Hello!
I’m announcing my candidacy for the GNOME foundation board.
Sonny Piers
sonnyp@gnome.org
no corporate conflict of interests
I’ve been involved in FLOSS for more years that I can count on my hands. Mostly XMPP, Mozilla and now GNOME for the last 3 years. I’ve been a foundation member for 1 year. Among other things, my contributions have included:
- building apps Workbench, Tangram, Junction, …
- organize events Berlin Mini GUADEC, GNOME Mobile hackfest
- participate in the GNOME Circle committee
- work on developer experience and making the platform more accessible
- mentoring GSoC and Outreachy students
Professionally and after 15 years of experience, I describe myself as a software and organization engineer.
I have been mostly focused on building products. A few years ago I got interested in organizations, and I’m now occupying a managerial position.
If you have any question or comment about my candidacy, feel free to leave a comment or email me.
Beside supporting the foundation and the community, these are the two topics that I would push for:
Decentralize GUADEC
Among community members, there are growing concerns with the carbon, financial and public-relation costs of flying the GNOME community accross the world.
We have already experimented with a satellite event, Berlin Mini GUADEC 2022, it was a great success.
Exploring this topic is also an opportunity to make in-person GUADEC more accessible to community members that are not able or willing to travel so far for so long.
Local and open events such as GNOME Latam have demonstrated that they can be a great vehicle for outreach.
Development funding
There are initiatives from public and private organizations to fund FLOSS.
There has been multiple successful and individual initiatives[^1] among the community to get funding, but experience shows it can be intimidating. I would like the foundation to explore ways it can help unlock this potential for the GNOME project, specially in areas that are strategic or critical such as core components, apps and accessibility. Currently, I see 2 possible options:
Establish a process for individual initiatives to request help from the foundation to apply for a specific fund to work on a specific topic.
and/or
Have the foundation prospect / apply for funds directly and establish a technical steering community to decide where to allocate the money.
I’m aware the foundation is looking for an executive director, which I consider complementary with this initiative.
[^1]: For examples Fractal / NLNet and GNOME Shell Mobile / Prototype Fund
