Stormy’s update: Week of September 14th and 21st

This is my update for work done for the GNOME Foundation, reprinted from the GNOME Foundation blog. For a higher level overview for what I do as the Executive Director, see What do I do as Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation? or my earlier updates.

I spent a lot of my last week communicating with lots of people. (At one point I had three IM windows open in addition to my email conversations and IRC and the phone rang!) I've captured the results of some of those conversations below. Hopefully the other conversations will also prove as productive soon.

Two one on one meetings with Brian Cameron who is the board member who works most closely with me on goal planning and results. (This is to alleviate any confusion from having seven bosses, to make sure things move quickly and to keep me from filling their email boxes any more than I already do!) In one meeting we went over the last six months and year's results. In the other we talked about current issues and plans for the next couple of weeks.

Board of Directors meeting. We held our regular board of directors meeting, you can find the minutes online.

Women's mini-summit. I attended the FSF's Mini-Summit for Women in Free Software. Unfortunately I was on the phone instead of there in person but there were several other GNOME women in the room like Marina
Zhurakhinskaya, Mairin Duffy and Leslie Hawthorn. We came out with some concrete plans for the future and a mailing list for everyone interested that's already active.

Interviewed with Bruce Byfield about the women's minisummit.

Had a conversation with an advisory board member who is not happy with us. (Working on the follow up to that.) Followed up with several advisory board members on payments. Four haven't paid 2009 fees. Two are in process. I'm worried about two. (But over all our last year of income/donations looks very good!)

Talked to several advisory board members about a new initiative one of them would like to fund through the GNOME Foundation. (We also got a proposal for a hackfest from an advisory board member!)

Reviewed German's excellent written summary and explanation of the 2010 budget. It's all ready to send out.

Got list of patents from OIN. Also got advice that it's not in our best interests to review them.

I attended and was interviewed on Linux Link Tech show.

Joined the Planetaria FOSS Women Planet that James Vasile set up. (I think it's an awesome idea. FYI, he modeled it after Planet GNOME.)

Worked on getting quotes for new advisory board member press release. (Quotes are never easy to get approved at big companies.)

Wrote Software Freedom Day press release.

Reviewed GNOME Travel Policy.

Had a couple of follow ups with Dave Neary and Vincent Untz about OSiM. Thanks to both of them for representing GNOME there. Thanks for Vinicius for making a GNOME Mobile member sign and to our GNOME partners that displayed them in their booths, Igalia and Codethink.

Proposed a marketing hackfest. There is interest, now we just have to figure out a time and a place we can all meet.

Proposed and got enough takers to do a women's issue of GNOME Journal. An issue written all by women about what they are working on in GNOME or about things they find interesting in GNOME. It'll come out in November.

Proposed that the a11y team branch out to non software conferences to spread the word about GNOME and how it can help people with accessibility needs.

Did some twittering on behalf of GNOME.

Proposed CiviCRM for a CRM system for the GNOME Foundation.

Followed up on 401K plan. Only step left is a signed document and a check from Rosanna.

Attended the GUADEC IRC planning meeting that Srinivasa Ragavan put together. Thanks to all the previous GUADEC organizers that attended – there was some really good information shared during that 2.5 hour meeting! Srini is going to post the logs.

Was disappointed that the invitation to GNOME to attend the 2nd International Symposium on Computers and Arabic Language fell through. Khaled Hosney, Seif Lotfy and others were working to make sure that GNOME was represented. It sounds like they are no longer interested in funding free software projects though. I think it still might be worth having someone from GNOME attend though.

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Sent thank you's to everyone who donated to GNOME.

Helped with the promotion plan for GNOME 2.28.

And although I didn't do it, I think it certainly worth mentioning that GNOME 2.28 released!

22 Replies to “Stormy’s update: Week of September 14th and 21st”

  1. I suggest that you make a clearer distinction between board directors (people) and advisory board members (companies and organisations). “board member” is too vague.

  2. “FSF’s Mini-Summit for Women in Free Software”
    Where’s the man’s one? Rather sexist wouldn’t you say?

  3. a mini summit to wear a mini skirt at…? why do the wimmin only deserve a mini summit and not a whole damn summit, darn it?

  4. We started with a mini-summit – just a few hours in the evening after the
    Software Freedom Day celebrations. We’re planning a whole day summit in the
    spring.

  5. You’re welcome to hold one to find out how to encourage more men to join
    free software projects. We wanted to focus on why only 1.5% of free and open
    source software contributors are women. We could have twice as many people
    working on our projects if we got more women involved!

  6. Thanks for the link to the Women’s Caucus notes. I’ve dropped a note to the FOSS Women Planet and asked to be added. Please also keep “us” updated on the marketing hackfest. I’d like to know more about this project!

  7. Removing all comments about RMS, Miguel, mono and the FSF as they are off topic. Anyone who would like to bring this up as a GNOME issue should bring it up in a GNOME forum like one of the mailing lists or IRC channels.

  8. Dear Stormy Peters,
    I don’t know you, we’ve never met. But I can assure you that, right after reading these infamous comments you’ve received, you have all my support and I hope that, one day, the last troll on the web will die soon, a bretzel stuck in his throat.
    Regards,

  9. Hi Stormy,
    Thanks for helping to keep it positive! I’m always excited to hear about folks working together to increase the visibility and participation of women in FOSS.
    Rikki

  10. Stormy,
    Thanks for taking the time to keep all of us up to speed on what you and the Gnome foundation are up to. Don’t get discouraged by the comments, and keep up the great work!!! A lot of us seriously appreciate it!
    Chris

  11. Hey Stormy,
    Two things – first, sorry you had the flood of negativity earlier, but I think moderating rather than turning off comments is the right way to go. I mean, if you turn off feedback, the trolls win. By moderating, the trolls lose all incentive. It’s your site, there’s no shame in having strict rules (or even loose rules) about what’s published and what’s not.
    Also interested in the GNOME Marketing Hackfest. Any chance you’ll be at OLF this October? I think (at Emma’s suggestion) we’ll be organizing a marketing BoF or the like…

  12. We’d be happy to help and assist the GNOME foundation with the CiviCRM implementation 🙂 I’m the CiviCRM lead developer and we definitely would like to see you’ll use the software effectively 🙂
    You can contact us on IRC / forums (http://forum.civicrm.org/). We did note a GNOME developer asking questions on the CiviCRM channel (we were offline at that time, but a few community folks took care of him 🙂
    lobo

  13. hope you are not blaming the other 98.5% for the lack of women….. because some women in the community do that, and they have been in the community for a long time, did nothing to *improve* the situation but every time they got the opportunity they bitch about how hard if *was* for them when they were getting started in the industry. Also some how some of the women in the community think they have the authority on anything female. (e.g.: in a drupal conference the dupal…organizer..person who’s a female (not the D7 project/release manager she’s cool) said “don’t do it… because I said so” about a design that include a female figure. Is this feminism gone wrong or was she just stupid? Just because they happen to be a woman don’t try to control `everything female`.

  14. But seriously – don’t discriminate on the majority because of a few “Are you a girl?!? I don’t believe you, send me a picture? Send me a naked picture? Can I see your… What do you mean no?!? You belong in the kitchen!!!” people.

  15. I’ve found the men in the free software world to be the biggest supporters of women in open source software. I wouldn’t be here without them!

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