GNOME Foundation Board of Directors time again

[Some intro for those not following Planet GNOME:]

So this is the time of the year that candidacy statements come in for the GNOME foundation board of directors. Having been receiving those for a few years now, mostly from the same set of people every year, it was getting less and less important to read them carefully and choose accordingly, but this year it was different.

Thanks to Dave Neary who brought up the issue of reducing the board size, the foundation-list enjoyed an unusual, yet healthy, traffic last month. As a result, the board size was reduced (after a referendum) from 11 to 7. As a positive side effect, the election atmosphere is already different, in a good way.

As greg was saying on IRC, the candidacy turnout is pretty good, specially for seven positions. But more interesting to me are candidates like Quim Gil and Anne Østergaard, who are both very strong matches for the kind of people we need in the board IMHO. It may not be obvious, but an ideal board of directors is probably not a board of celebrities, and having non-super-hackers in the board is probably an step in the right direction. Not that I believe super-hackers do not make good board members, not at all. Just that super-hackers are more needed in their hacking, or their jobs. Either they are too busy to spend enough time on the board, or they have enough time to spend on the board, but the project as a whole can benefit more if they spend that time on leading their own projects. It doesn't mean that super-hackers are the only busy people on the planet, but it is true that we are out of enough super-hackers. There is one and only one Owen Taylor. Even though he makes a perfect chair at the board, there are multiple other places that he suites quite as well (and much better) that no one else fits.

That's why I think voting for people who know how to run a board is a better strategy than voting for those who have better goals or are better hackers. My two cents.

That said, I'm also running, not because I think I make a good board member, no I don't (think so). But if GNOME is our little family, I don't mind offering what I can do, at any level. I don't see myself elected this year, but more of like as a way to get started in getting involved in the project on levels other than hacking.

[Other than that, attended the college puzzle challenge on Saturday. Twelve hours of puzzle solving in a team of four. We just did nine. So much fun.]

¶ 1:01 AM