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Greg Knaddison (greggles)

Sun, 12/23/2007 - 14:36 — greggles
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?: 
I've settled on a few fundamental values that I seek to promote in the world: Freedom, Information, Truth, Compassion. Drupal, being Free software, enables people to express themselves, share Information, to get their Truth out into the world at a very low cost. And, when people get to do all of those things and it is easy to do so then the project shows Compassion to their needs. I see open source web collaboration and publishing as one way to help promote those values in the world. ----- It also happens that my job is dependent on Drupal and I have relationships with a lot of people whose jobs depend on Drupal. So I understand the "Drupal as a business" perspective and am motivated by my self-interest to make sure that the project survives so that my job stays intact. ----- Somewhere between those two perspectives, I hope, lies a balanced view of the impact that Drupal has on people's lives. I want to make sure that the Drupal project survives to help fulfill these goals and I feel that a well functioning Drupal Association is key to the project's survival.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?: 
There is one main area where I want to work in the near-term: Increasing transparency of the processes and actions that the Association is taking. This has gotten a lot better in the last few months but I think there is still a lot of confusion about what the Association can do, should do, and is doing. Two immediate steps I would take would be to document the dates of the meetings that have happened in the past and then create a list of things people might want to see (budget, minutes, etc.) and then a description of when that will be available (a year after the fact, a month after the fact, only to members of the Drupal Association, etc.). ----- This is more work than Permanent Members are supposed to be doing and less work than Board Members should be doing. I don't feel I can honestly commit to a full board member position but would like to take a more active role than simply policing the Board.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?: 
The first step will be to identify the most common processes that we have and then document and analyze these processes. The analysis will be done with an eye towards improving transparency and efficiency. I hope that a bit of process improvement could go a long way in making people feel more comfortable with the role played by the association and that it will make people more aware of the work being done. ----- I have heard that there is already a lot of work to be done and it just needs more people to help. So, I would simply like to work on other people's proposals or facilitating the execution of proposals where someone else is the primary owner. My feeling is that the Association shouldn't try to do everything, but should be effective in supporting other community members to get things done themselves.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?: 
My goals only take my time and persistence in getting feedback from other people, so no budget is necessary. ----- However, a smaller goal of mine is increasing membership by enacting the most popular desired "benefits of membership" from Kieran's survey about Drupal Membership benefits. I would also like to increase the visibility of Drupal Association members (e.g. providing a badge or profile checkbox on Drupal.org for association members, providing @drupal.org email addresses to all members, providing an "I'm a member" button for people's websites that links back to their contribution).
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?: 
I have had broad involvement in the Drupal community and so I will bring a good perspective to the decision making process (I've read every mailing list for the past 2 years, participate in the forums, issue queue, g.d.o groups, security team, site maintenance team, etc.). ----- I have also worked for 2 years as a business process engineer/consultant with two large consulting firms (Arthur Andersen, PwC) which I think would be particularly useful towards my near-term goal.
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?: 
I started using Drupal 2.5 years ago to build a website for my neighborhood organization. We needed a way to publish the minutes from meetings and provide a discussion forum. I added in images a calendar and the neighborhood benefited from the increased communication. A next-door neighborhood asked me to build them a similar website and from that job I become a part-time Drupal freelancer. 2.5 years later I'm a full-time Drupal developer, maintain and write new modules, and do work via local user groups to spread the use of Drupal among new users.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?: 
I assume you know my Drupal community contributions or can learn them from http://drupal.org/user/36762 I also formed and organized the Denver/Boulder Drupal User Group and a Boulder DrupalCamp while I was living there and have taken a hiatus from that while I am abroad this year. ----- Outside of Drupal I have been involved with several non-profits for the improvement of Colorado's environment (trail maintenance crews, wilderness cleanup crews) and volunteered for organizations that improve my neighborhood and city. I guess most of the things I do involve manual labor in natural areas which I hadn't really realized until now. I have also volunteered for and donated to several Denver programs that help at-risk youths to increase their job-readiness skills. These organizations are all local, but specifically they are Access Fund, Wilderness on Wheels, Human Services Inc., and Junior Achievement.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?: 
8 hours/month
Apply for Board of Directors membership: 
Apply for Permanent Membership only
Statutes: 
I have read and understood the Statutes of the Drupal Association. I am prepared to participate by following those statutes.

Comments

Wed, 01/02/2008 - 05:22 — webchick

+1 to more transparency

I'm really happy to see your name among the contenders; I wasn't sure we would.

You possess a critical eye (this is a compliment, btw) and I think with your fresh perspective, you could help us improve both our internal processes and our relationship with the broader community.

Sun, 12/30/2007 - 06:32 — Dries

Communications director?

Greggles, do you think Communications director would be the best description of what you envision to be your role?

See also http://buytaert.net/drupal-association-organization-chart-2008-wishlist: The communications director is responsible for communicating the Drupal Association's activities to the Drupal community, and for improving Drupal's outreach in general. Writes drupal.org announcements and responds to inquiries from the Drupal community or the press.

Of course, your answer wouldn't be binding, and you could fill in such a role however you see fit, but am I correct when I say you would be happiest in that position?

Mon, 12/31/2007 - 18:48 — greggles

mistaken checkbox

Hi Dries,

I seem to have mistakenly checked the "apply for board of directors" box. In my primary goals answer I mentioned that what I want to do is slightly more than what permanent members are supposed to be doing and less than what board members are supposed to be doing.

Certainly communicating is a big part of what I would want to achieve, but as I said I don't think I can make a year-long commitment to doing as much work as is expected of a Board Member (e.g. I will be basically off line for all of April and much of May and June).

Thanks for helping me clarify my application.

Greg

Sat, 12/29/2007 - 18:26 — greggles

update on badges

Since my application includes the idea of badges which are now available the next steps for those badges that I'd be willing to work on would be

  1. Profile page on association.d.o for people who want one, to better link the badges back to
  2. Easy copy/paste html on the profile page which includes the img src and a link to the profile page to provide easy to implant badges
  3. "member since" and "membership valid/expired" indication on the profile pages
Sun, 12/23/2007 - 19:04 — Kieran Lal

Your interpretations of the statues and transparency

Hi Greg, you are advocating for more transparency in the association. This is a good thing, and I agree with you. Governance without transparency removes a critical feedback loop.

One of the dilema's the association has faced is what is sharing, and what is sharing too much.
1) The association publicly lists the paid memberships, and total donations it has received. We've also listed major donations like the 5K from OpenID, and donations of servers from Sun. However, we don't post a total budget and I suspect that's partially because communication cashflow is time consuming. Also, there's some concern about sharing total assets available, which might have unintended consequences. How would you address this need for greater transparency? Which parts of the statues apply?

2) The board stumbled early on in communicating meeting minutes to the association. It has now corrected this, but we still don't show individual meeting minutes or votes publicly. What parts of the statues would you cite, to provide more transparency? What regular tasks would you do if elected as a permanent member to ensure maximum transparency? What parts of the statues would you recommend the General assembly change to allow even more transparency?

Indicating you will evaluate and improve the processes is noble, but if they are restricted by the statues or current interpretations of statues that might prevent your recommendations from being implemented. It's best to understand this aspect of the statues before being elected.

Cheers,
Kieran

Sun, 12/23/2007 - 20:03 — greggles

Thanks for the questions.

Thanks for the questions.

1) I agree that there is an issue of balance. As an example, the Mozilla Corporation tends to be pretty tight lipped about a lot of the things that they do and they are obviously doing pretty well as a project. They take a long time to report where they have spent the money (though they do eventually divulge details). I think that a lot of this comes down to managing expectations - right now people don't have much of an expectation about the proper level of information. I would like to add to the FAQ a schedule of what information is shared and when (i.e. minutes, budgets, proposals, decisions on proposals, votes on membership, votes on proposals). If people just knew "you will never find out the results of votes on membership" then that would be helpful to them. Another problem seems to be a lot of confusion about what meetings have been held and when the next meetings will be held. So, I would add a calendar of all meetings and activities of the Association. I edited my application to include these specific goals.

2) Article 16 of the statutes says that minutes of the General Assembly meetings are available online to "at least" Permanent Members or are available to anybody that goes to Dries B's house or to anyone who sends a reason via mail for them. Since paragraph 2 of Article 16 allows pedestrians on the street access to these minutes, I think it's only appropriate to share them more broadly on the internet as well.

Article 26 which deals with the Board of Director's minutes just says that they will be shared with the members. It doesn't restrict or force their sharing beyond that which, I believe, allows us to do whatever is most appropriate for the community. Again, I don't think it's nearly as important that they are shared as much as it is important that there is a public statement to set expectations on what will happen with them. My preference is to share them broadly within a year of the meeting and I would lobby for that. I understand that there is concern that we need a lawyer's advice on this. If that is the case I would try to gauge how important they are to the community and, if warranted, spend money on that lawyer to be able to share them. Similarly, there is no restriction on sharing the budget (article 29).

At this point I don't know that any parts of the statutes need changing to allow enough information to be shared. Certainly if there is a conflict between the sharing of information that the community needs to know and the statutes then we will need to draft a change and update the statutes.

Beyond these initial steps I don't think there are any regular things I would do. I would of course make myself available for questions/concerns from the broad community and if any of them seemed like they could be improved by increased transparency then I would review the established processes so that we could find a way to help people out.

Regards,
Greg

Fri, 12/28/2007 - 06:49 — Kieran Lal

Thanks for following through

Hi Greg, great response. Thanks for clarifying your application.

I think you make a great addition to the association.

Cheers,
Kieran