@RevdKathy, thanks for you effort of putting this all together.

What new initiatives do you want to develop inside the community ?

I believe that quite soon we will have many new initiative coming from the community itself, it will be a matter of giving attention and support to them.
Something I would really like to see happen is support for unified donations system within maemo.org (I have written a bit about this in reply to EIPI's question). This, in my opinion, will be important for two reasons: not only as an encouragement for developers but also as a strong voice of community saying, that Maemo and MeeGo can be commercial platforms. Something similar happened with AngryBirds Levelpack 1, when a strong voice 'we want to pay, let us do that' was heard.
I would also like to encourage regular users to be more active in extras-testing process. Making voting and commenting easier (directly from the phone?) and more visible should speed the process of bringing excellent applications to the end-user. That is where I would see my focus.

What do you hope to gain personally from your time on the council?

Beautiful women and fame of course. What, women are not really attracted to Maemo Community Council members? Jezzz...
Seriously though, I see this is a way to develop, to see how such body as Council works and how it interacts with Community. Yes, there is much more to give than to take in this. Still without personal development, we won't be able to help the Community to grow better. It is a win-win situation



What experience or aptitude of yours do you hope rubs off on other council members?

I hope to bring the perspective of small developer & power user.
More importantly however, I will try to be the voice of reason and understanding in the council (ok, it sounds lame, but it will be need; it is apparent even now). Council should represent users' views, not be autocratic rulers. This is part of my philosophical (or religious if you wish) experience, which I can contribute. Extremes are easy, it's finding the reasonable middle that is difficult and must be exercised. Taking step back to get the right perspective, this is something many community members (even those with top Karma).
On a more practical note, I have been forum moderator (matematyka.pl, largest Polish forum about math) for over a year, dealing (with success) with community. At the moment I'm studying Nokia devices as part of my Masters program, developing some smaller and larger things along the way. Being a student, I'm used to project-oriented work (we need deadlines, goals, teams, etc.), stress, long nights and so on. I guess you can never have to much of this in a body such as this Council.

Where do you see MeeGo 1 year from now? be as imaginative as you dare.

One year from now? I see iPhone running MeeGo and Steve declaring (with tears behind his glasses) that he has never seen better OS. Imaginative enough?
In a year we can expect two devices running MeeGo (not counting n900), probably one from Nokia and the other one from other vendor (not necessarily a mobile phone/tablet). This will mean that the community will move from One Device-One OS-One Vendor to just One OS. It will be more interesting (especially if the other device will be something different), which will probably split members into general OS interested (more devs) and Device interested (regular users). Interesting times those shall be.
The platform itself? It will be pushed as alternative Andorid by Nokia, with goal to replace Symbian on high-end devices from Nokia. If everything works as planned, both devs and users will get unified platform and user interfaces for wide range of devices. Which is a nice thing.



Aslan said to Caspian "If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not".

In what ways do you feel Council membership will stretch you beyond your current personal capabilities, and how do you intend to respond to that stretching?

Buddha said: He is able who thinks he is able.
This questions corresponds to the one about personal gain from membership. This is going to be a serious commitment. The difference from my current and past commitments is that it is not something I do to get benefits from (money, better education) but to give, personal benefits being just something extra. This is an important lesson to learn (paradox, eh? the important benefit is that there are no benefits), giving to community without expectation about money or fame.
This what I would like to say to myself in a 6 months, 'I was doing something not because I was getting something for that, but because it was important for others'.