Requests to the board

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Jan 26, 2008 8:11 AM, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> It is more a question of how do you vote for someone without
> understanding their ideas on various decisions being made within the board?

Okay let's take me for example.  Did you and everyone else in
contributor-space have a reasonably good idea of what sort of things I
was interested in before I even stood for election?

Do you doubt for a second that I would stop championing the same sort
of things now that I have ultimate power at the cost of sitting in on
a phone call once a week?

As far as I'm concerning being on the board hasn't bought me any more
access that I haven't already earned with indvidual people inside the
community I need to interact with. The people who didn't find me a
useful resource before aren't going to magically start giving me more
attention because other people voted for me. If anything being voted
might have hardened already poor opinions of me.  All being on the
board has really done is given me a credible title to hang off of my
name, so when I can interact with people outside our community, it
buys me about 2 minutes of their time before they write me off as a
crazy.

> I can choose to trust certain members to do the right thing but more
> transparency would be helpful, I think. If others are contend with the
> current status, then I guess it's ok.

If you need to ask how someone personally feels about a subject, just
ask.  I personally hate dragging out disagreements into the open if it
can be helped, whether its on the board or in some other subgroup.
Everybody should know I'm just as much of a fan of talking one-on-one
with someone to make sure positive things get done, as I am discussing
things in a town hall mailinglist.  If I haven't had a sidebar
conversation with you in the last couple of years, you either aren't
on my personal radar, or I don't have a way to positively impact what
you are trying to accomplish.

-jef