State of Maemo, Q32010.1

Greetings, and welcome to another term for the Maemo Community Council. This is the first of what I'm hoping will be an ongoing "State of Maemo" series (that will most likely come out periodically rather than regularly). As we begin our new term, the Council has already come up against a few immediate concerns. Thankfully, those members of the Council who have expertise in these areas have been able to handle most of it from the Maemo perspective (which, of course, where the strength lies in the Council to begin with). Still, there will be times in which we do not have the collective knowledge or know-how to be able to tackle issues sufficiently. As always, we look to you, the Maemo Community, for help in this regard. And, even more so, we look to you for guidance in which items are of interest or at crucial points of development (or break down). This being said, before continuing with this address, I'd like to personally thank you, on behalf of the entire Council, for your diligence and help in making the Maemo Community a world class open source community of end-users and experts.

Another big thanks must also go out to the maemo.org staff for facilitating our elections and spearheading the transition from the old Council to the new one. Without you, our Community would be far less robust and much more prone to failure.

If you haven't visited the Maemo Community Council wiki page in a while, you might want to do so. As you'll see, it has been updated with the latest Council roster (photos included). Likewise, you'll notice that I (Tim Samoff) am the latest Council Chair. The Council Chair's job, as I hope you'll guess, has much more to do with presiding over meetings, organizing certain maemo.org-related tasks, and acting as Council spokesman, than it does any sort of esteem, prestige, or perks. The Council Chair does not receive more information or technology that the rest of the Council (or the Community at large for that matter) receives. In fact, it is sometimes the Chair's main priority to facilitate the transfer of information or technology to others within the community who are much more qualified to deal with it than is the Chair. Because of this, you shouldn't feel obligated to tell me anything that you would tell the other Council members or even the community. In fact, ninety-nine percent of the time, anything that you might want to tell the Council should be done so within the Community forum at talk.maemo.org. This forum is read continually and all important items posed there are acted on very quickly. If you ever need more immediate attention, you can also usually find one of us in the #maemo channel on freenode.net. We are also subscribed to the various maemo.org mailing lists and make a habit of reading and responding to issues there as well. Lastly, if there is ever need to contact the Council privately, you can email us at council@maemo.org. Be aware that his is just a forwarding address that goes to all of our personal email accounts (i.e., a public log of council@ conversations is not kept).

But who is this Council that I've been speaking of anyway? Well, if you took part in the recent elections, I hope you know something about us. Still, it might be helpful to those who are new to Maemo and those who are more casual visitors to know who we are and where we come from.

Since I'm the one who is writing this address, I'll start…

My name is Tim Samoff (timsamoff). I'm a visual designer, musician, and filmmaker (among other things). My interests are vast, which is why I find myself in the open source world. I'm not a programmer and I know little about Maemo's technological guts, but I'm passionate about great user experience and lowering the wall of open source software for casual users. This is my third term serving on the Maemo Community Council.

This Andrew Flegg's (Jaffa) fourth term on the Council (not all consecutively). His main focus is on community relations with corporate backers, the MeeGo transition and, most of all, streamlining processes for developers. Andrew's philosophy is that with developers we get apps; with apps an increased user-base; with an increased user-base, more developers. So far, Andrew's involvement with Maemo (both as a regular community member and as a Council member) has been invaluable. In fact, the Maemo Community Council might not exist had he not proposed the idea to the community years ago.

Attila Csipa (Achipa) is an open source software advocate with a strong developer background and a special focus on the distribution and QA of community developed software. He also follows the evolution of MeeGo with great interest, working on ways to bridge the gap between MeeGo and maemo.org, both community-wise and technologically. Attila has impacted Maemo in many areas, most notably through the creation of a maemo.org Testing Squad, as well as software to aid in testing Maemo-based applications. This is Attila's second term serving on the Council.

Andrea Grandi (andy80) likes helping new users, organizing events, and developing applications for Maemo. As a "Nokia Qt Ambassador," he also gets to spread the Qt message around the development world. While Andrea has been a part of the Maemo Community for a while now, this is his first term serving on the Council.

Kathy Smith (revdkathy) enjoys being a forum contributor both at maemo.org and meego.com. She reads the community mailing lists pretty thoroughly. Kathy wants to work with the community both in terms of making sure it endures for those who stay with Maemo, as well as taking everything we have learned in Maemo forward to MeeGo. Kathy is relatively new to the Maemo Community, but she's already impacted the forum strata quite heavily. This is her first term serving on the Council (and, thankfully, she is the first woman to serve as well).

Again, if you haven't visited the Maemo Community Council wiki page, please take some time and check it out. Along with seeing an impressive lineup of those who have served on the Council, you'll also find our Mission Statement:

The Maemo Community Council is a five-person body chosen by the Maemo community. The Council's mission is to "represent the Maemo community's best interests to Nokia, and to act as a community conduit for Nokia-generated information."

This is true and we expect the community to hold us to it. Yes, you have imbued us with the responsibility of representing you. Don't let this negate the fact that you have the responsibility of supporting us; letting us know what is happening within the community; alerting us about issues that arise; guiding us toward the areas in which you feel would benefit Maemo as a whole.

We look forward to serving for and with you as we strive to continue to make the Maemo Community second to none.

We also look forward to seeing a lot of you at the MeeGo Conference in Dubline Ireland, November 15-17, as all of the Council members will be present. These conferences are great places to meet, catch up, and put real faces to the people whom we communicate with every day. Don't miss it!

Thank you for reading the first address from the latest Maemo Community Council. Keep your eyes open for more posts regarding actual goings on within maemo.org, as well as the greater Maemo/MeeGo universe.