 So then I'd say let's start again with a quick round of introduction from the candidates and as always an order of appearance and Marina, since you were first, how would you start? Okay, I'm the lucky one, starting. So, well, what to say? First of all, again, thanks everyone for joining, also thanks to people that will decide to watch the recording later. So I'm Marina, mainly starting my contributions to the project from the Italian community when it was still open office time and I was at the university. So as a lot of other contributors, I started doing translations to Italian and in parallel with that, some QA activities always with the open office community. Then when the folk became something concrete, I was more than happy to jump in the open office project and with the Italian community, we decided also to make a real official legal entity for supporting the activities done locally by the Italian community. And what else to add? Yes, so before that, I was mainly involved on the local level, so as just a normal community member working locally without really interacting with the international community. And after that, I decided to engage a bit more with the project. So I was running for the board in 2016 and for the last term, so the current term, I decided to try to contribute to the membership committee, switching the focus of my contribution from the kind of governance and activities done on the board to something more related to the community that is more the job done on the membership committee. And I think it's a lot from my side. Thanks a lot Marina and also thanks a lot for running again this term. So then we have Uwe as the second candidate. Please, if you would introduce yourself. Oh, okay. So the most half of you know me for at least a few years. So I'm making sure I came to the project when its name was open office and starting off the 2000s, I think 2003 or 2004. When the French people started, I don't know the name, to make a Mac OS port and 11 port of open office. And then I've been quite a long time along with the German community, which was very, very active in this time about 20, 30, 40 people engaging in open office things. Mostly, we made a thing at the C bit, which was the biggest computer fair in the world then. And, but those things declined a lot. Then the fork we brought was happened. And so I engaged there, mostly in doing some QA on the Macs. Testing, testing errors and such things, keeping, keeping users answers, answering the question and such things. And get engaged in the, in the TDF itself and the GDPR emerged in Europe and did a project for the, for the TDF, introducing GDPR in TDF structures, maybe in the website and some other things too. And following this discussion, we had, we had the discussion about a tooling in the MC and so, so the one came to another, so I run for the MC two years ago. And since then, I tried to improve the tooling of the MC most of the time because I'm a substitute member. So I have nothing to say there, which isn't true because, because we quite, quite heard every voice, although so there's no big difference between members and substitute members there. Okay, that's, that's all for, for the start, if some questions emerge on the answer then. Okay, thank you. Cool. Thanks a lot, Uwe. So, yeah, so with that, I think we can start with first round of questions. So how, how we would run that is that people can ask questions either just raising their hand and asking it's here in the video or they can just type it in the, in the chat. And then we would take the candidates would then take turns to answer that question. And then we, we continue like rinse and repeat and start with the next question. So are there any questions from, from anyone here towards the candidates? So we can go home. Well, there was, we have, I mean, just for the, for the those who did not find time, I haven't, I have not taken notes like on the attendance list, but we had a nice, very nice round of questions already, also from, from staff and community, the first session. So it might actually be a little bit redundant for people who were here for the second time. But fear not, I have some questions prepared. So we will not run out of things to talk about. If there's nothing, but let's maybe let just for warm up, let me start with asking a question, then we will see if that leads to other questions and we take it from them. So there was, there was a question that a few candidates have answered yet already on the mailing list on the board discuss list. But from what I can tell not everybody. So I would maybe start with asking that question again here and then you can either refer to the, to board discuss or, or expand a bit on that or answer. So let's see if that works. So the obviously the one of the primary roles of the membership committee is evaluating applications or renewals. And for that we need, you need to assess like, is that contribution meeting the threshold and as a stat would say it has to be significant and non-trivial. And what would be the criteria just like roughly how you would evaluate that. So what would be maybe with an example would be trivial would not be non-trivial. And the third part of that, that set of question was whether that would make any difference depending on the area of contribution, let's say QA versus translation or marketing versus system administration or development. So then let's start again with Marina. Okay. So I was mentioning already my let's say view on those questions directly on the board discuss list. So definitely if you want to have a look at that, you can also find a reply on this topic. But for the recording, let me try to say that first of all, when we are getting renewals, in general, a renewal evaluation can be easier because the member is a is a nonpartisan or in general, because the tools that we have attended are already providing us some guidance on the amount of contributions. And with that, we can have a look at the kind of contributions that are reported. So for giving you an example of maybe a contribution that is too trivial for being considered as a good one, let's take the case of a code contribution that is just fixing one type of maybe one type of for a new application. It's not enough. It's clear that saying the correction of the typo is not enough. It's not telling completely the truth because if this person is really working constantly on cleaning up the comments that are in the code fixing a lot of typo, then this contribution can be also considered as a non-trigger one, given the amount of those easier contributions. So that it's also one of the distinction that we need to make. Then when it comes to new applications, that kind of evaluation is harder, normally, because really often the applicant is just a new one that sometimes is just sending an application even before contributing. So in that case, we are really digging around the dashboard that is aggregating all the information that we have. We are googling around, searching if we were lucky enough to get in this application also the details of some contact person that could help us. So when it comes to new applications, the task is definitely not easy. If we have something to evaluate, then of course, as we also mentioned during the previous session, what we need to do is to see if the contribution is something in line with what our status is telling us, meaning that contributing with code, of course, it's a valid contribution. Doing marketing, doing advocacy or QA or translations, working on guides, it's of course everything that can be considered as good. As we say this morning, what we can improve on this topic is to try to provide a more clear guidance on the quantity of those contributions that can be considered as good enough for reaching this threshold for being accepted. And this is definitely something that we could work on. Then for what concern the different rating according to the areas, I don't think that doing development should be considered less relevant than doing translations or other way to contribute to the project. If the contribution is something fulfilling the mission of TDF, it's a contribution that must be evaluated, and then the DMC should decide if that is enough for being accepted or renewed. But that's just making a difference because of the kind of contribution. It's something that should not happen. I don't know if I answer clearly enough to the question. If something isn't clear, feel free to ask more. Thanks for that Marina. That was very clear and extensive for me. Uwe, what's your take on that? It's quite easy because Marina described the actual practice of the DMC the last two years, so there is bad reviews. I may add some remarks from my side because sometimes it's hard to answer the question for criteria because at least in my term the last two years there hasn't been the need to develop those. Let me give you an example. I see four areas of contribution. The first one is code contribution and QA. There hasn't been, as far as I remember, no corner case. There have been contributions like Marina told those typo correcting, which have been obviously trivial, and the rest is that obvious non-trivial because of amount and quality that there is just not the question of which criteria we can take because it is so obvious. There is no need to have, there was never a discussion on that. Maybe we will some point in the future, we'll come to a point where we need to develop criteria, but by now it's not necessary. Translation and documentation is the second big area where most things happen and also there, it's a little bit more difficult there because there are more dimensions, I think. For instance, we have a corner case. Each year there is a translator who doesn't that much translating, but he is the only one for his language. And because we consider to have this language in the portfolio of languages, we consider it very important to have this translator as a member. Even if, let's say, if five others would contribute his language, maybe we would have some more discussion if this is not a trivial contribution. But as you can see, there are more in one dimension we have here. And so it's also a little bit difficult to explain the criteria explicitly. Oh, okay, Marina. No, no, I feel free to finish. I would like just to reply to Carla that was writing something in the chat, so feel free to finish. The second, the third one, the big one is the marketing thing where I think the line is quite clear as I followed the discussion. So if there is some public action, this is normally seen as a contribution. If it is not in the public, let's say someone held university lectures about using LibreOffice and so on. This is normally not seen as a contribution for the project as well as, or I installed five times or 50 times or 500 times, LibreOffice in this project on the PCs of the people is normally not seen as a contribution because it doesn't contribute to the project. Quite clear. And the last one is, what I see are some special cases from people which are engaged in governance. Typical cases, Michael Schienagle. I've never seen a code contribution or translation from my, but I think there is no doubt that he contributes a lot to the project. So as you can see, there is many, many dimensions of how people can contribute. I think if I would think a few days together with the rest of the EMC, there will be even more of those. So it is, and then to say, what is the criteria of a non-driven contribution, you'll see that it's nearly impossible. I'm very lucky that we have only some few corner cases each year. And as far as I can see, the EMC is, in every case I remember, there is no big difference in valuing those things. So this is mostly consensual, was it what we do without that big discussion. The most of the work is finding out what are positive contributions of people who don't tell us. We ask in the application form, we ask, do you contribute? And they say, yes. And leave it to us to find out what. So this is, in fact, the most work and not a discussion if someone is substantial or sometimes not substantial. Okay. Cool. Thanks a lot, Uwe. That was a very, very, very extensive and insightful answer. And Marina, back to you. You wanted to answer two questions in the chat. Yeah. So in particular to Kor, he was asking, co-commenting that when he was in the EMC, they got some uneasy evaluation to make what we had, we had cases. So normally, when we need to decline to reject the renewal of a member, we are trying to dig really hard if we can find something that we missed. In particular, if this member that will get rejected is an outstanding contributor. So it's not that it's everything easy and sport and we have the unicorns. No, no, this is not the case. But normally, when the members are providing us the information and they are investing the time in telling us a bit more than, yes, I'm contributing as Uwe mentioned a few seconds ago. Normally, that it is trivial is when we don't get enough information. Or what we had, for example, during these years with COVID, it's also some members that due to health issues, simply stated, I would like to contribute, but I had issues and I was focusing on my health. I had no chance to contribute to the project. In that case, it's sad to decline, definitely to reject and instead of just rejecting, we are trying to say, we are sorry, we hope to see you soon back on contributions. I mean, there's a more human part that is involved. These in particular for those cases, but in general, when we need to reject, it's the ugly part of the job, definitely. Thanks. Okay, yeah, thanks a lot for that. If that answers the question, I would have one more follow-up question along those lines, because it was really, really great to hear that in-depth explanation of that, like how you, or that there's such consensus in the MC how to run that. Uwe, yes? Yeah, one thing I forgot. One really important thing, which we think missed both to mention, is that we often have to ask local community members about the contribution of someone, because all those people who are working in their local communities, which are not that seen or not that visible in our infrastructure, then we have to talk to the local community. And so this makes really, as I told, many cases are really clear, but in those not-so-clear cases, this makes really a difference if we have someone to ask to write who knows that person then. So this is one of the reasons, because it is very important the membership committee is has people from all around the world and from as many communities as possible. It's just to add to the... I think it's very helpful for all TDF bodies to have proper representation, that's what I believe. So where I was getting, and sorry for kind of sneaking that question in, but it directly relates to what you explained. If the MC would be completely new, so it sounds to me like there's a lot of institutional knowledge in the MC, like how you run the processes and how you evaluate, and you seem to have reached a point where that's very unanimous, like you all agree, like how that should be. Would you consider that documented or established enough that a completely new MC could continue that, or would there be a gap? Same order or for the replacement? Tosen asked if it would be sensible to document. No, no, no, I got a question. I'm asking who should answer first. Oh, I think, yeah, okay, let me call you then. It's a bit weird, because it's just me and over. I don't want to jump on in. I think, but yeah, so let's do it. Oh, sure. That's what we're calling. So Marina, if you would answer first. Okay. Well, I think that in this case, both me and over are new to the MC because this is definitely our first term. And I don't think it was so hard to get used to the work. What we had was an initial onboarding from Florian that was telling us the usual guidance, explaining the usual things that we need to keep in mind, like GDPR or the different list and things. So it's the kind of onboarding that is similar to the one that also the members of the board are getting. And apart from that, for the tool, we had in any case Gustavo already dealing with the tool. In the current term, there was also Dennis working already on it. There was Gabriele with a bit of knowledge. So I think that we simply split the task according to the expertise of the different people involved. I think it was quite natural to just pick the different skills and try to use those. For the documentation, well, maybe starting with a complete fresh MC could be helpful to have a documentation of the current existing tool. But given that we are going with the new one, I think that really starting from zero, just with that, should work, let's say, straight away because the tool has been defined properly with all the steps that needs to be taken quite clear. So I think that the documentation of what is missing with a complete new MC can be done, can be helpful. But with the new tool, that will be definitely easier to jump in without any kind of knowledge. I think onboarding from me a bit and let's say two hour introduction in Proteus will do. At the moment, if Gustavo will not be elected again, that's what hit us hard because he's the most experienced with the O2, the CMC and database. But I think the new tool is quite easier to handle and more transparent in this technology. So this should be a problem. Okay, good to hear. Thanks a lot. Then there was a question from the audience. I'll try to read. So for the candidates for which this is the second or repeated term, which is both of you incidentally, what are the conclusions of the MC interviews and the community surveys that were done a few months ago and is there anything you can already tell us about that? Yeah, I think there's nothing secret that we can't share. So for what concern of the survey that was the presentation that we gave at the last conference, so some bits are already there. And definitely we need to follow up with more actions for also addressing the issues that we saw from that survey. And for the sessions with the communities, first of all, the sessions are just with a few of the communities that we have. It's just that we tried to look at the possible local communities with a connection with one of us in the MC and we decided to go with a session with the Japanese community, another session where we had part of the Brazilian and part of the Spanish community. So in total we had three of those sessions and with the information that we have, we can already start to do something, but maybe could be good in any case to also try to replicate this very same approach also with the others because yeah, we got a lot of feedback, but still the feedback are only from a subsection of our local communities. Something in common that I can definitely share is that there are some common issues inside those local communities that could be shared and addressed also with examples from how other local communities are working on the very same topic. For giving you a concrete example, there were some discussions on how that local community was using a web late and the issues that they got that they are experiencing and in some cases could be probably helpful to just share a bit more how the different local communities are using the tools that we have in common and that could be already helpful. Then I know that this one it's not exactly a topic for the MC as considering what we are doing inside the foundation, but in any case it's a feedback and if we have the chance to get the feedback from a local community, it's worth in any case to mention it then to the right contact inside the foundation that can help to address the problem. So we also decided to keep in the list those more technical questions that are not exactly related directly to the governance of the project. There were feedback on how the budget for the local activities is used, is requested by the local communities and what else. Some other comments on for example how to deal locally with some marketing materials that could be produced locally instead of having a TDF shipping from Germany or the world. So in general I think that what we agreed inside the DMC was to aggregate those feedback with some ideas or some proposals in one unique document and we finally made it and with that shared this document with the team, with the board and started to discuss initially there those proposals, but of course it's nothing secret. So after this initial sharing of this common, just for having a common ground on the problem, we could open the discussion directly with the rest of the community. At least that this was the idea that we had in the DMC and I think I was talking enough so let me pass the board to Uwe. Yes please Uwe. Just to add one thing which perhaps puts a light on the problem I see there. We had as we have with a lot of community this talk we had the question about local marketing material as well as community budget. So put together there are people who want to do something to act on something but they just don't know how to get it paid and what is really hard to see is obviously don't know who to ask for. It is not that much that they had no idea to do but what I was what was very astonishing for me that they maybe I'm wrong but it seemed to me they didn't really know who to ask for the money or who to ask how the procedures are within the TDF. And I think this is a really big gap. We can close those at the end really really easy to manage meetings where different people from the TDF maybe also from the staff or from the board or from someone else engaged more on the TDF level and not on the local level and who knows how the things ran there. Just maybe ask them such simple things and okay this was just to add what Marina already said. And complimenting that one of the other feedback was that if they know how to ask for this budget some of them are not sure that what they want to do with this money is enough for really asking for the money. So this is also the other issues that we somehow had reported. So the fear that how the local community is working is not good enough for even asking to this entity that is TDF to get some money. Or other people that for example would like to organize activities but the issue that they should get reimbursed later it's a problem because they can't afford to initially pay what is needed. So those around the budget were less the comments that we got. This is quite similar to some people who don't know if their contribution is enough to apply and if you look at the contributions it's more. Exactly. It's exactly the same thing the same structures and we have a core stated that the communication around that somehow doesn't reach the people. Yes this may be maybe because of a real bad information noise relationship of the let's say both discuss list. If I'm a normal local engaged user I would cancel this list after three weeks reading it because there is no information which I need. You need to be there for two or three years to get the pieces together in some in this discussion some in this discussion. So I think it would be great seeing what Marina started with these town hall meetings or something like similar but just meet the TMC or meet the TDF or something like this on an irregular basis to go actively to go to those communities those local communities just sit there drinking a beer and say okay is that something you want to ask us that will be enough it will be a good step forward I think. Now that you mentioned it core yes reading the list that is one of the other issues that somehow we got reported the language. English is a barrier there are a lot of local contributors that are not good enough with the language and they are not interacting with the international community because they are afraid that the bad English will put them in a bad light so that they are shy and they are just not they are just skipping the interaction completely or we are writing in English but they can't understand the language and if they don't have a locally a member that can guide them they're lost they don't know. So one of the proposals that that we got was for example to try to see if we can empower the the members so the the members of the the members of the board of trustee to act for example like kind of local ambassadors for the local community of course as we say that during that meeting we don't want to replicate the bad experience we had during the open office time with some contributors that were acting locally as community managers deciding who was able to interact with the international community and who was just not good enough for being part of everything so that is something to do carefully but in general could be also a way to to give a bit more value to the membership having the local members acting as a initial contact in this initial bridge between the local communities and the international project and the with care I know I'm worried but yes yeah and great to hear that that that was actually you answered one of the question that that I would have asked which is like do you also already have ideas how to how to solve that or how to address that and and what I what I hear is that first of all having those town halls that's actually the first first solution to the problem which is like going out and learning about those issues and then with this with the local ambassadors which are probably much much more visible than as I mean I think implicitly already have those people who who are bridges but like empowering them empowering them more and I see Kaur you've raised your hand sorry for talking over that no problem at all Torsten usually I can wait hey yeah yeah I'm really I really think it's valuable to reach out more to you know who has nephew left as well I'm really in favor of reaching out more making that the barrier towards people all around the world lower and to help working with him etc no doubt that it that works and I know that some people are just for whatever reason a bit more shy and I know that that language is a barrier and it also in meetings well I I think I often speak up against native English speakers in whatever meetings if they go full away in the in their own slang in at high speed luckily I don't try to to speak Italian nothing against Italians but from what I understand it's even more fun it's even fun they having said all that I also like to ask some nasty things now and then I can't help because I cannot a lot of things that I can imagine but I cannot imagine if there's an email and you're at the computer and you don't fully digest the language that you not paste it in one of the translation websites for your local language etc so yeah and it doesn't mean that we don't have to do anything but put it all on our plate oh it's wrong oh please this is right this is right for one email per week but this can't be done for 20 emails a day oh only 20 hey only 20 yeah I so basically you're right this is not also we don't have to do anything and to carry anything to anyone yeah this is this is quite too easy just okay it's not a solution I was referring to the announcement of that that people can ask for budgets etc but honestly if people are expected to read the localization list for example um yeah they should be able to read English anyhow um let's see how we can improve that and let's maybe focus let's maybe focus on asking on asking concrete questions that as much as I like the the conversation um um maybe there's more more questions from like concrete questions uh for for the candidates um not wanting I mean Marina we were not wanting to to cut you off so if you still have input there uh do you speak up uh so so there's a follow-up question pretty much in line with what you suggested a bit more formalized would paying a local coordinator that can act as a gateway be a solution there was just post one idea I had after our meeting in the afternoon about the fiduciary duties of the members of the membership committee just to remind you the board of trustees also is a formal body of the tbf and by that it was also those fiduciary duties so any member is called to act here not only some boards throughout kind of relief to him man it's don't tell the members they won't get scared well technically speaking they should note that because for applying for a membership but they shouldn't tick the I read the statute thinking I mean like in a very contract you should read what you are saying we all know that it's not always the case but I mean yeah but um we always tell them it makes no difference they just have to do an election one one one one the time in a year so but yeah I mean jokes apart uh it's clear that we need to explain to our members of the board of trustees that being a member is not just uh uh getting an email uh at LibreOffice.org and uh being able to vote for uh the board or the mc or decide to run should be more definitely more and we need to explain them what is this more adding also something for making the initial uh work a bit more appearing so directly asked on on paulos in my opinion now this uh I think this this is a thing a community should be able to manage by itself and if it's not able to do so then let's think about what's going wrong with that community so I don't I don't like the idea to pay local coordinators as as gateways this would be maybe a great idea to to empower the ecosystem around the world to to get get some more companies and professional programs into the system but for for the community I don't think it makes very much sense my opinion yeah I mean at least looking at uh how we are defining we define the tdf for the moment I I can't see how we could select those local coordinators that should somehow employ the for working as a as you might call the gateway for the community in particular because I mean if we are paying this person then we need to make sure that the contributions done by this person are enough for also making this person able to get a membership I mean it's not it's not so trivial we could even reduce the the number of members because we just have everyone on board as a as an employee that is only doing a paid job and that could be could be a problem I don't know I mean then let's see what what the future will bring but for the for the moment I agree with the I don't think we can really pay a local coordinator we could start with the empowering the local members and and see how we can help them to to grow locally I mean interacting with I don't know universities or interacting with the companies that are working locally I mean I remember for example the activity done with the with the Turkish community by by collaboration with the Mohammed giving a lot of lectures in that directly in the university so this is something that that we should also look into but just paying a local coordinator I don't know it's let's say in this way out of the box just going randomly and paying someone it's I don't know if it's really a good way to just invest the TDF donations okay thanks for that um last last answer over on that to answer call no we don't uh evaluate that idea and let me quickly jump in that over because I'd like to wrap this into a bit of a larger question and if I may okay okay so uh the larger question uh and we had to discuss that um also in the in the earlier session is this how can we or do you as as a standing emcee and can the day for the next emcee have good ideas how to grow and foster membership like in particular with with your connections to to local communities and that's where our course question goes right into that direction and of course asking whether the emcee has thought about organizing for example prices or or other intangible things to give out so that membership becomes more attractive uh so if you're going there we say more there um we were looking also at some ideas on that direction so um one proposal was to look into other let's say good projects that could provide for example some discounts for our members or some special offers for our members and with that you could tell to members that given that they are also members they are not just getting a a liberal office dot org email address but if they want then they can also get some discounts from projects that kind of partner with the tdf it's something of course that must be evaluated approved by the board because we should have a kind of agreement of those projects we should see for example if this project is also doing some giving something back to the office if it's somehow contributing so also the selection of those kind of partner should be should be done carefully but for other community for other communities this is something that seems to work so i think we should try to continue to look also this direction uh yeah it's uh not the unique way to to involve people it's probably the first one you know when uh when you are at the conference and there's a table full of gadget some people are coming closer for the gadget and then you can try to catch them talk and interact and see if after giving a sticker you can also get the person engaged enough for at least trying to ask you something back it doesn't work for everyone but it's a it's something that can be done to actually just one aspect and to answer core directly to this fun question if we evaluated the idea to organize price draws maybe but surely not to make membership more attractive if ever we do such thing we would do it to make contributing more attractive and this has to be understood perfectly for anyone here we don't run for more members uh as as Marina said this morning what's the use in telling oh we have a thousand members but just a few uh few 30 or 40 are running running for the board or even are going electing the board and the rest is is quiet as we have by now i think the uh the quota for for the membership uh electing the board the last was about 50 percent around that so half of the members even didn't vote if i remember right i don't know exactly number but it was really low i thought so the idea is not to to blow up the number of members i think if someone contributes and develops an idea of interest in governance he will ask by himself maybe we need a little nudging him if you think this would be a good idea to have him on board but it is not the idea to to to have more members and members it is the idea to have more contributors and if someone has an idea if you can get some more contributor by organizing price draws okay why not okay thanks for those statements i think that's um quite to the point corn you had the question yeah i i agree it's about contributors uh still in discussing we somehow uh i i think uh there is also a challenge of making people aware of membership and uh and benefits uh etc that that people somehow don't bother also i i know at least some examples of people contributing but just not bothering at all they say uh why should i but and and i sorry it's not a serious idea to do price draws obviously and it's just a something like google somehow didn't when i got it right they got they got paid for working on this or at least they got some some some one which is out of it isn't it yeah well the students get paid for for gsoc but i suspect the actual price is it's a great thing to have in your cv i think that's the major draw now or one yeah hard hard to put a number there but but i think it does play a role um to maybe um dwell a little bit on on that question would but would you agree that that it's not irrelevant like that it would certainly be a problem if the membership would be continuing to decline and also be the number of candidates for the bodies of the foundation would be uh and continue to decline yeah i mean uh reducing the the board of trustee means that we have less options to get uh candidates for the board of the mc we are representing less the the local communities so we need to keep in any case a good balance being able to grow the membership in a way that can really represent all the different contributors and at the same time we should also work for growing those uh those members from the role of just the voters to the position of someone that is even interested to do the next step and run for the mc run for the for the board and on these i think we are a bit failing because if you look at the last elections and i'm talking about mc or or board it's not that i'm pointing in particular on one particular body it's just that we are less or more the same people going from one side to the other or or the usual names that are in the community for a lot of years but we don't have enough new phases and yeah that that is a problem that we we need to address it's what we say this morning also we are getting older and yeah it's nice to to have more time to to spend on the project but at the same time we can't live forever so maybe we need to take care of our foundation and be sure that someone else is able to to take over if tomorrow everyone will disappear maybe we have to think about the structures we are using i worked a little bit with the last few boards mostly because of this gbpr thing which goes very wide in some some details and i got got an impression and the impression was that the board is and we will maybe we can talk about on this in the workshop at milano that the board the board has basically very much more on its table than you could expect from volunteers to handle and if this is right you have to think about changing structures maybe that could also motivate more people to do that work if they if they have the feeling that they can decide something and not only they go into a endless two year long quarrel with other people and this is a little outcome but this is just a subjective perception at the moment not that well yeah i wouldn't say that that thought didn't cross our mind never marina you had comment just following what i was saying a few seconds ago i think that if we can organize our work better maybe we can also be able to delegate more and you know break things to do in a smaller task that can be delegated also to other members that are new in the port of trustee and can grow step by step understanding better how it is to work on the budget define how to invest the donations or how to handle the membership and things like that but yeah i think that for these we really need to have a clear view of where we want to go and uh work all together and with all together i mean really all the parties that we have at TDF plus all the different committees that we we have and i'm talking about certification committee ESC or advisory board not just board team and mc so really everyone that is working more interacting more with what is the the governance of the project should talk to to the others that are doing sometimes similar activities and share share the workload also because the majority of us is just a volunteer and also the the team that is getting paid for doing the job but i mean it's not a group of people that first of all is a million of people and second the time that is available is just a 24 hour per day and should not be 24 hour so splitting a bit more the the work and sharing a bit more the work could up yeah i can echo that and i mean actually that that's what you're already doing in the membership committee i mean you're you started to do work that previously for example board people did like with this um reaching out for the community encouraging people doing the running the survey that sort of thing also the contract of interest policy which originated in the in the mc so so in fact you already are load sharing load balancing with the board and of course question towards you as mc candidates and mc members of the current mc is there a similar situation let's say overload too much things to do in the mc that perhaps we all need to think about how to lighten that load or is that still under control i mean uh we are plenty of ideas i leave that to my chair sorry i leave that to my chair uh no feel free to speak really no i'm sorry she's just computing the works so she should know okay yeah i'm trying to coordinate work inside the dmc uh we can do better yes definitely yes the difference that we have over the time zones uh it's really pressing inside the dmc is great on the other side because we can really cover a lot of different communities local communities at the same time when we need to schedule a call it's pretty hard but uh yeah i think that uh we have some good ideas on the table and we should work better with uh with the team and with the board for looking at what we can uh we should work as a mc and what maybe it's something uh where uh where the team can can follow better because at the end that they are the one working daily on the on the project but then we can simply overload the team with a task from the dmc with uh then the team also overloaded the task from the board because then doesn't scale anymore and yeah it's why i was saying we should have a you know a nice uh wishlist the ballad is the with the things that we want to work on and see with some timelines what we can address instead of overloading everyone and achieving a zero were your thoughts on that okay i'll i'll take it easy the uh original work the mc has to do could be done in uh let's say two or three one hour sessions per quarter to decide on uh on some open questions on of some applications that's it all the rest the mc does is voluntary work the mc or some people in to in the mc say hey we use our role to do this and that it is not on our chart but it is necessary or it's a good idea to do it so we do it because we can do it and this is a good idea uh and i think let's start this marina getting the chair i think before that the mc had some ideas like like this like this questionnaire but there wasn't really really something happened things happened when i remember right just when when when this was our term or just just short time before so um this was merely i think the initiative of marina to get other things done too i remember we started this long list of things we could do and uh maybe in red mines somewhere it still exists so if we have no ideas anymore we can look there uh and it it came out that we we ended up with two or three things which the mc that did as an mc but to to make it clear it was always a small group of mc people who did that and and the others tried to help where they could or i can't say for me those towns those meetings with the local local communities were organized by marina and i don't know who helped you with that two or three other people from the mc and i just tried to be there when when when the event was there but i had to do other word i i cared about our new tooling which was also a lot of work but totally other totally as a planner and so i think that they evolved a good thing and we should should go on further on this way but there is there is this is mostly self organized and i think it's okay like this and nothing nothing to do like the board must organize the work of the mc i don't see the finish cool can marina uh so for uh those sessions i mean that was not just me doing the the work uh i had the the initial idea looking at the japanese community that is true but uh was for example shinje helping to find the the slot that uh worked for the japanese community was always in trying to uh get the the right day for uh for having got so narrow equal during the translation and was the same also for the other for the other sessions i think that uh what is needed in general not just in the mc but also in the the board is to uh to have people that uh wants to to run for the role uh because this person says uh the the role as something with a meaning not just for being appointed to be part of this body or the other um we are volunteers as uh as uber was was mentioning and uh yeah contributing to the project should be something that uh we feel like a a kind of mission and together with that we should try to to work to work together then i mean can happen that someone has uh a high workload because of work or because of personal issues it's perfectly fine but when there is the commitment to to be in in one of the governing bodies it's important to understand that that is not just one hour per month but it's a bit more it's uh i disagree that being in the mc is just uh something that can be done uh investing one hour per uh per quarter for the for the evaluation or one hour per month if you want to look deeper uh in the contributions if you want to look deeper in uh where are contributors that could be invited to join for the memberships uh for the membership and so on there's something more to do and people needs to commit and to invest their time in the in the foundation great thanks thanks for that um that extensive answer again um maybe just to to tease out a little bit more there because that's just great to hear but i'm just to make sure that i i fully get the picture would you would you agree would would you that think that statement is true that the mc is um it's okay with having different speeds like everyone's having their own pace and it is okay if somebody's only able to spend two hours a month um and and that person is not holding back someone who can spend two hours per day and vice versa the person who can spend a lot more time is not upset about someone who can't because of other commitments okay let me go first uh well i i don't think that uh so let me stay in this way i think that is perfectly fine not to have different schedules and being available with a different time frame the point is that if someone is uh uh taking the responsibility for a topic this person should push on it and and deliver without blocking the others then uh if someone can't attend the meeting it's perfectly fine to say i can't doesn't work for me uh it's not nice when uh everyone is waiting for someone blocked for uh for weeks without being able to to to go with uh with the steps that are planned that uh i think it's uh it's something that would frustrate everyone even the same i mean i think it's normal we are we are human but apart from that i think that is perfectly fine to say uh this month i can't join any meeting next month i can invest eight hours per day i mean stating things clearly it's fair enough uh announcing a kind of commitment uh without then being even close to that kind of commitment that that it's uh less nicer okay put it in short as as everyone behaves professional everything is okay thanks for the summary with one exception so uh going to do to the original question if uh if some some different speeds are okay there is one exception the chair himself or herself uh has a duty to push it forward on a regular basis so if anyone else says okay next two months i'm away okay we can't cope with that but if the chair says okay next two months i'm away then he has to care for from some replacement at least but that's the only exception i think so um this is due to the duty to the project kind of the project we do so yeah so this works fine at the moment at least now uh i know i know what you've meant but we won't discuss this in public but but i think it's um it's it's very um um i think it's good to hear because it it it enables a lot of things because it it the on ramp then for people to enter bodies is is not not very steep and and while someone might not have time this year or next year they might have time in three years and they're already like working with the body and then knowing the knowing the ropes and and all of that and i'd maybe be interested in taking the leaf or two out of that book for the board which has been historically been expecting quite a bit more from from everyone so that does resonate thanks thanks for the for the answer then also the the thoughts and and and the input and and all of that so um so we talked about um like um the roles there and and and membership and um i wonder so so let's maybe ask for for questions from the audience if people have something i would i would have i could have some copy paste from from the last one but i would have maybe one and we can spend probably spend the rest of the the call on on that one um but let's let's wait a second if somebody has from the audience has a question of course you can also ask yourself questions that you really would love to answer so so then then from from let's say given that you've both been with the project for essentially since day one um what would you think and that's i i i i'm the first to admit that that's not not something that the mc that the natural role of the mc is but i'm asking it anyway so what would be the most important thing the one thing that that you would change or that you would do that you think has priority number one for tdf if you could change it well i think the manifesto i mean not changing but it was called the next decade manifesto decade is ended so we should have a new manifesto and have a clear vision that should be the base of all the the rest of the work that we want to do uh it's uh how we want to to define tdf for the next decade so i think that should should have a priority it's quite easy which is to name it uh well i've worked i've worked a little bit on this this board and uh this was my last proposal but they didn't like it and not my monkey not my circus to put it clear i tried my best they don't like it so to answer this question quite quickly it's it's quite easy i would clone florian sorry i didn't quite catch that i would i would i would clone florian clone okay doubling him uh yeah i know what you mean and um it does resonate given that we likely are not permitted to do that um given uh local laws um anything else you think we should do ready but you got the idea uh yeah we need more let's say executive working which didn't don't block anymore the board in in doing it's his very own work uh my feeling is that the board is 80 percent of the time is doing the work someone else's work and mostly of this uh because this someone else isn't existing so this is this is what i thought uh what i what i what i said we have to perhaps re-sync our structures there are maybe at the end too simple for such a big thing like we have now maybe no maybe maybe and i will ask florian and maybe mike at the workshop in at milano this is the thing i'm interested very interested if they ever imagine that is tdf would would would grow up that's big because i think the structures they defined 12 years ago or said such time around yeah they are okay but i don't think they're suitable for for such such uh managing such a complex organization with such many different dimensions of action and such such a such an amount of money at last so maybe we re-sync them and this is this is what the board really should do we think of that but it needs time to do that because they're all volunteers and to get the time they must they must get the table clear and i'm feeling i'm feeling the uh the incoming incoming questions and incoming work for the board which must be decided by the work are always just a little bit more than the outgoing one so so the title gets bigger and bigger again and this has to be changed this is i think this is the most essential thing thing which the tdf should do in my opinion yeah maybe there are also really really important other things like to be like to be like to get a consensus on the vision i don't think it is that important to have this vision written down but to have the consensus a common view of it this is the this is this is the core of the problem yeah so i so i think i agree but no i'm i don't think i'm i do agree with both of you and i think those are aspects so so having having this manifesto or having this vision that provides guidance in and of itself so you don't need to spend so much time arguing over or to go because there's already there has been argued and and written down and there is some some broad direction put and and agreed upon and and the other bit of course is the scaling problem that that were that were increasingly running into and and the fact that that board is dealing with many things and doesn't find it's like this this this dilemma okay i can't i can't sharpen my tools because i'm so busy working with them so so just improving the processes and and finding time to realize and and and scale up and and find find the the cycles to to to work on that is a challenge when you when you once you got into that situation and the problem the other problem is of course that has been a string of firefighting incidents in the past here are two which didn't really help like for all involved in terms of workload and and having the the brain capacity and yeah the the ledger to to to do that so it i i i whole whole heartedly agree there um so i i wonder how many workshops we will actually need um in milano to to deal with all that backlog um i would hesitate to put that all into yours over um yeah and so so maybe the silver lining is that that's a problem that everyone has and since it's a problem that everyone has there's a cottage industry of people with uh good advice and an experience um that one could tap into possibly um yeah for me there was um there was enlightening um what else should we talk about i'm kind of running slowly out of steam i could again just the haste repace some some questions from from the last session but it starts it probably starts to be a little bit redundant maybe this transparency thing as a very last bit but um yeah what do you think arena over i didn't get your last two or three minutes because i was thrown out the session by some obscure intimate breakdown i was just praising the uh the input there so it didn't last much okay i have i have a citation for you my secretary could help me a real lot uh if i would find the time to explain to him what what to do what what to do yeah yes but honestly so so that's that's the that is that is everybody's problem so that is just the absolute bulk standard problem that everybody has every organization every company even even when when you scale up your family so that that's just normal um no i think i think it is it is uh in most of the time most of the time it's uh it's not in most but maybe 50 50 it's just uh to hide the incapability to to let loose or the over engagement yeah yeah i'm not saying i'm not saying that that that's good reasons i'm just saying that everybody's got the problem so so everybody's everybody's as as as an organization grows um that is my experience like we that uh an association uh foundation an open source project without any form of governance or a company they they all hit this just there's a natural limit that that one person can handle and once you hit that limit use use just stop yeah like you're essentially just swapping uh in and out and thrashing and and not making any progress so and then there's probably about a million reasons why that is and and one is that of course um letting go and delegating this doesn't come natural well i agree that that is a common problem but uh then we should probably as you hint in the last sentence delegate more and look at the the skills that are already in house and try to just let the people with those skills do the job or give advices on uh how to to do something in a more efficient way something that uh that maybe we should work better and i'm saying a way because it's also something that i need to do better uh is to set properly the priorities on the tasks that we really want to work on and avoid to overload the the others that can still do something but that are not plenty of time always to do something because you know if if you are always pushing a million of topics in parallel at the end the people that have less time available or in a let's say less constant way are just giving up because they don't know they can't catch up even with the backlog of things that uh needs to do needs to be done so and that's why i so much liked your um your description and and i again that i was that's why i was asking whether i got it right that you have this this um this idea of of different speeds so so that if people like working on something and then that's okay and someone is interested they can just open the door and look what's going on there with the with the new um mc system or or with the town hall meetings and and but if you don't have the time then well you show up at the whatever at the my weekly call and that's fine as well and so my my mental model my ideal would be that's something that that we should do not only in in the mc but but elsewhere like having working groups with people who really are interested in the topic and then they can work and spend lots of time and everybody else just gets the result or the occasional update on progress uh yes or no yes because we need to to have to achieve something to have things done so i definitely agree on this but on the other end we can't simply push out the the others or you know deliver deliver deliver and just give to the others a chance to to see what is going on we should be able to to include in any case the different people that are in the different bodies uh and this is uh this is going back to what i was saying at the beginning if you don't have time and you don't have time always you should not run for for the bodies you need to commit knowing that you need to have the time that is uh i think the the important part that it's fine to not have time always declaring it but if this impediment it's it's a constant then the person should just say i can't anymore i'm stepping down i think it's fair to say that instead of just being in the body keeping the the seat busy not doing anything so so what would be the for for the membership committee but what both of you think would would be the minimum per week or per month that that to to be useful i think that uh if you can't commit one hour per week it's uh it's harder to be the person driving a topic yeah cool yeah yeah that that's um i'm i'm glad to not be able to drive a topic this one hour the week because uh half of the time you're in the meeting of the m3 every two weeks for one hour and the other hour every two weeks is it's far far away from what's necessary to drive a topic you may have here and there uh others others we still talk about grounded itself okay maybe a very slow topic but that's good to hear that that first of all you agree there and that it's actually pretty low um in terms of like necessary investment so so that my view would be perfectly possible for pretty much any volunteer to be perfectly clear this is the necessary investment you shouldn't go behind it yeah definitely yes i mean it's really the minimum requirement for doing something and that has a meaning for uh for the foundation otherwise it's just really claiming a seat uh for stating in dcb that you were in the body for uh that's okay so is there that that's quite some comments but i don't see any actual question but maybe if you put a question mark behind your uh oh and we have fosin uh raise your hand fosin should yeah uh i was enjoying the discussion and i thank you all for that great discussion that uh you have one thing that i wanted to say is that uh do you what do you think about the member committee membership committee to be kind of proactive and for example find the some uh eligible persons who are actively contributing but uh not currently members of the media uh i wanted to know if you uh have tried to find uh such people and uh ask them to become members what do you think about this idea have you done this before and or do you have plans to do this uh well uh these was also something that we touched in the previous column um yes we have the the dashboard for example uh that is giving us an overview of the contributors in the different part of the project and that is one place to look into uh the other is our local communities because i mean it's clear that as a member of a local community we we know a bit better who is also active that is still just let's say a contributor but another member so we have done that in the past we could do it more but yeah it's it's definitely a part of the job we can't just expect that contributors will fall from the sky we need to search for those people and invite them to to join the the board of trustee after being a contributors or just you know those users that uh you can understand you can feel that uh they could do more just with a with a bit of push but yeah it's uh it's something that uh that we can do more definitely at least i can speak for myself as a member also of the italian community and we have several uber joining so maybe if one of the uber wants to add something just just in time if you'd like to answer the question there's a short no me personally i didn't i have not that that multiple connections to all the community out there my my my thing is more governance and such legal things for the tdf and such things so so you see there is there is there are also different interests in the mc and anyone anyone follows his his nose as we say in germany or follows his hobbies so one one of marina's favorite is to find new members and uh i have a moment and i don't know if you can hear me or see me by now oh yeah okay yes indeed we can do that sort of thing or mr mr something up your question yeah i was just asking uh something that you answered so can be the uh request can come from someone who actually uh been there in the community for a while and uh someone who understands the membership and uh asks uh to be a member and him or herself or you can uh go and offer someone to become a membership easier to different approaches yeah but but you prefer that someone uh asks uh explicitly uh and uh as far as i i understood from your answer uh you don't offer someone to become a member is that right if i did it if it's so so the question over is if you if you actively go out hunting for members and then encourage them to to apply for membership me personally i do not but i don't know if others marina i'm trying sometimes i'm successful sometimes no i mean it's uh i think part of the game uh it's clear that's uh it depends also on yeah the beer of course no i mean the point is that i for for me uh i still have connections with the with the italian community even if i'm living in germany but uh in general uh interacting with the with the local contributors trying to bring them also to to tdf is uh something that in general i i like to do i mean i'm italian and i'm hysteria type of the italian so i like to socialize with people not sure it's a part but uh yeah sometimes i i was able to bring uh contributors to the to the membership but yeah it's uh i don't think that one approach or the other is uh is the right one i think we should have both and if we are keeping uh the different approaches uh inside the dmc at the end that we will bring contributors so it's it's fine okay thanks so a whole lot um just to answer the question joseph yes thanks okay so you certainly have time for one more question and one more beer so is there is there any more questions from the audience i can i can come up with any number of questions but um maybe somebody else has okay so then let me let me ask this and maybe um given that we have 10 minutes left some like three four minutes answer each of you um you have at least marina you you mentioned that the number of times but i think uwe you were also referring to um let's say other communities and and other projects what would be your um from from all open-source projects that you know that you heard about that you've seen that maybe you are volunteering in you've participated in um which one would be the one that you would like to a tdf to become or the brother's product to become uh it can be self-referential it can be tdf um but maybe there's other guiding lights you could follow well apart from uh tdf and liberal office i'm involved in the indian social community so i mean that is is the obvious answer from from my side uh there are some some nice things that that i like from from the open-source project like for example this idea to have a town hall meetings for the elections that comes from there i was stealing without hiding it i was stealing it from from the community and they were looking at our our model and they were also looking at our tool for handling the membership so i think in general it's it's good to look around because i don't think that any one of us is just involved in liberal office and in tdf everyone is somehow connected also with other local communities other projects and we should just share and look trying to to take the best of from from memory project and try to improve on all these sides to be honest i i don't know that much other project what i was thinking about last day so i wrote it sorry of course course course gone oh okay i discussed with him he has brought up the idea of how there was some some woman getting an overpriced for how to handle common common goods and he uh he brought this up and we discussed some something because common goods what what she researched on are restricted limited common goods like racing areas and we have we have uh we have a non-restricted common good because software copying software doesn't cost nothing so this is in my opinion another thing and so we discussed this a little bit and i came to that point i don't know i didn't think very much on that but what i'm what's pleasing me is when i'm looking at the apache foundation i don't know very much about them but as far as i got it they have a real they have they have really strict divide between the single project which handles his technical issues within the project and the roof of of the foundation which handles the legal and the governance aspects maybe maybe this this could be the one or other idea to to get this more divided in the tdf because i feel uh technical and and governance and legal aspects are a lot there's a lot of turmoil with them and interfering one of the other and maybe maybe it's a good idea to think about a role of the ec or something like this but no no special thing where i would say hey this project because it's really great we should do like that cool yeah but it's it's very very um enlightening so so so maybe if i summarize um what you suggest is that there's no single project that would be like the the role model or anything it's more like oh it's good to look around and chop around and cherry pick and then get get the good ideas and leave the bad ideas there uh as far as i know no one found the philosopher's zone by now so yeah cherry picking maybe a good idea okay yeah and it's interesting that that you i mean i've i've also been uh or i'm still involved with the open source project and and um i'm well let's say i'm following the the asf from the distance um and certainly in terms of scale it is one of the the largest foundations and as such because they managed to scale it up it's something to to keep in mind and and and look at and and analyze that is true so marina please yeah i think that uh a model to look into is also for example the fetora project it's true that they just have a a company behind that they have a redact behind but how they are keeping uh the the freedom inside the project the freedom to decide the freedom to organize the different working group it's in any case something really really interesting that for example is missing in the open source project on the open source project side there's really a lot of freedom to sketch something new it's just a matter of having time and pushing for something and no one unless someone will stop a contributor to do something the python foundation they have a really great uh a code of conduct this is something that honestly i'm really envious because they managed to to have it and to have it done really really well in a professional way so that is the idea of shopping and cherry picking from the different projects of course looking in the right direction i i meant it in an in an absolutely not non-disparaging way um so so i think i mean that's that's actually i mean that's one of the features with open source so you don't reinvent the wheel you just you just clone it or fork it or uh just embedded like you wrote this with the with the many third party libraries so like sharing of ideas and just just like this market of ideas and then just getting the best finding the best um i think that comes quite natural to an open source project okay so um given that it's three minutes to the to the two hours limit um unless there are last words or comments or a very very short question i would say let's call it a day it's been a long one at least for me and also for many of you thanks so much for for marina and uva for for attending twice today um and for everybody else here um for for asking multiple questions and having an absolutely lovely conversation it was super great entertaining and lightning i loved it enjoy the repeat on youtube see you around bye everyone have a good night hello see you bye bye good night thanks for watching