Dear Community,

The time has come for Council elections.

Nominations for candidates will open on Oct 21, 2013. As has been observed previously, nomination periods have to be extended due to a lack of candidates coming forward hence the purpose of this post is to clarify what Council actually stands for and an appeal for candidates to throw their names into the hat.

Over the past ~12 months, the Community has gone through major changes with the most overwhelming being the transfer of ownership from the "safer" sanctuary of Nokia to the "riskier" sanctuary of the Community.

Our infrastructure is currently being hosted for 50 euro a year at IPHH with options for them to extend it annually. On the other hand, there are interesting projects on-going; namely Neo900 and Jolla's imminent device.

Issues that were present with the previous Hildon Foundation Board have been ironed out too with the presence of logical Directors.

The Council now has a merged rule-set for both the Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council. We no longer need to run two elections, and one election for a Council body that will officially have both the titles will be the norm now onwards.

The Council's main role is to ensure the lights remain switched on for all Community infrastructure as well as to help any efforts from the Community that might need co-ordination. The Council is the voice of the Community-at-large and has a vital "red button" which if pressed can call for elections of the Hildon Foundation Board if at anytime it suspects the Board of running contrary to the Community's interests. Re-read, this is an important point!

Hence, in effect the Council is a very important body that requires dedicated candidates. From the current Council, joerg_rw, qwazix and I have been involved heavily since the past ~12months with all the migration work hence we have decided not to stand again for the Council. In short, we all need a bit of rest, and need new members to step in.

Therefore, we humbly appeal to capable and willing members to be steadfast in declaring their candidature for the upcoming elections.

In conversations with a few members a common theme emerges of members unwilling to stand for elections mainly due to doubts in their abilities to be able to carry out Council work. Let us assure everyone that you don't need to do technical work nor do you need to dedicate a large amount of hours per week to Council work.

There is a dedicated techstaff that keeps the infrastructure running and maintained while there is a weekly Council meeting which would usually suffice for the whole week's work.

So to end, we repeat our appeal to all to seriously consider running for elections!

Interested candidates please post your introduction here in this thread!

Regards,
Q3 2013 Community Council