Community Council/Candidate declarations for September 2009

Randall Arnold (Texrat)
First some history. As the QA engineer for tablet products in 2006 I worked tirelessly to ensure quality of N800 devices, developing test and training plans above and beyond what the program had provided. When I discovered that a growing community of developers was hungry for Nokia interaction, I began volunteering my time to help where I could. As many know that partially consisted of dropping hints to maintain community interest, but it also included providing support to the community as well as communicating community concerns to the proper Nokia channels. I ran an internal blog called "The Long Tail" that frequently highlighted tablet issues. When our factory shut down, I intercepted N800 faceplates destined for scrap and provided them free to interested community members.

I also have many years experience in programming and product design which I believe helps me identify with consumer needs.

These are various examples describing my interest in the products and the high desire for them to succeed. As a council member I will continue to devote my energies to improving the community-corporate relationship and advocating the product line to the general public (while also working to ensure the average user does not get lost in the process). As a former Nokia employee I understand the culture and motivations behind many product decisions but at the same time I strive to be objective enough not to always accept them as excuses. ; )

Jay Carter (zerojay)
I'm a 30 year old married father of one that has been working in the video game industry for 4 years this coming Halloween. A lot of my work within Maemo has mirrored the kind of work that I have ended up doing professionally: quality assurance, production and... well... all the dirty jobs no one else seems to want to do. I've applied the skills I've learned professionally over to Maemo repeatedly, as one can see through the many bugs I've filed against Maemo and surrounding software as well as recently spearheading the movement for community involvement with Nokia's translation teams. We use agile software development at work (SCRUM) just as Nokia and the council appears to, so I feel that I'll be extremely comfortable within this environment.

This wouldn't be the first time that I've been involved in leading a community as I've been involved as a community liason between a company I do not work for and a community I love. I know what to expect and how things typically work when trying to interact with commercial entities as a community member as well as the other way around.

Like you, I love these tablets and I want to do everything possible to not only keep them alive, but make them a true success. Help me make the most of this platform.

Matthew Lewis (penguinbait)
Hello, I am penguinbait. I have been using maemo since the 770 was new. I own the 800 and 810. I love all things linux, which is what drew me to Nokia hardware to begin with. My first attempt into compiling a window manger "Window Maker" for n800 proved successful. Further attempts into Openbox WM and ROX also produced a fast usable desktop, although buggy. KDE came next and proved to be pretty cool with support for BT mouse and CUPS allowing network printing. XFCE made a appearance briefly. CD/DVD burning on KDE. Lots of tools scripted tools for cloning maemo OS. Known to be occasionally vocal .........

Alan Bruce (qole)
Pros:


 * I have the highest number of "thanks" on talk.maemo.org: Either I'm helpful, or I know how to "game" the system. Or both.
 * I survived a term on the council, and I now "know the ropes" a bit better. I can help bring some continuity to the council.
 * I am a good bridge between the "power users" and the "developers" since I'm a bit of both (but mostly a "power user").
 * I stay current on the forums, and I think that I have a fairly good sense of what the issues are in the community.
 * I believe that I am a good writer.
 * I love the Internet Tablets, Maemo and open source software.
 * As a Canadian, I can understand how cold weather and a harsh environment can shape the mindset of the Finnish people. I therefore can understand how Nokia thinks. ;-)
 * I have a good sense of humour... And nice eyes.

Cons:


 * I'm not a good administrator. I could draw up an agenda or chair a sprint meeting only under emergency circumstances. ;-)
 * I have been known to be incautious in my phrasing. My inflammitory posts have upset some central people in the Maemo community. This may happen again.
 * I am on the west coast of Canada. If I wish to attend an IRC meeting with European participants, I have to be up very early and the meeting has to start in the late afternoon.

So that's what I think about myself. If you want to form your own opinions, please peruse my posts on talk.maemo.org or the mailing lists. My personality is there, in all its glory and horror.

Andrew Black (AndrewFBlack)
I decided to run for the Council this time I have considered it the first two times but never followed thru on signing up I think its time I go for it. I really want to see the community grow and get bigger. I also want to make sure the people who stick with the N8x0 and 770s don't get left behind. That is one of my biggest things. I for one will keep releasing all my themes for all the devices I can.

Stephen Gadsby (sjgadsby)
About me:


 * I'm a mid-thirties-ish father of three who is a technology generalist by trade and by nature.
 * I joined the Maemo community--via itT--shortly after purchasing an N800 in February of 2007.
 * Since the spring of 2008, I've been publishing weekly "Bug Jars" to summarize activity within maemo.org Bugzilla. Initially, this was to help end users begin to understand that complex system, but the bug reports quickly evolved to aid developers also.
 * I follow all the maemo.org mailing lists and attend sprint meetings to keep abreast of community activity and maemo.org development.
 * I'm active on talk.maemo.org--for years as a user and now as a super moderator. (I've yet to receive my cape though.) I enjoy answering user questions there, and I now also work to organize threads and eliminate spam.
 * I can make a kazoo sound with my teeth.

My goals:

In short: to give back more to this community that gives so much.

I don't have an agenda beyond a desire and intention to work as I can to help our community continue to improve as it grows. Really, I'll do that whether selected for the council or not though.

Thank you for your time, and I welcome your questions. Well, some questions. I don't know where you left your car keys.

Valerio Valerio (VDVsx)
About me:


 * Currently I'm a MSc researcher at University of Évora, Portugal, and in the last years I have actively participated in several OSS projects and community's.
 * I joined the Maemo Community about an year ago. After the development of BlueMaemo, I received some very positive feedback from the community, that made me stick around.
 * During my studies, I've done facilitator roles, that in my opinion can help me and the community if I'm elected. I also have a passion for organizing events/initiatives and make things happen.
 * I consider myself a normal guy, in my free time I like to watch football, cinema, listen rock music and do some sports.

My past participation and future goals:

In the last year, I actively contributed to our community as a programmer, but also organized some initiatives as Andrew said. The big one's were the Google Summer of Code participation and more recently the schedule of the community days of the Maemo Summit (I really like to organize things :) ).

I'm not that 'vocal' as some of the other candidates. I like to have good discussions and believe that some talk is needed in order to reach good decisions for the community, but I don't like to ramble too much. Actually my philosophy of work is "more action and less talk" ;).

I'm a coder not a politic, so I also don't have a agenda ;), but I do have a strong willing of help our community that gave me so much. I can promise that If I'm selected I will work as I can to help our community to improve even more.

Selected or not, I intend to continue among our community, developing new initiatives and help the grow of the community.

Questions about me or my intentions are welcome :).

Graham Cobb (gcobb)
I am one of the oldest members of the community but I hope you won't count that against me. By day I work in marketing, for a software company. But I used to be a professional software developer, for about 15 years, before I turned to the dark side. My background was in real-time software in data networking (routers and similar devices) -- so I really don't know much about GUIs!

I am a strong supporter of open source and am proud to consider myself (a small) part of that community, having made modest contributions to a few OS communities before (Tivo, OpenWRT, Linux kernel, Rex 6000).

Of course, the Maemo community is the leading community for open source development on personal devices so I am very excited to be part of it.

I have been active developer on the Internet Tablets since soon after the 770 came out. I work on things that I need for myself but try to make them useful for as many people as possible. I am currently the most active maintainer in the GPE project and maintain the various Maemo ports (I still support gregale, bora and chinook/diablo as well as porting to Fremantle). I enjoy fixing bugs as well as helping users.

I follow the -users, -developers and -community mailing lists closely and often contribute (you hadn't noticed?). I am not as active in ITT/talk or on IRC.

If elected, my focus will be on empowering and further building the developer community. I think that with the arrival of the N900 this is going to be a very exciting time for Maemo and I want to make sure that both commercial and hobbyist developers feel at home and can make an active contribution to the community. My goal will be to do what I can to help make Maemo become the platform of choice for all the neat new applications because of its openness and its community as well as its devices.

My strengths are:

marketing, so I can relate to Nokia and to the new breed of developers who will be attracted to the platform, as well as other hobbyists like myself manage both large and small applications and ensuring they are well supported by Nokia and the Maemo council and staff whether the Maemo platform is successful
 * my experience of working in large companies, both in development and in
 * my interest in providing tools for developers to allow them to create and
 * my concern for the users, who are the people who will ultimately decide

One of my weaknesses is that my emails are too long!

Gary Birkett (lcuk)
I have decided to stand for the council this time round after having my ear bent from many people. I have been active in the community for the last 18 months and have been hanging out in irc and the regular channels and hacking away at my liqbase software during this time. During this time I have spoken with lots of people in the community and have tried to create simple and personal computing apps which connect us at a human level.

There has always been a strong desire to use the best software we can find/create/use on all our maemo devices and give the best experience possible on each of them. Coupled with this, has always been a strong need for optimization in the mobile devices platform and have always been on hand to help and assist with projects and mechanisms. My experiences with liqbase allows me to help people get the most out of with GTK and QT and SDL or PYGAME to find the best path through a problem.

I am a firm believer in core solid basic principles and help and encourage anybody hacking on the platform, creating new and innovative apps and hacks makes it interesting for all. Coaxing these hacks and lessons into the general community is a practical useful thing and will help the platform to florish over the coming years :)

A further aspect of my candidature is collaborative commercial work. I recently took part in the onedotzero adventures in motion festival where I was asked to construct a remote control device for their identity installation. Whilst at the festival there was a great deal of interest in using the platform to create bespoke custom applications for installations and projects people have.

I would like to further this commercial interest and create a mechanism for other interested parties to connect developers with commercial entities to bring their ideas and bespoke applications to life whilst putting food on the table of the extremely hard working developers within the community.