Stuart Herbert | Gentoo

I’m not very good at campaigning. Er, how about I talk instead about what I’d like to achieve: the Gentoo Converge conference.

My main aim is to establish an annual, world-wide Gentoo dev conference, where we do our very best to get as many Gentoo contributors as possible in one place at the same time.

As an interim Trustee, I’ve already begun setting up the structure required to make Gentoo Converge happen. If I’m not elected to the Board, I’ll be passing this on to the successful trustees - so make sure that they’re committed to delivering a dev conference before you give them your vote instead of giving it to me

The planned organisation for delivering Gentoo Converge is this:

• The Board of Trustees will be responsible for approving all plans and expenditure. We won’t be spending a penny w/out the Board’s agreement.
• As Gentoo Converge organiser, I’ll ultimately be responsible for putting the plans to the Board, and then implementing the approved plans.
• To help me put together the plans, I’ll be recruiting an Advisory Board. They’ll provide peer-review on the plans, but will not have the final say. The Board will be appointed by me, and I expect to change the makeup of the Board as we’ll need different skills at different points along the way.
• To help me deliver Gentoo Converge, I’m looking to find a Business School who will work with me on the planning and delivery. There’s a great educational opportunity for a School’s students here, as well as the PR benefits of being involved. If you’re part of such a School, and would like to discuss this in more detail, please email me as stuart at gentoo.org. The majority of our developers are based in Europe, and then the US. I’d prefer to run Gentoo Converge in Europe (there are issues w/ US patent and copyright laws that mean some of our devs are at risk of arrest if they visit the US), but running Gentoo Converge in the US isn’t out of the question.
• Funding … raising money for travel assistance is going to be a challenge, no two ways about it. I currently have four lines of attack here.
  1. First is raising the money via a direct appeal for donations from users.
  2. Second is applying for grants from other organisations. This could have implications for the Foundation’s not-for-profit status that I need to understand better.
  3. Third is allowing users to attend for part of Gentoo Converge, and charging them a suitable fee to go towards our overall budget.
  4. Not everyone needs financial assistance to attend. The folks who can pay for it out of their own pocket need convincing to do just that.

  I know there’s some opposition to this strategy, but I personally don’t have a problem with handing round the begging bowl. The Gentoo Foundation has no commercial arm to bring in revenues of any meaningful amount. Unless we change that, we’re left with begging as the way to fund this.

• The hardest part of the logistics is to find a venue and a date that gives us the maximum number of attendees. Sorting out flights etc is something we’ll just farm out to a travel agent, like other conferences do. If the conference is in Europe, many folks’ll be able to travel by train, and via car-sharing. Once folks have decided they’re coming, getting them there is the easier bit.

There are some alternative thoughts out there about what I want to achieve. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

• We don’t need an international conference. Oh yes we do. Apart from the PR and status opportunities (which shouldn’t be ignored), we desperately need to sort out our personal differences around here. A proven way to do that is to have folks spend time together in real life. Not everyone’s going to go away as soulmates, sure, but folks’ll have a much better understanding of each other, and they’ll have a lot more respect for each other’s point of view. We’ll be working with the Business School to plan the conference with this very aim in mind.
• We should have regional conferences instead. Regional conferences are useful - we’ve been running Gentoo UK for three years now, and long may that continue. But regional conferences don’t bring a critical mass of developers together, and they don’t do enough to bridge the different cultures that our developers come from. I also think that, for a regional conference to be sustainable, they should be organised locally - not centrally.
• The conference will be too expensive - there are better things to spend the money on. That’s why it’s good that there’s a vote over this year’s Board of Trustees. The money we raise and spend on this project will have been raised in the name of Gentoo, and we shouldn’t be spending this level of money w/out the Foundations members having given the Board a clear mandate for this project. If you want an annual International Gentoo Converge conference, vote for me. If you don’t want the money spent on this project, don’t vote for me.

I would like to run the first Gentoo Converge in Q3 2007; realistically we’ll probably end up starting with a smaller conference than we’d all like, and build on that year after year.

There are other, more administrative aims that I’d like to achieve as a Trustee:

• As best as I can tell, the Foundation is currently uninsured - both for general liability, and for Trustee liability. I’m clear on the legal requirements there, but over here in the UK an organisation like the Foundation would be required to have general liability insurance, and it would be very unusual to not have Trustee liability insurance in place too.
• The Gentoo Foundation exists (for legal purposes) only in the US. The Gentoo trademark needs protecting worldwide, and we need to make sure that only the Gentoo Foundation can collect fees from the use of trademarks owned by the Foundation. Chris and I agree that we need to setup “wholly-owned” subsiduries in other countries in order to achieve that.
• Incoming Boards of Trustees need a proper orientation training programme. They need to be aware of their legal responsibilities (and liabilities!); they need to be aware of how a Board should operate, and they need training in how to manage an organisation’s finances. This should be in place for every new Board, and folks who want to stand as a Trustee in an election should have this training first, so that they understand what they are letting themselves in for before the actual election happens.
• The current Board is (effectively) made up entirely of executive directors. There are no non-executive directors at all to provide experienced advice to the Trustees. Again, maybe this is a UK/US thing, but over here non-executive directors are a normal part of a Board (I’m on the board of one company as a non-executive director myself), and is something I believe would really help the Trustees - especially after the first Trustee meeting that I attended last month.
• One of the duties that Trustees are charged with is ensuring that Gentoo remains an open project. I want to work with the Council and with Developer Relations to ensure that we do indeed remain an open project - and that we do not become a closed-shop where only a select few are allowed to truly participate. I challenge all the other candidates to also declare that they will do the same. I believe that anyone who stands as a candidate for Trustee, but who does not support this position, is fundamentally at odds with what Trustees are required (by our bylaws) to do. Openness shouldn’t just mean that our work is published under a F/OSS license. It should also mean that our project is open to new members in the future, just as it has been open to new members up to now.

Why do I feel qualified me to stand as a Trustee?

• I’ve been a Gentoo developer since 2003 (I joined just after the Zynot split, and was a contributor via bugzilla before then). If you use Gentoo for web-serving, I’m the person most responsible for how that works across all of the herds and projects involved. Other things I’ve kicked off or lead include Planet Gentoo, Gentoo Overlays, and Gentoo Seeds.
• I founded the Gentoo UK conference, and co-organised it in 2004 and 2005.
• I’ve run my own company.
• I’ve been a full-time manager at one of Europe’s largest companies (Orange).

There’s a mini-bio available on my homepage if you want more details about my experience outside Gentoo.

If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to catch me on IRC. I can be found in #gentoo-dev if I’m online.

Er - vote ’stuart’

I’ve thrown my hat into the ring, and decided to stand in the upcoming elections for the Gentoo Foundation. A bit like Robin, and his one-issue stand on package signing for the council elections, I’m standing for election on one issue: creating an international developer conference.

My proposal goes further than simply running an annual conference, and discusses how turning the Foundation into a truly world-wide organisation could not only help us raise more money, but also could help us create an even broader community than we have now.

Please, have a read, post feedback below (or come talk to me on IRC), and come and help us make this happen.