Eight of us from the GNOME Marketing team got together in Chicago for a hackfest earlier this week. We had a lot of great discussions, came up with some good material for people manning a GNOME booth at conferences, a slogan and talking points for GNOME 3.0, presentation material for GNOME, ideas for mentoring GNOME […]
GNOME Marketing Hackfest Read More »
This morning I tried to attend a webinar, The Open Source Community vs. Patent Trolls – Preserving Developer Freedom. I knew the webinar was hosting on software that wouldn't work on Linux, GoToMeeting. (Actually, who knows if it will work on Linux. The web page checks your operating system and if you are on Linux,
How companies leave the community out of the conversation Read More »
hackfest n. A meeting where developers gather together in person to work on a free software project. Hackfests are one of the ways that things get done on free software projects like GNOME. They get lots of good work done, they energize teams and raise visibility of the project and its mission. The free software
How to plan a hackfest Read More »
Chris pointed me at this cartoon as a comment to my It’s not about not offending post and I keep finding myself looking at it. I almost always feel like I’m representing a group – if not more than one group. When we lived in Alaska, I represented Caucasians. When we lived in Spain, I
Who do you represent? Read More »
When talking about women in free software or political correctness in general, we seem to focus on saying things that “don’t offend” the minority group. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about saying things that encourage people to join your group, that send the right message and represent our values. While not saying things
It’s not about not offending Read More »
While I’ve learned not to procrastinate, the truth is that I do procrastinate every once in a while. This isn’t a post about why I procrastinate but rather how I deal with it. Here’s how I deal with my own procrastination: Do the first step. Sometimes I procrastinate because the task is too large to
7 ways not to procrastinate Read More »
One of the hardest things to learn in management is how not to do it all yourself. People often call this a problem with “delegation”. But the problem isn’t with telling others what to do. The problem is learning how not to do it all yourself. I talked earlier about how my style is to
Why you shouldn’t do it all yourself Read More »
Bounties or grants are often suggested as a way companies can pay for work on free software projects. The GNOME community has had mixed results with bounties and grants, so when Funambol community manager Stefano Maffulli contacted me about a GNOME grant and said they'd had success using grants for Funambol, I thought it'd be
Grants, bounties and free software Read More »
If you follow any of the links to Amazon in this post, any purchases you make will send a referral fee to the GNOME Foundation. Peter Drucker‘s Managing the Nonprofit Organization was full of good ideas. I started ripping off pieces of my bookmark to mark interesting pages and ended up with no bookmark! Managing
Book Review: Managing the Nonprofit Organization Read More »
One of the most common questions I get asked, right after “What do you do?”, is “What does the GNOME Foundation do?” I wrote an article explaining what the GNOME Foundation does in the current issue of OSBR, Women in Open Source, guest edited by Rikki Kite. (And there are some really good articles by
The GNOME Foundation Is All About People Read More »