As I do each year (and did again in 2024), here are my goals if I am re-elected to the Board at the ASF next year. Posting these statements each year (see 2019 and many past years) is an important way to communicate outside the membership how I think the ASF is doing (great!).
My objectives next year as a director are simple:
- Continue to improve the services we offer our projects, especially around making services easier to find/use/consume, and provide better build, CI, and other infrastructure needs where practical for our organization.
- Build a culture of positive encouragement so that newer Members feel comfortable speaking up; and make it easy for them to step up and volunteer for Foundation governance and operations.
- Ensure the board takes a strategic view, and takes the time to think about the big picture and 5-year plan so we can keep the ASF vibrant and improving for the next 5, 10, and 50 years.
Some difficult discussions on a few mailing lists in the last year
notwithstanding, I think Apache is doing great. We’re still providing more and more software for the public good, and continue to provide independent oversight to our 200+ project communities. Spending time in many of our projects is a great way to see how we’re continuing to spread good in the world, as well as being an innovative organization for distributed, volunteer-run work.
As director, I will advocate to get us even more organized at improving services for our projects. Scaling up build and related services in a responsible way, and improving our documented processes so it’s easy for our projects to get what they need is a key goal.
The ASF needs newer Members to step up and volunteer with governance and operations tasks to continue to thrive. I will continue working to make Foundation processes easier to understand, as well as working to improve our culture so newer Members feel comfortable speaking up and volunteering. We need new blood to keep the Foundation running.
If re-elected, another key goal for me will be ensuring the board takes the strategic view. We expect our projects to manage themselves; similarly, our operations teams (infra, press, accounting, etc.) are working well overall. The board needs to focus on how we keep our independent identity and continue to grow into the future. One way is to work on principles-based governance, focusing on our 5 year plan.
I’ve written or edited significant parts of our member- and
project-facing docs, like Governance, Branding/Trademark policy and many more; and I regularly speak about the Apache Way and other governance issues at ApacheCon and elsewhere. I’ve built many handy Whimsy tools, like the Meetings tool that’s a one-stop-shop explainer for the Annual Member’s meeting, as a way to help make volunteering across the ASF simpler for all. I also made a new members mentoring tool.
I am currently unemployed. I will never let employment affiliations get in the way of doing the right thing for Apache. I’ve been quieter than usual this month because I’m building a site for meta-coordination across volunteer groups at home due to the coronavirus shutdown.
Thanks for reading!
