"Woah, I cannot believe you are EIPI!!! You are famous (well at least in a pool of 30,000 people). Very cool."

4 0

Randall Arnold (Texrat): This time it's to help maintain continuity from one council to the next, as well as to help facilitate transfer of successful maemo.org assets and projects to MeeGo while acting to calm the concerned maemo.org membership.

 Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): To help out where I can.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): I believe that for this election, there should be 1-2 (fairly) new community members elected. The worst thing that can happen to the Council is if only 'old' members are elected (the ones that already have been in the Council or close to it). Or the other way round.

I think that I can bring this new energy and approach into the Council, something which is and will be extremely important in those times. 

I consider Maemo/MeeGo to be an important player on the market, because of philosophy ('root access'), user experience (more desktop-like) and developer perspective (Linux development for mobile phones). Being interested (also professionally) in all those three aspects, I would like to see the platform flourish. Community is an important part of Maemo and future MeeGo, and Council is an important part of this Community. Having the best possible Council is then important for me personally. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): A lot of things. This is an exciting time for mobile Linux and, I believe, the beginning of something that people will look back on in 10 years as the time when mobile computing changed forever. I see it as an incredible opportunity to be involved with this and help shape the direction things take towards the future.

Plus, I just like helping to make good things happen. ;)

Randall Arnold (Texrat): Same way I did last term: commit to this being a part of my life.  It wasn't easy last term but this work is important enough to me to make the time. 

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): Good management. Currently I'm making videos about the N900 and I'm very active in the community. The activity in the community will fusion with the activity as a concil member. If then is not enough time, I can still decide to not make a video on this day. 

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): I am a busy person, both working and studying. I however feel that there is still place in my 24 hours day for involvement in Council works.

On personal (and practical) note, I do have very flexible schedule in both my academic activities and work, both regarding hours of the day (and night) and days of the year. Neither real-time conferences nor trips should be a problem (as they have never been). Due to my work, I live in two time zones anyway (Europe and US). Living alone, I don't have to worry about working at night or weekends. I guess everyone who has been a student knows how this works :)

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): Same way I always do. ;) Invest the free time where I have it. Sometimes there's more of it and sometimes there's less, but I try to be as productive as I can as often as I can.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): There were lapses in every medium.  The main formal methods, email and the forum, work well when used.  The challenge is making sure every council member engages, at the very least to say "I can't be bothered right now".  Frequency can be on an as-needed basis as well as regular meetings, once every two weeks working for the latter I think.  All members should participate.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): I think only one or two council members should have the responsibility to inform the community. That does not mean, that the others are not allowed to inform as well. But these two members have to inform the community in form of a weekly/monthly report.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): I agree with the statement that there is not enough formal communication about Council activities. Whether this should be done by chosen persons or by all members, depends on the structure of elected Council, both regarding personal issues (this formal channel should not be monopolized by one fraction) and chosen responsibilities division (if any, in a natural way persons responsible for certain aspects should be the ones communicating them).

There are two main methods of communication that could be useful in this situation. Formal reports from the works of Council published in set intervals and (less formal) Council blog, an aggregator for all the members. I should definitely see the second option being done, the first one (for example in a form of two/three weeks wiki pages reports) depends on the actual works of the Council and if the results are suitable for such reports.

In short: make the community aware that there is a Council, that it works on something and may even sometimes ask for help. 

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): When I served my first two terms on the council we made a lot of use of the blog on maemo.org. I think having at least one member pushing a sort of "state of the community" post at least once a month would be helpful. But, much like the paid maemo.org staff, frequent communication and open working methods are a necessity from all council members.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): Absolutely.  Each member should champion a cause or causes and perform as a community facilitator for activities involved.  Project manager may be a better term.  I can answer the portfolio question best with examples: application testing as Valerio has championed, community outreach as I have, etc.  Size of the project should not be as much a focus as impact on the community.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): Yes, I think the community members should have specific roles. For example as I've said one or two should be responsable for the community communication. Again one or two should be the contact for Nokia, and later, as we will have meego the contact for Intel, too.

And the last one is thecontact for the linux foundation. So we have splitted tasks for every council member.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): If any roles in the Council should be introduced, those should be more about being coordinators for certain tasks than being one and only responsible for various things. I think that this is a good idea, allowing people to focus on certain responsibilities and making it clear for the community who is the right person to contact.

Regarding the scope of the tasks, this will be something life will tell. I think that those can be both large blocks (like sprints coordination, extras testing process, meego cooperation) and small, well defined tasks within this scope.

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): To a certain extent, people seem to fall into the role that most suits them, but I don't think this process should be formalized beyond, perhaps, having council members pick up certain pet projects they're particularly interested in and act as a go-to person for them.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): I think it was okay up to now but believe 12 months will make more sense with MeeGo.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): I think that the time is just right, because the community, devices and personal situations are changing very fast.  If the period would be shorter, the council would have no chance to achieve important projects. If the period would be longer, maybe someone would not be happy with the council.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): I believe that in current situation it may prove to be too short of a period. It is however a matter of how many members of the Council are re-elected, so the continuity is preserved. I think that cadence of 9 months would be better.

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): 6 months feels a lot longer from the other side, trust me. ;) Council members are free to run again as often as they like. Assuming a candidate remains popular, they have as much time as they need to push whatever agenda they'd like to push, but the 6 month period leaves the option open for members who don't want to continue their obligation (for whatever reason) to step down, while offering a much lower barrier to entry for potential candidates. 6 months is a much more reasonable obligation period for most people than a full year.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): Even given the explanation, I disagree with the decision.  Not simply because only one member was privy, but because the one who was could do nothing with the knowledge.  That made it pointless.  Either inform the entire council or none.  If information security is so big a concern, make it none... but be prepared for a challenge afterward.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): I'm fine with that IF it does have good reasons. I think Nokia had good reasons to not let everyone know the meego release. 

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): Nokia should not create such splits within Council. Not because the members are entitled to any information, but because this is harmful for the Council and community: if there is a reason why some members should be excluded from certain information, it means that the system Nokia-Council-Community doesn't work and needs to be fixed. 

I however do not know the particular case with MeeGo announcement and, as I appreciate that there may be extraordinary situations in Nokia-Council contacts (the above is my opinion about those contacts in general), I cannot just write 'it was wrong', as I do not know. However, the less it happens the better.

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): I don't particularly agree with Nokia's decision with the MeeGo announcement, but I can understand it. Unfortunately hedging like that just ties the hands of whoever actually gets told. At least when the whole council is involved they have an opportunity to plan for whatever big announcement is coming down the pipe, but a single person doesn't have many more options available than sitting and waiting.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): Main priority is ensure the health of the current community while migrating to MeeGo.  That won't be easy.  We have already seen the anxiety MeeGo has introduced.  We need to 1) push Nokia to answer hard questions about the future of the N900 vis-a-vis MeeGo and 2) listen with empathy to maemo.org member concerns and see what we can do to address them.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): Unify the community. Help to form a big community with talented people.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): As the MeeGo will be approaching to day one, it will be Councils priority to ensure panic-free environment. Many members of Maemo community will get afraid that their n900 is going to fell apart (metaphorically speaking [mostly]).  If this happens, it will have a very negative impact on the Maemo community as well as the newly forming MeeGo one. It must be clearly stated that we are experiencing evolution (raaapid one), no one is going to be left behind, MeeGo monsters will not take over talk.maemo.org and so on. This will be a difficult task for the Council, but with (hopefully) unified views of the members it can be achieved.

 

This Summit will be a crucial one (exact weight will depend on Nokia and Intel timing). Good organization and giving people reason to participate will be the most important task. If at this point (active) members will get apathetic, not seeing reason to participate in a summit of a soon-to-be-dead (in their thinking) platform, the community will fail. 

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): Depending on Nokia's decision regarding MeeGo-on-N900, of course, but, primarily: making sure the existing maemo.org infrastructure is in top-shape to carry support for the Maemo platform for as long as is necessary, helping to smooth the MeeGo transition as much as possible, and bringing as many of the good parts of Maemo and maemo.org to MeeGo as we can.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): Separate the personal from the professional.  I have recommitted myself to this recently, and hope other candidates do as well.  We won't have time for pettiness.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): I've never had PERSONAL disagreements with any of the others, so no problem. But IF there would be one, communication is the key. Every human is different, with different opinions. We have to agree on one decision before communicate, to form a strong community council.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): Personal differences will happen always (now, that's something new), especially among individuals that are supposed to be leaders. I don't really believe in any sort of system solution in this case, it should be all based on individual talks. As Buddha said, Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace. In short: I don't know nor dare to propose any system that would guarantee solving such differences. We will deal with them when they arise :)

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): We'll just have to work together to be civil and ensure productive collaboration. Whatever challenges disagreements may bring with them (polarization and entrenchment are major issues), they force you to continually evaluate your own position and prevent you from becoming complacent in your views.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): Given that MeeGo already has a robust structure, starting with the Technical Steering Group, I am assuming we can expect a more professional approach with MeeGo.  This is not a slam on maemo.org; we had extremely resourceful people doing the best they could with what they had.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): More moderators because the community is growing very fast and will be growing even faster. Then we should have a contact from Nokia/Intel just for developers.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): Regarding resources, the most important issue at the moment is lack of good documentation. We need to resolve this issue with Nokia (so they deliver it) and create a well organized layout, probably similar to the one known from Java or Qt documentation. Current wiki pages acting as documentation are to inconsistent, information is hard to access etc. This should also be a priority for MeeGo community, from the day one.

 

Another issue is a structure of some parts of maemo.org, where to many pages are presented to the user without clear logic (an example can be overview of the packages and trying to access voting site for a package). At some point it is easier to go back and ask google about given site than to navigate on maemo.org

 

If elected I would like to see improvements in the packages promotion and handling on the maemo.org. Nokia's inability to implement framework for paid applications for n900 in Ovi Store is now apparent, the least that can be don eon the community side is to have a unified system of donations. Providing real security framework is probably outside our possibilities, so we should not go for a 'real' paid applications; instead system of donations closely linked to the application overview and good promotion of the best ones should be implemented. Large part of community would actually show their support with donations, we should promote this and make it as easy as possible.  

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): To be honest, I don't believe there's a lot of long-term benefit investing resources heavily into maemo.org unless they translate well to MeeGo (and hopefully even less of one if Nokia decides to do the right thing). For my part, my pet projects have always been the wiki and bugzilla, improvements to the software and processes of both offer concrete and easily-translatable benefits for MeeGo.

 

Specifically, I'd really like to improve the approachability of bugzilla with improved and simplified bug views for new users and more-helpful bug-submission forms.

Randall Arnold (Texrat): I tend to be a cheerleader or coach at the beginning of an undertaking and a "lead from the shadows" sort once the ball gets rolling.  I prefer to motivate rather than micromanage, and to clear paths rather than give orders.  I also think any project should have fun elements.

 

The second is such a big question it's difficult to answer concretely.  But in summary the main challenges I see are tackling "FUD", keeping maemo.org members engaged and incorporating lessons learned into what we do with MeeGo.  I see these already happening so I am encouraged by the leadership so far.  Quim Gil has been a relentless presence here, tirelessly posting and emailing and making sure the conversations stay on track and produce respectable results.  Tero Kojo has also done this on email lists.  I will take cues and follow their lead as best I can.

Cosimo Kroll (zehjotkah): My leadership style is cooperative. I first read/hear, then think about and last talk about it.

Nobody can tell what the future brings, but I can imagine (only one example), that we will see a lot more average user in our forums, who don't understand the Linux style of life. We have to integrate them, and encourage them to participate. Only a active community is a good community.

Arek Stopczynski (hopbeat): As I have already written several times, I see myself as a man of dialogue. It is this Council's responsibility to make this community available for as many users as possible and in order to achieve this, it is necessary to understand various groups present in it. The Council is elected to represent community, not to rule it. It however doesn't meant that it can be pushed around, in those interesting times the leadership must be strong. But it must reflect the aggregated needs of the community, not an effect of fights between those groups or even Council members.

In short: be able to see the groups in community; listen to them; get from this what is good for community/community wants and implement this forcefully. There is time to talk and time to act.

Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles): Full of spit and vinegar, hopefully with a bit of insight thrown in? ;) I'm a person who likes to get down to the detail work and help make things happen. I'm not the type of person to sugar-coat anything and rarely shy away from a good discussion (sometimes a negative point). I love this community and I love this platform and my goal as a leader is always to help make it the best it can be.

 

The most unclear issue, and the one that will have the biggest effect on the transition in the coming months, is MeeGo-on-N900. It's a question that will need answering before we can be certain of our path to the future. Until it's answered, though, I believe we have to assume the worst and keep working to make maemo.org as strong as it can be.

11 0