Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

Hi Jeff,

I am genuinely not sure whether GNOME has this already but given that the board has stated it is quite overstretched by the current workload on them. I get the impression some tasks tend to be delegated more on a need to know/do basis and that this may be contributing to a heavy workload on the board but it is hard to be certain whether that is a fair assumption with the information available about that. With that in mind though, if this does seem like a constructive long term adjustment, I would like to ask the board to consider discussing establishing democratically elected formal roles so that those with specific interests can support the BoD carry out their work more effectively and strengthen the infrastructure of GNOME:

(I suspect these roles may already exist but I am not sure whether they are elected roles or not or who currently manages them)

Secretary

Treasurer

(Although I am aware that there are teams who focus on some of these areas already, I am not sure if the following formal roles exist to manage those teams, at this time:)

Publicity and Campaigns

Events and Socials

Research and Development

Diversity and Equality

Outreach and Engagement

There may be some important areas which I have not suggested a role for and maybe some that are suggested are not quite right for GNOME's needs, so please take the specific suggested roles with a pinch of salt: they are just suggestions and ideas. The main point of consideration that I think might be worth discussion in this instance, is whether some sort of sort of appropriate structured, democratic, delegation might be in order (regardless of whether GNOME seeks a new CEO soon, or not).

I can appreciate that in the short term, something like that may be an added burden to organise (but for what it is worth, I would be willing to help out with that). I suspect that formally establishing dedicated roles in a democratic way, could attract community interest in filling them and also that the inferred delegation in that, could significantly free up more of the Board of Directors time and allow you all (and the future cohorts of directors) to focus on the important work, which you find that you are unable to delegate: 

Those who were to be elected into roles, could also be in charge of managing teams who are willing to support the work they are focused on. If that were to work out, then they could have regular IRC meetings to discuss relevant items in detail and come up with actionable solution which they could then present to the board of directors, as appropriate. It may also provide members of the community who are interested in contributing to a particular area of GNOME's infrastructure to quickly access relevant published communications about that area of interest, so they can more easily figure out what is going on, what needs to be done, who is involved and how they can get involved, etc. It may also serve to assist successors of the future to figure out where to start more easily, in general.

Magdalen

On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Jeff Fortin Tam <nekohayo gmail com> wrote:

Hello Foundation members!

The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC.
Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting so far:

  * Funding - quick status check on:
      Ecosystem (re)mapping
      Adboard outreach
      Sysadmin sponsorship
  * Sitrep on deal with WHS for funds in Europe
  * Review action items for completeness and status
  * ED search

(Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the
meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of
information or discussion on the board list)

If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the
meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here.

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