Thinking about voting

[Jody Garnett]

A couple days ago I posted a leading question about what we would like 
to board to look like in terms of "balance" (as I would like some 
discussion the help me figure out how to vote).

I have received a number of private emails now, so either:
- we changed the mail group settings and "reply" just sends to one 
person now; or
- the question I asked was a bit too political

However I still need to think through how to vote - and will share my 
thoughts.  For those that replied to me privately - thank you. I am 
feeding the pro/cons mentioned into my ideas for the content of the website.

For me the difficult part about voting this round is this: I simply do 
not know everyone yet.

I understand that there was a request for the nominated parties to 
introduce themselves, to help in this regard. After working in the open 
source community for a while I prefer to get by via accomplishments and 
not on my hopes and ambitions   The reason for this is simple: trust.

Let me try a small example: I have wanted to play with catalogs and 
improve how we play our game with automation for a while. However I have 
not yet had the opportunity to do so. If I keep talking about the great 
ideas I have in mind, and not doing anything about them in public I 
would soon be either ignored or annoying.

So I am comfortable talking about what I am doing in the foundation: 
setting up a user rather then developer focus for the web site, 
floundering as the geotools representative to understand what needs to 
be done, sending out the occasional amusing post to balance out the 
serious questions I bring to the table and so on...

If I step out of my comfort zone I can talk about where I want to take 
this foundation. At one level it is a venue to improve the state of 
things.  We should present our "projects" as "products", something that 
will task almost everyone. Although it is rather dull I am also excited 
about improving interoperability, even if this is just providing sample 
code on implementing GML and SLD correctly. I am less worried about 
things such as the development community, but as I meet other projects I 
understand that there is work to do in this area as well.

Jody