[maemo-community] Election: September 2009 - Questions for Candidates

[From: Graham Cobb]

I realise it is probably too late to make much difference but, as I have been 
travelling, here is a late reply.  Hopefully some voters did at least read 
either my earlier email or the Wiki page.

> > 1. Care to share a little history about yourself and why you want to
> > serve on the council?

I am a hobbyist developer, who works on things that interest me and, I hope, 
may be useful to others.  I am very excited about the Maemo community both in 
terms of the devices and what they can do and the way in which Nokia has 
tried to create a community.

> > 2. Is there any particular experience or event that helped you decide
> > to run?

I believe that the introduction of the N900 and the messages Nokia has given 
about the future of Maemo mean that this will be a time of big expansion for 
the community both in terms of developers and users.  There will be exciting 
times and there will be challenges to face and I believe I can help make a 
contribution to these challenges.

> > 3. What do you believe qualifies you to serve on the council?

I have been an active developer in the community for a long time, I am not 
slow to express my opinions and I try to make constructive suggestions.  My 
professional background combines development and architecture in embedded and 
real-time systems with, more recently, a move into marketing.  I believe I 
can bring insights from both the hobbyist developers as well as understand 
the drivers of more commercially oriented developers, some of whom may choose 
to be active in the Maemo community instead of just part of Forum Nokia.

> > 4. Where would you like to see the Maemo Community in 6 months?

Bigger.  More developers.  More inclusive: with active members ranging from 
power users, small developers, larger open source projects and, even, some 
commercial organisations, including non-free software.  While I am a strong 
supporter of free software I support it from a desire for freedom, which 
includes allowing people to run non-free software if they wish.

I also want to see the community provide ways to continue to support the 
existing devices.  As those devices become available cheaply, they will make 
excellent introductions to the community for younger developers and we need 
to find ways to support developers and users of those devices.

> > 5. Do you have any specific ideas about how to get us there?

As the N900 goes into full launch we need to review all aspects of what worked 
well and what didn't about creating and porting applications for Fremantle.  
That includes things like the SDK Alpha and Beta programs, Nokia's Stars 
program, device availability, responsiveness to community feedback and bugs, 
autobuilder, extras-testing and all the other things that have been done to 
encourage and help developers.  There are no easy answers but we need to 
understand what has worked well for the community and/or for Nokia, what we 
want to change immediately (if anything) and what we should be planning to do 
for Harmatten.

> > 6. What do you believe to be the biggest problem facing the Maemo
> > Community today?

I hope it is going to be the accelerating pace of introduction of new devices, 
new features and new software!  In the short term it is getting applications 
available for Fremantle.  In the medium term it will be the move to Qt.

> > 7. What role do you envision for the community council you would serve
> > on?

After the great work done by the first councils, it is time to review what 
works well and what doesn't and make sure we have the tools and processes in 
place to support the large growth of the community over the next couple of 
years.  This includes working closely with Nokia, who provide funds and 
support for the community, as well, of course, as the R&D for the devices and 
base software.

I would also like us to start thinking about how the community will evolve and 
whether, at some time, we see it becoming more independent of Nokia.  It is 
not obvious to me what the right answer is here and I am keen to encourage 
some debate.

> > On another note, will any of the candidates be present at the Maemo
> > Summit in Amsterdam next month, and if so, what will be your main
> > focus, and/or presentations if you have any.

I will be at the Summit.  I am not presenting -- I hope to learn both about 
technologies but also about people's experience in the community. 

> 9. What do you think of the maemo.org sprint process? Have you ever
> attended one of the IRC meetings? If so, what did you think? How could
> the process be improved?

I have not been involved and have not attended any of the IRC meetings.  This 
is certainly one of the areas to review -- is it working well?  can it be 
improved?

Graham