Call me an idiot, but I have not yet voted for the council election.


Apart from having little free time, due to a new house and the subsequent renovation, I have found nothing in the profiles of the electable candidates that seems to affect my every day user experience.


I suspect that is because I do not know enough about the issues at stake. Normally I wouldn't vote (I don't do politics) but something tells me (my gut perhaps?) that it's important to vote, this round. However, I do not have a clue about the consequences when I vote for candidate x or y. I would probably end up voting for the candidate whose posts I have been reading/enjoying the most, but that seems rather arbitrary and counter productive.


So, my question is, could someone in the know create a little primer, a “Maemo community council voting for dummies”?

Oh don't worry about it, neither have I as yet and I'm sure quite a few other late bodies. The main thing is that you've decided you will vote, and are taking it seriously enough to start this thread.

The first step will be changing that primer from a "N900 council.." to a "Maemo community council voting for dummies" Remember, this site started long before the N900 and encompasses a wide variety of Maemo (and Maemo related, ie. Harmattan) devices these days The elected Maemo council will be here to represent everyone

You no doubt have already seen the "let's decide the future of maemo.org" banner on the top right of the page - it links to:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...tion_Q1/2_2012

That is the main election wiki with links to the various candidates etc. Have a look at the candidate declarations along with their posts on the forums here (you can search forum posts by username), try and find out more about the projects candidates have been involved with, etc etc along with your 'spidey-sense' intuition - that could be all you have to go on

And remember this is an important election as it will help steer the direction of the site as we move into the future and face the opportunities and challenges that new operating systems and devices will bring. Where will maemo.org sit in this brave new world? The elected council will be at the helm steering the good ship maemo.org, so we'll need people who are up to the job. What qualities do you think such persons will need? Should they be pro-active, responsible, reliable, genius, good looking, filthy rich, and excellent at rapping... They will also have to maintain a good relationship with Nokia and other entities that look after the site administration etc Or as close to the perfect mixture as we can find

There's only a short time left before voting is over, but you may want to reach out directly to candidates with your own queries or ask their opinions on questions you feel haven't been answered.

We're all here as we love our Maemo devices, and i'm sure all the candidates will work hard with good intentions to take our community forward. So you can't really go badly wrong with your choices.. I think.. :P

I might also add, that some candidates - including me - tends to be available on #maemo IRC channel, always happy to talk with you, answer Your questions, discuss about current problems, etc.

/Estel

Thank you for starting the thread Anthonie. As a current council member and one of the candidates, I will tell you what I see as the important issues for the future and my basic opinion on them.

First and foremost in my mind is community governance and purpose. This is why I have consistently pushed for a broader based self-governing community including users and have proposed a mission statement to be adopted. The most important step to achieving a successful community is to set goals, and determine and define what we will regard as our success. I think the role of Council should be to guide the community to achieving such goals and mission and should not be limited to facilitating communications between Nokia and the community.

Secondly, I propose the use of organization, management and planning for community projects and activities to achieve our mission. Others have long advocated that maemo.org should be an ad hoc "sandbox" environment for maemo development where the infrastructure and development help is provided. I would reject that limitation as the circumstances have changed from what they were three years ago and we need to think about how we have some form of maemo survive. This is not to say that Council would get deeply involved in projects, but that we will work with those that are relevant to moving some form of maemo forward so that it can be used in the future. As example, I point to the CSSU (both Diablo and Fremantle) that I have supported over the last year.

Finally, while it is important to scratch the itches we have now, I think we have to keep open all available options so that an open source maemo like experience remains available to users in the future. We will work with Nokia to the extent that is possible and fits our mission, but if need be, with other projects as well so that we have appropriate devices and software in the future. This notion of breaking with the past is unpleasant to some people, but we should move past the nostalgia.

If you have any questions, I will answer them to the extent my schedule permits over the next few days.

Thank you all for the replies.

In all honesty, they did not help much. As for the statements of the nominees, I had already read them before and they are simply too esoterical to be informative. I tend not to follow the "political" debates, and stay away from fanboyism or hateritis threads. In order to make a proper judgement on some of the questions and their answers, I would need to do a whole lot of background research.

However, this morning I voted, after spending quite a bit of time reading through the statements again and writing a quick summary.

For completeness I'll add it here as that was more or less the primer that I was looking for (an unreasonable request, I understand now).

Reason(s) to vote for:

ivgalvez (Ivan Galvez Junquera)
===============================
Pro(s)
Realigning the forums of Maemo and Harmattan
Realistic expectations towards Nokia (None)

Con(s)
Little time
-------------------------------
Estel (Piotr Jawidzyk)
========================
Pro(s)
Clear agenda (get things done (TM))
Future approach repo's

Con(s)
------------------------
jcharpak (Joseph Charpak)
=========================
Pro(s)
None, no real description available online and I lack the time for #irc

Con(s) The above
-------------------------
woody14619 (Craig Woodward)
===========================
Pro(s)
Maemo and Harmattan realignment
Really clear communication plan
Long term community ideas

Con(s) Mission statement poorly written, which undermines the message about clear communication (nit picking)
---------------------------
Aries (Arie Mark)
===================
Pro(s)
Strong focus on end users
Seems to understand what is and what is not the responsability of the Council

Con(s) Not sure
-------------------
NeilDK (Niel Nielsen)
======================
Pro(s)
Interesting thoughts, hardware wise
Importance of Nokia as a (legacy) party

Con(s)
Too much Nokia, too little Maemo; a distraction I do not like, as it takes away focus from the OS's.
Not enough profile meat for a community council (but could have for a dedicated HW dept. which I would like)
----------------------
SD69 (R Bauer)
=================
Pro(s)
Community driven (mission statement) attitude
Already been a council member, continuation of processes, might be a good thing, could be bad
Importance of Nokia as a (legacy) party

Con(s)
-----------------

I'm afraid, that's problem with all elections - to choose responsively, we need to do lotta hell of background research. Well, philosophically, it seems to be the case with all decisions and our choices...

Anyway, thanks for You effort to bring interesting discussions about candidate's/their ideas and voting all-together
---

If someone haven't noticed - it's last moment for voting, it ends today.

/Estel

@Anthonie nice initiative with this thread and it got me inspired to vote, thanks for that.

I just one problem my user does not exist when trying to log in on maemo.org. I made my account on garage.maemo.org 07/02/2010 and that's the one I'm trying to log in with.

Anyway slightly to late to fix it as voting ends today.

Regards Dousan...

thank you for the thread. I almost forgot to vote!

plus, Can celabrate 500 posts in this thread. YaY

True. And that's exactly how I meant it. It also means there is a need to fill in the "blanks" for people not in the know, and that is quite difficult. I guess it's a challenge for those newly elected

@Dousan and Chuck:

Good to know the thread triggered some more people to at least look into voting!

I'll drink one on all the talk.maemo users who have survived 500 rounds of Chuck Norris! For another 1000 on TMO!

Me too! Always voted before, maybe not last time, but now all the names are alien to me. I guess not voting is the most honest vote I can give.