Hi all,
I hereby state that I will be running again for a Board of Directors seat with
The Document Foundation.
Im Bjoern Michaelsen and I am currently serving on the Board of Directors as an
unaffilated individual. Before that I ensured LibreOffice to be properly
released and maintained through half an alphabet on Ubuntu: from the first
LibreOffice release (3.3) on Ubuntu Natty to LibreOffice 5.3 on Ubuntu Zesty.
My current job is unrelated to LibreOffice. This unfortunately also limits the
time I can donate to the project in various roles: as a developer, as a member
of the ESC, as an organizer of events or fullfilling an administrative on the
Board of Directors. But it also allows me to claim to be a truly independent voice.
I spare you providing a long list of my prior contributors to the project, as
they are a bad prediction of those in the future. Instead I will try to provide
you with what I can bring to the role on the Board and what goals I am going to
aim for:
I served as a Director or Deputy on the Board of Directors of TDF since it was
first incorporated, and along the way I learned insights in the finer details of the
decisions and experiences made by TDFs Board of Directors. The hard core of
these involve the allocation of the foundations resources: Its brands and
donations. But I also understand and contributed to the softer points: TDF
carefully using its public voice as a NGO for the greater good and its stated
mission.
I hope I will be able to bring this experience into the next term of the Board
of Directors. I am encouraged to see strong contributors to the project as
new candidates in this election and hope to share the duty of serving with
them, together providing a strong and reasonable voice of independent and
unaffiliated input in the Board.
Ultimately, I hope after this one last term can confidently leave TDFs Board
with many new diverse and independent voices in all parts of the project anf
foundation and retire back to spend my contributions more on e.g. the code of
the project again.
Beyond that my goals for the TDF projects, LibreOffice and the Document Liberation
Project are:
- focus on growth for the whole project cycle:
The project obviously provides a product (releases of software). Those
products in turn need to provide the project -- esp. with contributors as
more helping hands are always needed in all areas of the project
- growth and diversity:
The project should continue to grow and diversify: geographically, socially
and by affiliations. Both will help hardening the project against external
forces.
- experience is key:
Product and project need to come closer, and using the former should be a
temptation to also take part in the latter wherever possible. We should
2always look for opportunities to improve here.
- sharing knowledge:
LibreOffice/DLP have grown to use more and more bleeding edge development and
project tools and proccesses. We should offer to showcase and make them
accessible to observers, researchers and teachers in education and elsewhere.
Those learning from us might very well benefit us with their contributions.
75-words version:
I bring lot of experience from prior work on TDFs governance and am an
unaffiliated contributor to LibreOffice. I think the key to the success of
LibreOffice is in the project and seeking growth for it by improving the
experience for contributors and raising the visibility of our community and the
opportunities for contribution.
Best,
Bjoern
