With people writing about running for the Fedora Project Board, I want to take the chance to say I am not running for election this time.
My Red Hat-appointed seat of the last 18 months expires with this election. My interest is in seeing some new blood working on the Board. I haven’t been spending as much time directly on Board projects in the last six months, which is a good argument for new blood :), but also comes from the crossover of my work in Community Architecture. I’m a 100% community guy all the time now, so the board is only another 1% on top. By bringing in new people, there should be a surge of new ideas and energy. Especially with the caliber of people such as Dimitris and Michael.
Which is the other reason I am not running. Red Hat is going to want to appoint someone new to my seat rather than extend my stay, and that is definitely the right thing to do. To stay on the Board, I have to stand for election for the first time. No problem there, I think I’d have a fair chance, but then I’d be blocking one of these other great community organizers to have a chance leading this ship.
What I’m looking forward to is running in the next election in six months, when the new round of people are more seasoned and have had a chance to steer the Board for a while. I’ll be refreshed, full of new ideas, and ready to engage. If I should be fortunate enough to get elected. 🙂
I intended to comment on your post earlier and became distracted by family.
Thank you Karsten for being part of the board. Even more, thank you for not running for one of the community seats. Following the last election it became very obvious to many Red Hat’s presence and some say influence in the community by the number of “community” seats filled by Red Hat employees on top of the Red Hat appointed seats. The community needs to have a responsibility to itself and to Fedora as a whole, I do not think this can be achieved with out community members that are not Red Hat employees on the board.
The above may sound like I do not appreciate the community members that are also Red Hat employees. The truth is I think their value to our community is minimized by some and this is not right. These are hard working individuals that in many or most cases do work on Fedora on their time on top of work hours. They need to be applauded equally with anyone else that contributes sweat equity to Linux and Fedora.
Bob