Community Council

Revision as of 16:31, 2 February 2010

The Maemo Community Council is a five-person body chosen by the "Maemo community". The Council's primary purpose is to represent the views and opinions of the Maemo Community to Nokia, and vice versa. The "Maemo community" is roughly defined as:

all users of maemo.org;
people sufficiently attached to Maemo devices via blogging about them, developing for them, or discussing them.

Maemo Community Council members are unpaid volunteers who are not employed by Nokia Coporation. Likewise, the Council has not signed a non-disclosure agreement NDA with Nokia. Maemo Community Council elections are held every six months.

Purpose (Mission)

To represent the Maemo Community's best interests to Nokia, and to act as a community conduit for Nokia-generated information.

Member Roster

Current: September 2009 - March 2010


Randall Arnold (Texrat)	Alan Bruce (qole)	Graham Cobb (gcobb)	Matthew Lewis (penguinbait)	Valério Valério (VDVsx)*

Former

March 2009 - September 2009

Ryan Abel
(GeneralAntilles)

Alan Bruce
(qole)

Andrew Flegg
(Jaffa)*

Kees Jongenburger
(keesj)

Tim Samoff
(timsamoff)

September 2008 - February 2009 (Inaugural Council)

Ryan Abel
(GeneralAntilles)*

Andrew Flegg
(Jaffa)

Eduardo Lima
(etrunko)

Simon Pickering
(lardman)

Tim Samoff
(timsamoff)

*Council Chair

Open Communication

Open communication is one of the core values of the Maemo Community Council, both to serve as an example to Nokia and because it's the right thing to do. All communication is open by default.

Community-related news, announcements, and calls for participation are summarized in the Council blog.
Council "micro-updates" can be found in the Community subforum at Talk.
If you have a community-related idea or issue, please post it in the Community subforum at Talk.
At some point, the maemo-community mailing list will be integrated with the Community subforum at Talk. Until then, the Council will use the Community subforum and link to important items in maemo-community, identified by using the [Council] tag.
Last, Council members are usually present over IRC at freenode.net/maemo and are always happy to chat with you.

Media

Presentation used at Maemo Summit 2008: "Introducing the Maemo Community Council"

Council Work

In addition to being committed community members (and all that entails), some of the specific responsibilities of the council include:

Facilitation: making sure that one portion of the community knows what is going on in another
Chairing the maemo.org sprint meetings, and representing the community
Hiring of maemo.org staff
Pushing to expand the community through organic growth
Being able to represent the community to Nokia, especially when dealing with sensitive information; for example, attendance at N900 launch as community reps.
Backup mentors for the Google Summer of Code participation.

To keep track of the ongoing work, see Twitter; the council blog and the current Sprint.

Current Highlights

FAQ

What is the council for?

There have been a number of times when Nokia have asked for the community's input on something (for example, the 100 days brainstorm) and been met with either silence; or a cacophony of disparate voices. The aim of the council is for the community to have selected five representatives who speak with a more authoritative voice. These council members, elected for their views, can express their opinions safe in the knowledge that the community has permitted them to do so.

What is the difference between a council member and a committed community member?

Paperwork ;-)

More seriously, nothing much at all. Many of the roles and tasks council members will be involved in are no way restricted to just council members. It is, in all honesty, a facilitation role: doing what one would do normally, but also absorbing information from other sources to try and minimise any duplication and represent the community to Nokia; and itself.

It is expected that council members will attend more of the monthly meetings, and be aware of more community channels than otherwise.

It has also been proposed that the council would have oversight of paid staff working for maemo.org.

Do council members get paid? Is membership a "reward"?

No. Council members will typically (but not necessarily) "do" more than another community member. The council are still community members, and have been selected by the community's belief that the views presented by the selected members will both a) align with their own views, and b) best represent the community's interests.

It is hoped that membership of the council will count strongly towards any future device discount programmes, or event sponsorship; but these are a) not guaranteed, b) relatively small.

Have the council signed NDAs with Nokia?

No. The council does not know anything that anyone in the community couldn't find out. The only exception is that Nokia will sometimes warn the council about announcements shortly ahead of time to warn the council that their efforts in facilitating community discussion may soon be needed.

How can I get involved?

You do not need the council's permission to become an active member of the Maemo community. In the words of a famous shoe maker: just do it.

If you require additional help from the community, email the maemo-community mailing list. If you require more discretion, there is an email alias which goes directly to the council members: council@maemo.org.

If there is a specific task you want to raise, and push for at the monthly meetings, see the Maemo.org_Sprints#Tasks sprint process.

How can I stand for the council?

Before the elections, nominations are requested on the maemo-community mailing list. It is expected that someone who wants to help shape the community will be subscribed to that mailing list.

Selection Process

Main article: Community Council/Election process

The 5 council members will be elected by the community. Elections are open to community members with an account over 3 months old and karma of 10 or more. Candidates can be anyone with a karma of 100 or above.

A list of eligible candidates will be published a few weeks before the elections. Based on this, a list of candidate declarations is put together.

Election 2009-September

Election 2009-March

Past election results are available here.