It always happens at the last minute, but we again have a great list of candidates for the GNOME Foundation board, possibly the best ever, and quite diverse. Dave Neary’s candidacy statement is promising yet pragmatic, and shows what the foundation is achieving, really fulfilling its purpose now that it’s cleared up the dull stuff. He’ll be chairperson again, I hope. And it looks like he’ll have a motivated and decisive set of colleagues. It’s getting better all the time.

GNOME Germany also has elections in December. We’ve become slightly better organised, but opportunities have been wasted over the last two years, mostly through lack of clear leadership and openness. We’ve failed to expand the membership past a small bickering core, and we’ve failed to navigate German beaurocracy. Reliance on donated server space even means that the web site is now offline, and even before it went offline there was a useless plan to move it to yet another wiki engine and CMS system, wasting more time and effort and reversing what’s been achieved. So it’s time for a completely new start and it’s time to get results. I think Jörg “Josh” Kress is providing the best leadership right now, so I hope he is enthusiastically elected as president. I’ve already posted him my “Vollmacht” so he can vote on my behalf at the meeting. I’ll get more involved again if he is elected.