for developers, writers, translators, people that file bugs, and everyone that does anything to make Fedora great is very high on my list.
  • I don't think it can be stressed enough that Fedora should be fun! I will strive to reward those that deserve it, attempt to change ways that make life difficult, and generally try to be helpful to all.

• Anything else you want to add:
  • I have personally found Fedora to be a great place to contribute. Most everyone has been incredibly helpful and quite flexible when I was working on various projects that required help from other teams. I hope to extend that same thoughtfulness that others extend to me. I think I'm pretty even-tempered and fair to all who I work with.

Sparks 02:47, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Questionnaire

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor? Why this post?:
  • I wish to document and standardize more of what the Board does to not only shed more sunshine on the board but to make it easier for those within the Fedora Project to better understand what the Board does and to increase efficiency. Being a contributor and not a member of the Board, I feel that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get full access to the activities of the Board.

• What are your goals for your term on the board (in more detail)?:
  • I would like to document the Board processes and look for places where visibility can be increased.
  • I would like to increase resources for secondary architectures, specifically ARM, to allow more development and experimentation with Fedora.
  • Lastly, I'd like to implement a process for either silently or publicly praising contributors that go above and beyond.

• What do you think are the problems and challenges Fedora is currently facing? Do you have solutions for these issues?:
  • I see a fracturing between individual projects and SIGs within Fedora away from the cohesiveness of the entire Project. I'd like to work to bring all projects together to aim toward a common goal with each group picking up their piece of the puzzle. I certainly don't have all the answers but hopefully helping to push towards a well-oiled machine will help it come to fruition.

• 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?:
  • Make it easier for contributors to contribute. Identify our audience and try to entice that group to help make Fedora better without isolating users and contributors that aren't specifically in that target audience.

• 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 feel that while progress has been made to increase the visibility of the Board and their actions that improvements can always be made. Certainly the IRC meetings being held in a public area and have minutes and transcripts available on the wiki are great but that only incorporates half of the meetings that are had. Phone meetings should be recorded and publish those recordings, in addition to the meeting minutes, so that people can trust the published minutes. I would also make the few meetings that occur in person, such at FUDCons, available to more people by holding them out of turn of other classes, held in larger rooms, and video recorded.
  • I feel it would also be good to add a page to the Fedora website that not only included links to the meeting minutes but also listed board members, their contact information, and even their pictures and bios. Not in the wiki where it looks bland but on the colorful website. Perhaps having leaders of all the projects and SIGs would be a good thing there as well.
  • Lastly I would encourage the leaders of the projects and SIGs to be in attendance in the Board meetings, if possible, to serve as eyes and ears into the Project as a whole for better visibility, not to replace individual contributors who would always be welcome.

Peter Robinson (pbrobinson)

Introduction

• Goal statement:
• Past work summary:
• Future plans:
• Anything else you want to add:

Questionnaire

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected coontributor? Why this post?:
  • It allows me to contribute back to the project in a more central way than being a contributor and to contribute ideas and direction in a quicker and more direct way. It also allows me to continue on in the work I've being doing up until now including working to improve Fedora on cheap devices in particular working to have ARM accepted and promoted to a primary arch. In my last term I worked as part of the ARM team with FESCo to get a set of guidelines for promotion of a new architecture to primary.

• What are your goals for your term on the board (in more detail)?:
  • In no particular order:
    • Continued expansion of support within Fedora to mobile and low power devices such as ARM to ensure Fedora can lead in the ever expanding mobile and low powered device space and allow Fedora to assist others to innovate in this massive arena.
    • Allowing all groups that wish to use Fedora to be able to do so as simply and easily as possible.
    • Ensuring all groups work together nicely and think outside their own box and to impact other groups in a good way rather than a “my way or the highway” attitude.

• What do you think are the problems and challenges Fedora is currently facing? Do you have solutions for these issues?:
  • There's a number of challenges facing Fedora and there's certainly problems.
    • One of the issues you can get whenever you put a large amount of people of different interests and diversity together. Having travelled to a number of FUDCons and chatted with people online I know Fedora has a wide and diverse community and that is a great thing as it's what makes Fedora a thriving and diverse community. I would like to see the community be more aware of differences of others within our great community whether that be religion, cultural, sex or even desktop UX of choice. Whether it be on IRC when chatting, in mailing list discustions or face to face at a conference there should be no reason for people to be abused, objectified, yelled at or worse. I don't believe we should support people in our community that known to do as such. We can do a lot more to improve this.
      From a technical perspective there's a number of things we can do to improve the community. The Fedora Engineering team is leading the charge in some of this such as the great mailing list mock ups, I'm sure community members have more ideas. *** From a technical perspective there's always a lot of challenges and things can be improved including simplication of some of our processes, making the documentation easier to find and read for new contributors and easier to understand when they do read it.

• 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?:
  • I think Fedora has very good visibility already but I'm not sure everyone relises it and we can certainly improve that. For example Fedora runs on the 2.5 odd million OLPC XOs that are currently deployed and the couple of million already scheduled to be deployed this year. They're probably the widest single deployment of Fedora and will also be one of the first products to ship with Fedora ARM. I also don't believe we've done enough promotion of the work we've done with the Raspberry Pi. I'm sure these examples are just a few of where Fedora is used and where we're leading the curve that people both within and more importantly outside the community realise.
  • I think we can also do a lot to improve the community involvement for non native english speakers. You just have to look at the size of the two FUDCon APACs to see the size of the community already involved and I'm sure they're just the tip of the iceburg.

• 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?:
  • The communication of the board can certainly be improved. I think this is the case for all areas of the community though including but not limited to FESCo and FAmSCo too. I don't think there's a single fix for the communication issue, the board over time has tried a number of communication methods some more effect than others but none were perfect. I think it would be good for the board members to communicate more by blog posts as it's a means of all parts of the community to read when they get time.

Nick Bebout (nb)

Introduction

• Goal statement:
• Past work summary:
• Future plans:
• Anything else you want to add:

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.

• 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.

• 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.

-- 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.