Category: GNOME work updates

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.

Monday was a US holiday.

Met with a company interested in using Linux and GNOME. (Actually using it but not as much as they'd like.) They had a lot of feedback for us and we talked about ways that they could get that type of feedback directly to the projects. One of the main issues was knowing where to submit bugs. They submitted a lot of bugs to the Linux distributions. Then they'd be told to resubmit the GNOME ones to the GNOME project … it would help if we could just forward them along to the right place.

Talked about upcoming events at the GNOME Advisory Board meeting. Mario Behling and Emily Chen talked about the GNOME.Asia Summit. Daniel Siegel and Seif Lotfy talked about the Zeitgeist hackfest and John Palmieri talked about the Boston Summit.

Worked on 2009 waterfall chart and 2010 budget with German. It is now ready to share with the board of directors and then board of advisors and the Foundation list.

Talked to several people about OIN's announcement about purchasing 22 patents from Microsoft. OIN is supposed to post the actual patent numbers.

Talked to Willie Walker about GNOME accessibility.

Met with Ruthe Farmer from the National Center for Women & Information Technology. They do studies about women in technology and publish best practices for how to encourage more women to take technology jobs and to stay in them. They would like to do a study around women in free software. They have recently written a study about the Culture of Open Source Computing (pdf) that points to a lot of resources about women in open source and developer motivations in open source and you can find their reports online.

Sent thank you letters to people who donated to the GNOME Foundation during the week.

Started studying Ford Foundation website to understand what types of programs they give grants for and how we might find a good fit for GNOME projects.

Followed up with an advisory board member who hasn't paid 2009 fees yet.

For this week. This is not the list of all the things I have to do but rather what I want to do this week.

• Board of Directors meeting
• 1:1 with Brian Cameron about my goals and results
• Send finances out to advisory board. (All ready to go – waiting on Board of Directors feedback.)
• Work on requirements for a CRM system so that sys admin team can install one.
• Follow up with potential sponsors.
• Follow up on 401K plan.
• Follow up with International Cooperation, the group in Gran Canaria working with developing countries.
• Fill out (draft for) form for applying for a Ford Foundation grant and run by appropriate GNOME mailing list.
• Make sure that plans are in place to have a new US event box and get it to Utah Open Source Conference.
• Finish following up with advisory board members whose 2009 payments haven't come in yet.

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.

If you measure productivity based on what gets done (as opposed to how hard you work), this was a frustrating week.

What I got done:

• Got a new advisory board member invoiced. (Well, Rosanna invoiced them, not me, but I helped make it happen.) Working on quotes for press release. (Didn't actually get any yet.)
• Got some feedback on financial waterfall.
• Followed up with end user looking to use GNOME and GNU/Linux and running into problems.
• Continued to push for Q3 quarterly report to be done.
• Pinged sponsors and potential sponsors.
• Pinged people holding up 401K setup.
• Pinged press team to get started.
• Met with Denise to talk about how the customer success stories are going. 
• Met with Keith from the Open Invention Network to talk about how OIN and GNOME could work more closely together. He's looking for the community to help find prior art and to be advocates for them.
• Posted Friends of GNOME August results.
• Blogged about Funambol grants.
• Attended Board of Directors meeting.
• Planned Board of Advisors meetings. Meetings will most likely be:
• • September – events (Boston Summit, GNOME Asia, Zeitgeist hackfest)
  • October – finances
  • November – updates from advisory board members on things they are working on (list to come later)
  • December – update on how the Oct/Nov events went and future events

Things to be done (and this is a short week due to the Labor Day holiday): (Feel free to suggest other things or to help.)

• Work on 2010 budget with treasurers. (More urgent than it sounds as our fiscal year starts in October and companies are planning their budgets now.)
• Send finances out to advisory board.
• Make sure press team takes off and starts working on some tasks.
• Work on requirements for a CRM system so that sys admin team can install one.
• Follow up with adboard members who are missing payments.
• Follow up with potential sponsors.
• Follow up on 401K plan.
• Follow up with International Cooperation, the group in Gran Canaria working with developing countries.
• Fill out form for applying for a Ford Foundation grant.
• … and a bunch more stuff that will have to wait until next week.

Thoughts?

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?

This update is actually for three weeks, the week of August 10th when I was at OpenSource World, the week of August 17th when I was on vacation and the week of August 24th when I caught up with all the email I got in the previous two weeks!

During the weeks of August 10th and August 24th, in no particular order:

I met with existing sponsor to discuss how to get payment for their GNOME Foundation dues.

I met with a potential new sponsor and pinged a potential sponsor that I've spoken to a couple of times.

Sent out the feedback from the interviews with the advisory board members. (Sent it out to the advisory board and to the GNOME Foundation.)

Attended OpenSource World, ran the Desktop track and spoke. The Desktop track was very well attended with 80-100 people at every session. I really enjoyed the fact that the participants were very engaged and every speaker got lots of questions during and after their session. The opening panel was all questions from the audience. I got a lot of GNOME questions that I have passed on to the right experts.

OSiM World arrangements. Arranged for company working with GNOME technologies to meet with Vincent Untz and Dave Neary while they are there. Several GNOME companies will have booths. Igalia offered to display GNOME Mobile information in their booth. Checking with the others.

Drafted mail with marketing team about raising advisory board fees.

Met
with one of the advisory board members who's offered to mentor us on
finances and got feedback on how to display our financial data. Worked
with Germán Póo-Caamaño to create a waterfall summary of our fiscal year 2009
finances. (Will share soon.)

Did a short interview on women in opensource with Rikki Kite for her series on women in open source – suggested some more GNOME women for her to interview too.

In general I've been working on attending and giving less talks myself and getting more GNOME folks involved. I've passed on several speaking opportunities to other GNOME people. If you are available to speak on GNOME topics please add yourself to GNOME speakers page so people can find you. (Feel free to nominate other people you think should be on that page – at least their name and what talk you saw them give.) If you are speaking about GNOME technologies or attending a talk on GNOME, please make sure it's in our calendars, both the wiki and the Google calendar.

GNOME press team was announced.

Took a week of vacation. We went camping for a few days (climbed the biggest sand hill ever and slid down it with my 9 year old), had my parents over for a few days (still trying to talk them into moving to Colorado), threw a couple of parties (a wine tasting party and a kid's birthday party – not at the same time), cleaned the fridge, freezer and bathroom cabinets, caught up on bills.

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?

Worked on the quarterly report.Got 11 updates out of the 15 we'd like to include. (And if I forgot a team, please let me know!!) Working on two more with the team leads. Waiting on two additional ones. Editing them and working with Paul Cutler and Vinicius Depizzol on the layout.

Wrote final draft of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit press release. Vincent and Cornelius released it.

Met with the GNOME Asia Summit planning committee. Good stuff happening there but I'll wait for them to announce …

Recruited
Denise Walters to help with GNOME marketing, in particular the customer
success stories. I know Denise from HP where she worked on Linux and
open source marketing.

Summarized the information I got while
interviewing all the advisory board members and sent it out to the
advisory board members. Will send out to the GNOME Foundation list on Tuesday.

Created
a very rough place holder of a wiki page for the new GNOME press team
we'd like to create. (I realized I didn't really know what to put in
the page – hopefully people will ask questions which will make it
obvious to me what's missing.)

Had a short interview with Todd Wiess, a free lance reporter for an article he was writing about whether the economy is affecting free software projects.
What was interesting is that he thought laid off people would have less
time to work on free software while they looked for a job whereas I
would have thought they'd have more until they found a job. (While
looking for a job is a full time job, few people who like coding like
all the stuff involved with finding a job, so I'd think they'd need a
coding break!)

Finalized 401K plan! Sent signed documents off to SocialK folks.

Booked travel for Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference and Utah Open Source Conference – both events are covering my travel.

Sent a thank you note to all the Desktop Summit sponsors with links to press about the Desktop Summit. (Press links compiled by Dave Neary.)

Got the Zoom2's from Texas Instruments for our usability study! Talking to folks about how to move forward.

Sent thank you notes to those that donated through Friends of GNOME. Personalized them where I could.

What I'm planning on doing this week:

This week I'll be at OpenSource World, running the desktop track, moderating a panel and giving a talk the Desktop or the Browser: Is the Netbook Escalating the Issue? (Plus I still have to create the talk and slides.)

The following week (August 17th) between a camping trip and my parents coming into town, I will probably take some time off.

Here's my list of things I'll work on in between those events: (Things that are missing from the list have been passed on to somebody else or are in progress.)

• Get the 2009 Q2 Quarterly report published!
• Advisory board/sponsors work:
  • get feedback from advisory board members on advisory
    board meeting at GUADEC (I think I'm going to need to ping them
    individually.)
  • get agreement signed by GNOME folks for the work
    Canonical is funding on bugzilla for GNOME (Missing one signature –
    from the sys admin team.)
  • Amazon mp3 download uses GTK – contact them about sponsorship
  • send finance update out to advisory board (I’ll be doing this once a month.)
• Marketing team stuff
• • Start marketing list thread about raising advisory board fees and the communication around that
  • Update GNOME marketing wiki
    pages with Paul Cutler
  • Get the press team created and started
  • find someone to help create a GNOME slideset template
  • write up blurbs about why companies sponsor GNOME (or
    find people to help) – for our website (Maybe someone would like to
    help with sponsors?)GNOME Foundation sponsorship plan like premium sponsorship – put in wiki
• blog about travel committee – they did an excellent job with the Desktop Summit
• Partnerships:
• • Talk to Jim Zemlin about Moblin & Linux Foundation and relationship to GNOME Foundation
  • follow up with OIN – they list GNOME as a partner
• Recruit others to help:
  • Figure out how to get a team started to get GNOME working more closely with governments.
  • find someone who can help create a list of
    recommended desktop apps that OpenLogic would put in their library for
    enterprise customers
  • Follow up with someone who had ideas for a GNOME project and wanted to know how to go about it
  • Automate things. In past lives I've found the best way to get tedious tasks automated is to give them to someone who (a) finds them tedious and (b) has the skills to automate them. Tasks that I think could be improved somehow by automation: (Let me know if you fit (a) and (b) and would like to give them a try.
  • • Getting Friends of GNOME names onto the website.
    • Sending thank you notes to Friends of GNOME. (Could be done by CRM.)
    • Getting Friends of GNOME data into gnucash. (One of the board members is looking at this.)
    • Scrubbing confidential Friends of GNOME data from gnucash so we can publish the gnucash file.
    • Reimbursing contributors whose travel we pay. (While the travel committee is helping with receipts and reminders, it still takes Rosanna 20 minutes per wire transfer to transfer money to someone. That means it takes her several weeks of work time to reimburse everyone for GUADEC travel. Every year.)
    • Putting feedback we get through Friends of GNOME onto a website.
• follow up with sys admin team about installing a CRM
  system for the GNOME Foundation (It would really help the board,
  Rosanna, myself and others working on contacts, sponsors and finances.) Dave Neary offered to install a CRM for us, so this might be more about picking the right one now.
• follow up with the sys admin team on setting up
  better analytics for gnome.org so marketing can make better plans.
  (They are working on this one.)
• follow up with International Cooperation group from
  the university where the Desktop Summit was housed (They’d like to work
  with us to promote free software in developing countries.)
• Create policies for the GNOME Foundation to comply with new US nonprofit regulations. (Things like conflict of interest, travel, whistle blower, compensation and records retention.)

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?

Thanks to everyone who helped get things done this week!

I think we could have a bunch more roles in GNOME. We could have someone in charge of customer case studies, someone responsible for GNOME presentation materials (slide templates, business cards), someone in charge of potential sponsor identification, etc.  If anyone sees a common thread of tasks and thinks they are up to, suggest an appropriate title and let the Foundation know you are interested!

We now have a donate section on the right hand side of the GNOME home page thanks to Andreas Nillson, Paul Cutler and Andre Klapper.

Touched base with John Carr about how the system administration team is doing. They have a team formed that’s been hard at work and have posted minutes from their last meeting. New requests can be logged in bugzilla now.

I emailed Hackerthreads about our GNOME store plans but didn’t get a response. (I’ve never gotten a response from them about anything I’ve emailed them but they email Rosanna every once in a while and they send us a percentage of all the proceeds they get from GNOME merchandise.)

Added June numbers to Friends of GNOME spreadsheet and posted a Friends of GNOME update
to the Foundation blog. (June numbers weren’t great but it was good to see the subscription revenue hold steady. We are almost at our initial annual goal of $20,000! Thanks to all our Friends of GNOME!)

Asked all GNOME teams for Q2 results for the Q2 quarterly report that will come out in a couple of weeks.

Pinged a couple of times about GUADEC 2008 finances and heard that Baris is working on the tax situation in Turkey.

Prepared slides for my OSCON talk on the role of users in free software projects.

Paul Cutler set up a microblog@gnome.org email address so the identica/twitter team can post from email. (Let us know if you’d like to help identica/twitter or set up a plan for how best to do that.)

Went to OSCON in San Jose for two days.

• Gave my talk on users in free software projects – it started some good discussions.
• Met with potential GNOME partners like FOSSFA.
• Met with a GNOME Mobile member who would like to get more involved.
• Put lots of faces to names. Hopefully I can remember them all.
• Attended Open Source for America launch party. The GNOME Foundation is a founding member!
• Met Stefano Maffulli very briefly in person and discussed where to
  advertise Funambol sponsored GNOME related projects (that they are
  willing to pay for)
• Interviewed with Paul Hudson from TuxRadar. He posted some snippets. Full interview to come later.

Met with another advisory board member to get their feedback. (And to encourage them to pay their way overdue advisory board fees.)

Met with a large financial company who is trying to move to GNOME/Linux desktops. Talked about ways to get their issues in front of GNOME developers for discussion. Look for blog interviews or GNOME Journal articles or something similar!

My priorities for this week:

• thank all the Desktop Summit sponsors (Still hoping someone from the marketing team will help compile a list of all the press and blogs that came out of the Desktop Summit.)
• Identify someone to lead case study activity:
  • Publish case studies/success stories from the foundation (This was an idea that came up on the marketing list and Novell has already sent us a great GNOME customer story that we can use.)
  • ask other sponsors to help Sun, Red Hat, Canonical for customer stories
• find someone to help Dave Richards with the usability hackfest he’d like to hold in the City of Largo (Lucas Rocha is helping to find someone.)
• summarize advisory board feedback for foundation list
• summarize advisory board feedback for advisory board (close to ready)
• fill out Google Adwords Grant Application
• apologize to invited journalists who didn’t make the Desktop Summit because there travel wasn’t booked
• get feedback from advisory board members on advisory board meeting at GUADEC
• create wiki page for GNOME press team
• get agreement signed by GNOME folks for the work Canonical is funding on bugzilla for GNOME
• Find speakers for the Desktop panel I am now chairing at OpenSource World. (In addition to my talk.)
• Meeting with Paul Cutler in person to talk about updating GNOME marketing wiki pages.
• Speaking at a Colorado Springs Linux User Group.

More stuff that needs to be done:

• finalize 401K plan with attorneys (pinged attorney again – I know she’s been traveling as I saw her at OSCON.
• blog about travel committee – they did an excellent job with the Desktop Summit
• follow up with people who had good ideas at GUADEC that they mentioned to me
• Talk to Jim Zemlin about Moblin & Linux Foundation and relationship to GNOME Foundation
• GNOME 3.0 launch plans? Include advisory board companies
• follow up with OIN – they list GNOME as a partner (Dave Neary met with them at OSCON and followed up with an email)
• Follow up with someone who had ideas for a GNOME project and wanted to know how to go about it
• talk to Mozilla about their  Accessibility Strategy
• figure out how to work with Spanish government (Janjo Marin sent me some ideas.)
• Fill out paperwork for 401K insurance
• continue to ping about automating Friends of GNOME data input process (paypal to gnucash to webpage)
• Finance stuff (waiting on a treasurer):
  • add checks to Friends of GNOME spreadsheet
  • Work on budget with new treasurer
• Figure out how to get product news from News
  Foundation blog to press and advisory board (will probably give to
  press team when it is created)
• find someone to help create a GNOME slideset template
• Find out how to review new gnome webpage content so I can help
• Amazon mp3 download uses GTK – contact them about sponsorship
• write up blurbs about why companies sponsor GNOME (or
  find people to help) – for our website (Maybe someone would like to
  help with sponsors?)
• find someone who can help create a list of
  recommended desktop apps that OpenLogic would put in their library for
  enterprise customers
• GNOME Foundation sponsorship plan like premium sponsorship – put in wiki
• follow up with sys admin team about installing a CRM
  system for the GNOME Foundation (It would really help the board,
  Rosanna, myself and others working on contacts, sponsors and finances.)
• follow up with the sys admin team on setting up
  better analytics for gnome.org so marketing can make better plans.
  (They are working on this one.)
• follow up with International Cooperation group from
  the university where the Desktop Summit was housed (They’d like to work
  with us to promote free software in developing countries.)
• send finance update out to advisory board (I’ll be doing this once a month.)
• Figure out who could attend a conference in Saudi Arabia to discuss potential financial support for adabizing programs
• write up notes from marketing BOF at the Desktop Summit
• Help Rosanna recruit someone to help automate some
  more of the Friends’ process – like getting Friends of GNOME donor
  names on the website as they come in

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?

First thing Monday morning I went to the doctor who determined that
I had a sinus infection. (For fellow travelers, if your cheekbones ache
and your teeth feel like they are going to fall out every time the
plane takes off and lands, you may have a sinus infection. Not only did
I have the scheduled 3 takeoffs and landings on my trip home from the
Desktop Summit but when our plane got hit by lightening, they threw in
a bonus landing and takeoff in Wyoming!)

Followed up on some Desktop Summit stuff:

• Sent co-locating survey results to both KDE and GNOME boards.
  Attended GNOME Board decision meeting about co-locating in the future.
  (You’ll have to wait for them to say what the decision was …)
• Pinged sponsor companies about banners that were left behind.
• Helped draft co-located press release.

Pinged attorney about 401K plan. (Our attorney did meet with the plan’s attorney.)

Trying to help figure out a board meeting time – with seven board
members around the world with jobs and school, it’s hard to find a time
that works. Our current time doesn’t work very well for folks in India,
like Srini. (He did stay up until 3am last time though to dial in!)

Read the GNOME Annual Report 2008. Nice job, Lucas, writers and photographers! It was a good year for GNOME.

Created a Zazzle account for the new GNOME Store. (Got permission to have a 5 letter login and store name, gnome.)

Set up a press interview about my talk at OpenSource World.

Wrote my Friends of GNOME post cards. They went to Finland, Australia, Cyprus, and Canada as well as several US states! Sign up to support GNOME with a Friends of GNOME monthly subscription and get a postcard from your favorite hacker!

Created some Amazon affiliate accounts in US, UK, Canada and Germany
so that Jaap can set up stores and a Firefox widget that will enable
people to direct Amazon referral fees for their purchase to GNOME.

Talked to a couple of sponsors (Canonical, IBM) about things they’d like to see done and things they are willing to sponsor.

Met with Sally from HALO Worldwide. She
helps the Apache Foundation with their press and marketing and teaches
a class every year at ApacheCon. We talked about how she could help
with GNOME marketing and pres. I’d love to have a marketing hackfest
and have her come teach a press class.

Met with Paul Cutler about all the things we’d like to get going on
GNOME marketing, following up on all the conversations from the Desktop
Summit.

Went through all my email and notes from the Desktop Summit and created an enormous todo list.

For next week:

• Create slides for my OSCON talk, the Role of Users in Open Source Projects. It will be based on [Correction] The Role of Consumers in an Open Source Community.
  Speaking of OSCON, I really like the system they have set up for
  identifying which talks you want to see, what other talks people
  interested in those talks are interested in and identifying who will be
  at the conference and who you’d like to meet. It would be great to have
  something like that for GUADEC.
• Attending two days of OSCON. (Short trip this year to save on hotel
  stays and to minimize time away from home as I’ve already spent 10 days
  away from home this month.)
• Tackling as many items from the rest of my todo list as possible.

The rest of my to do list. (Let me know if you’d like to help on any
of the projects!) These are not in any particular order here.

• thank all the Desktop Summit sponsors (Hoping someone
  from the marketing team will help compile a list of all the press and
  blogs that came out of the Desktop Summit.)
• finalize 401K plan with attorneys
• blog about travel committee – they did an excellent job with the Desktop Summit
• ask all teams for input on Q2 report
• follow up with potential sponsor who was at GUADEC
• follow up with people who had good ideas at GUADEC that they mentioned to me
• Talk to Jim Zemlin about Moblin & Linux Foundation and relationship to GNOME Foudnation
• GNOME 3.0 launch plans? Include advisory board companies
• publish June Friends of GNOME data
• Publish case studies/success stories from the
  foundation (This was an idea that came up on the marketing list and
  Novell has already sent us a great GNOME customer story that we can
  use.)
• ask other sponsors to help Sun, Red Hat, Canonical for customer stories
• find people to help with the customer testimonials (case study article, quotes, slides, sidebar)
• find someone to help Dave Richards with the usability hackfest he’d like to hold in the City of Largo
• find sponsors for GNOME foundation booth in 2010 CSUN
• apologize to invited journalists who didn’t make the Desktop Summit because their travel wasn’t booked
• talk to OIN – they list GNOME as a partner
• Follow up with someone who had ideas for a GNOME project and wanted to know how to go about it
• summarize advisory board feedback for foundation list
• summarize advisory board feedback for advisory board (close to ready)
• fill out Google Adwords Grant Application
• talk to Mozilla about their  Accessibility Strategy
• figure out how to work with Spanish government (Janjo Marin sent me some ideas.)
• Fill out paperwork for 401K insurance
• add checks to Friends of GNOME spreadsheet
• continue to ping about GUADEC 2008 finances
• continue to ping about automating Friends of GNOME data input process (paypal to gnucash to webpage)
• Work on budget with new treasurer
• Figure out how to get product news from News
  Foundation blog to press and advisory board (will probably give to
  press team when it is created)
• find someone to help create a GNOME slideset template
• get back to Funambol on where to advertise GNOME related projects that they are willing to pay for
• Find out how to review new gnome webpage content so I can help
• Amazon mp3 download uses GTK – contact them about sponsorship
• write up blurbs about why companies sponsor GNOME (or find people to help) – for our website
• find someone who can help create a list of
  recommended desktop apps that OpenLogic would put in their library for
  enterprise customers
• GNOME Foundation sponsorship plan like premium sponsorship – put in wiki
• follow up with sys admin team about installing a CRM
  system for the GNOME Foundation (It would really help the board,
  Rosanna, myself and others working on contacts, sponsors and finances.)
• follow up with the sys admin team on setting up better analytics for gnome.org so marketing can make better plans.
• follow up with International Cooperation group from
  the university where the Desktop Summit was housed (They’d like to work
  with us to promote free software in developing countries.)
• get feedback from advisory board members on advisory board meeting at GUADEC
• send finance update out to advisory board (I’ll be doing this once a month.)
• Figure out who could attend a conference in Saudi Arabia to discuss potential financial support for adabizing programs
• write up notes from marketing BOF at the Desktop Summit
• get identica@gnome.org email address so identica/twitter team can post from email
• create wiki page for GNOME press team
• get agreement signed by GNOME folks for the work Canonical is funding on bugzilla for GNOME
• Make sure we get donate button on gnome.org front page
• Find speakers for the Desktop panel I am now chairing at OpenSource World. (In addition to my talk.)

Cross posted from the GNOME Foundation blog where you can find previous updates.