Hi all,
Well, I have been struggling for a long time, thinking if I should
self-nominate or not. Marina sent messages to me to strongly suggest me
to run for the BoD. I have the will to contribute more to the
community, but I told her that self-nomination is really not a part of
our culture. In Eastern Asian culture (Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, ...
most areas affected deeply by Confucius) self-nomination usually means
arrogant. Especially I have just got involved more into TDF for only
around 2 years, which means "running for BoD position" is really a bold
decision (and it would usually be interpreted as arrogant by people
here). You may feel strange or funny, but that is exactly why I'm
struggling.
Today I just finished the first version of subtitles of Bjoern's
interview video in LibreOffice Conference 2017. (It's on Amara
https://amara.org/en/videos/JzyUE4THGsVz/en/2028661/ it's still just a
draft and please feel free to proofread it). I found that we have
common thoughts and ideals. In my interview I said that, what
LibreOffice needs is to make more people understand that, everyone can
contribute to LibreOffice (or any FOSS). It's not an easy task as we've
worked hard on it for more than a decade in Taiwan. Bjoern's interview
made me think more and decide to self nominate for the BoD.
IMO the position of BoD is not "leading" the community. Of course
members of BoD need to make decisions for many important things but I
don't think it as "leading". IMO the BoD should be "the intersection of
the community", which means most people in the community agree, approve,
and recognize the BoD to make decisions for the community. So an
important part of BoD is to communicate with people. What I can (and
have been doing) contribute to LibreOffice (either as a member of BoD or
not) is to spread the words everywhere, and connect LibreOffice
community to Asian people more closely. Also, I'd like to keep focusing
on marketing both ODF and LibreOffice, especially to the governments,
either in Taiwan or in other countries. Also, I'd like to communicate
and make the UX of LibreOffice more close to Asian people, or say, make
it more diverse. Currently there are some UI design not friendly to
Asian people (for example, in Calc there's a shortcut key Ctrl-Space,
which for us is to switch the input method and hence would never
transfer to Calc).
Currently in Taiwan I think we're in a historical high point of adopting
ODF and (derivatives of) LibreOffice, which also means that we're now in
a plateau period. We're still running for a new 3-year projects and
setting more rules to governments. I'd like to connect closer with ODF
committee, and share my experiences to different places about ODF and
LibreOffice.
As for myself, I own a small company in Taiwan running for training
courses and migrating projects of FOSS. But actually in most occasions
I'll use the identity of the President of Software Liberty Association
Taiwan, which was founded in 2001 and is an NPO to promote FOSS. In the
past decade we focused a lot more on education, which I think gives us a
good base to promote FOSS/ODF/LibreOffice now.
Phew, that's it. I hope to have the chance to contribute to the whole
community in different ways.
--- separate line ---
Full name: Franklin Weng (Weng, Chia-Chi on my passport)
e-mail address: franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw, franklin@libreoffice.org
Affiliation: Software Liberty Association Taiwan
The candidacy statement:
"If I'm elected as a member of BoD, firstly I'll do my best to be the
bridge between the community and Asian countries, and then I'll also
focus on communicating with people and marketing ODF and LibreOffice to
governments of different countries. Besides, I hope to make the
products more friendly to Asian C/J/K people in the aspect of UI/UX."
Regards,
Franklin