Ubuntu Membership Board call for nominations

As you may know, Ubuntu Membership is a recognition of significant and sustained contribution to Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community. To this end, the Community Council recruits from our current member community for the valuable role of reviewing and evaluating the contributions of potential members to bring them on board or assist with having them achieve this goal.

We have five members of our boards expiring from their terms, which means we need to do some restaffing of this Membership Board.

We have the following requirements for nominees:

  • be an Ubuntu Member (preferably for some time)
  • be confident that you can evaluate contributions to various parts of our community
  • be committed to attending the membership meetings broad insight into the Ubuntu community at large is a plus

Additionally, those sitting on membership boards should have a proven track record of activity in the community. They have shown themselves over time to be able to work well with others and display the positive aspects of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. They should be people who can discern character and evaluate contribution quality without emotion while engaging in an interview/discussion that communicates interest, a welcoming atmosphere, and which is marked by humanity, gentleness, and kindness. Even when they must deny applications, they should do so in such a way that applicants walk away with a sense of hopefulness and a desire to return with a more complete application rather than feeling discouraged or hurt.

To nominate yourself or somebody else (please confirm they wish to accept the nomination and state you have done so), please send a mail to the membership boards mailing list (ubuntu-membership-boards at lists.ubuntu.com). You will want to include some information about the nominee, a Launchpad profile link, and which time slot (20:00 or 22:00) the nominee will be able to participate in.

We will be accepting nominations through Monday, September 10th at 13:00 UTC. At that time all nominations will be forwarded to the Community Council who will make the final decision and announcement.

Thanks in advance to you and to the dedication everybody has put into their roles as board members.

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We have received the list of nominations:

To renew their term:

Proposed as new members:

This is very valuable, thanks a lot for stepping forward and showing your wish to contribute with the community.

The council will now discuss the nominations, and inform about the results as soon as possible. For everybody on the community: feel free to reply here with you comments about the nominees, or send them privately to community-council@lists.ubuntu.com.

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If only for the sake of some scrutiny:

@lucyllewy if I may ask, what contributions to Ubuntu have you made outside of (your extremely valuable) snapcrafting? :slight_smile: I thought Ubuntu Membership itself required sustained contribution in at least two fields, though I can’t remember where I read that and can’t find where I read that now, so am probably entirely wrong… Also I suppose your Wiki page mentions involvement in #ubuntu-uk so I guess that would count as a second field if that is indeed still a requirement!

@elopio says ‘at the same time he’s helping us improve many aspects of Ubuntu that need polishing or we need to completely rebuild’ though you don’t say what exactly in your Wiki! Is this stuff you’ve been doing on Launchpad or via IRC conversation with devs? :slight_smile:

Also, on a somewhat related note, I remain somewhat confused about the formal relation of snappy to Ubuntu, given that snappy runs across distributions and has / attempts to have distro-neutral branding. Is it correct to say that snappy is a Canonical project but not an Ubuntu project perhaps? I’d like some clarity on that.

Again, I think Dan is an excellent snapcrafter, just trying to provide some scrutiny and I hope this post will encourage others to chip in and ask questions :slight_smile:

While snapcrafting is my main avenue for improving and contributing to the project, I am also pushing forward with maintainership of the Ubuntu Drupal project[1] which I took over control of a short while ago. Followers of my contributions may also recall I recently set up a website called Is It Out Yet?, which bears an uncanny similarity of purpose to the Ubuntu Drupal Countdown module which used to show on community sites when a new Ubuntu release has arrived.

I also an an active participant of the Ubuntu Podcast community. I try to help out with general Ubuntu-related issues that crop up in the Ubuntu UK IRC Channel and am a lurker on the Ubuntu Developers and the Ubuntu Users Mailing Lists. And sometimes I play jokes on the Ubuntu and Linux community.

With regards to Snaps and the Snap ecosystem, I’m the maintainer of record for several snaps, including GIMP which is has a large user-base from the Ubuntu and wider communities. I am representing the Ubuntu and Snap projects with contribution to get GIMP’s Snap package accepted upstream, where I’ll be the primary point-of-contact bridging the Ubuntu and Snapcraft community with the GIMP community, and primary maintainer of the GIMP Snap on behalf of the GIMP team.

Beyond the crafting of individual applications into Snaps, or which I have done many, I have given some love to the Snapd project, which directly benefits the Ubuntu project by providing the infrastructure for Snaps to run securely. This involves working with the maintainers to foster my contributions and discuss appropriate security mechanisms to implement and ensure their correctness. I am also an active participant of discussions at all levels of the Snapcraft and Snapd worlds and regularly help people on the Snapcraft.io Forums.

I have represented the Communities of Ubuntu and Snapcraft at Canonical-organised events where Industry Heavyweights were invited to work towards bringing their projects to the wide Ubuntu and Linux-using communities and will do so again soon.

[1] Ubuntu Drupal consists of:
https://www.drupal.org/project/ubuntu_drupal
https://www.drupal.org/project/udheader
https://www.drupal.org/project/udcountdown
https://www.drupal.org/project/udplanet
https://www.drupal.org/project/udsidebar
https://www.drupal.org/project/udtheme

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The council has decided to accept the 5 nominations to fill the 5 seats on the membership board.

Thanks a lot to @popey and pleia2, whose term of service on the board ends now. We are very grateful for your years of service in the community, and we are sure we’ll still be seeing you around making awesome things :slight_smile:

Welcome to the two new members, @lucyllewy and @bashfulrobot! Thanks to the 3 renewed members naeilzoueidi, fenris and @tsimonq2, and of course to the rest of the members of the board: @elacheche, iulian, msdomdonner, @wxl and wildmanne39 for your willingness to continue supporting Ubuntu.

This is just perfect timing to celebrate together in the 18.10 release party! We’ll drink to your health.

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Thanks for having me all!

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