My opinion is that Maemo is run by a coalition of people I disagree with, and voting wouldn't make a difference. Also, it would amount to an endorsement of the current system, which I don't endorse.

In a political system like the US, you can be in the minority and work to build support for your group, taking years if necessary. In a small system like this, you really don't have a chance.

I was in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) a while back. It was run by a Maoist wing of Communists when I belonged. Opposing them was hopeless; they showed up for every meeting and outorganized everyone. Whenever there was a controversy, they decided what the rules were, and the rules were always in their favor.

This is not as extreme, or as important, but it seems similar to me.

Don't have the necessary bits and pieces required on maemo.org to vote (such as a login etc..) Unless you are a dev, not sure at this time what that brings to the table for common or garden users like myself, may change when the forums move over though.

Im fairly familar, and have read lots of posts by 4 of the 5 who have been elected, and actually am quite content with the result, especially Jaffa, who is a Brit as well, and seems a top bloke (you would have had my vote).

Cool! You could be our own slum dog millionaire... do we need a choreographer then?

***

Seriously though... I don't think it is so much of a fight as it is an awareness and presence.

With a more user friendly device on the horizon, it's conceivable that many more people will interact with all things Maemo via the forums (and only the forums). As a result, other maemo.org channels may become more isolated and viewed by some as elitist... More frag.

The running of "Maemo" (the platform, the maemo.org website, Maemo Software team in Nokia?) is not something the council does. The primary role of the council (and I'll be raising this in qole's thread on maemo-community when I get a chance) is to represent the views and opinions of the Maemo Community (which includes anyone sufficiently enfranchised to discuss things on ITT, rank downloads on maemo.org, developers, power users, bloggers etc.) to Nokia, and vice versa.

On a practical level, this includes highlighting things like "x, y and z would be possible if Nokia did a & b, and here's why that's useful to Nokia and the community"; as well as recruiting for roles like the debmaster to aid in the quality and quantity of software in the maemo.org Extras repository.

It;s in the community's interest to get that repo enabled on devices wherever possible (and it's shipping with devices, but disabled at the moment), as this ensures that application authors are getting the widest possible audience.

You don't need to be a developer to either contribute to, or gain value from, maemo.org. For example:

• Helping triage bugs, or voting and commenting on them.
• Organise and contribute to the wiki, or use much of the useful information on there.
• Finding new applications to download and commenting and ranking on them.
• Keeping track of what's going on in the community through news and, more specifically, the planet blog aggregation.

Doing any of these things will also raise you karma points which, ultimately, will help contribute to things like any future device programmes - or sponsored travel. Concrete advantages to actively participating a lot in the community, but there are benefits to you (particular bugs or enhancements being fixed and new applications to use on your tablet) even if you aren't that prolific.

Ta muchly :-)

Jaffa, that should be in your signature: "Maemo Community Council Top Bloke".

And, whether members of itT are members of maemo.org or not, know that the Council has (and will always) be advocates for the important discussions that happen here -- be it called internettablettalk.com or talk.maemo.org. So, even if you've never been to maemo.org, we (the Council) never cared -- it's the users and the platform that we care about, regardless of where everyone "hangs out." This being said, I really do wish that more people had voted.

Case-in-point: Me. I haven't written a line of code for Maemo...ever. But, I'm in my second term of Councilhood, I was sponsored for Maemo Summit 2008, I was accepted into the N810 developer program (and even received a second, free N810 for some bug testing I did for that program), etc.

Volunteering for -- and impacting -- Maemo is not all about writing code, or even being tech savvy. If you own a Maemo device, you can participate.

And, I know it's probably been said here before, but... Even if you never go to maemo.org, having an account there -- with your itT info added to your maemo.org profile -- will accumulate karma just by your participating here on itT (itT Thanks are tallied in the maemo.org karma count).

Tim

OK, seems about 50 people voted here so far. Of those who did not vote for the community council, a majority of 55% said either "What's the council good for, anyway?" (29,6%) and/or "I don't know all these people" (25%).

While this is not representative, it seems likely. Not knowing what the council's good for... There's even a thread about this on the community mailing list right now. I couldn't really explain the role of the council if somebody asked.
Not knowing the candidates: While I come to both ITT and maemo.org almost daily to look for news, I only knew 4 out of 9 candidates well enough to make any decision right away. I didn't want to be unfair to the others, so I went to their profile pages on maemo.org, searched for their posts on ITT (if they had any), read their blogs/homepages/... to gather information and then compared it to those I knew.

So the bottom line could be:
If we want more people to vote, we need to better define what the council does and the candidates themselves should not be shy about "campaigning" (meaning: introducing themselves to the public). Nobody, even those with a high karma, can expect to be known.

My personal problem understanding the role of the council ATM is:
Council members are active community members. I see a lot of activity driven by council members. Still I can't tell if this is because they are members of the council, because the council as a body exists, or if it is because they're just devoted to Maemo and would have done what they did, anyway.

I could explain the role of the council better if I knew: This, this and this was done as a work of the council. It wouldn't have happened if the single members, even though each active and devoted, hadn't been organized in the structure they defined within the council.
Just an idea...

I dunno, to me it sounded simple enough : Nokia has been learning how open source projects work, through trial and error, since it launched the 770 in 2005.

It now understands that it needs an active and lively community to support the tablets, and is ready to listen more, to interface more, and provide means & funds (the summit, maemo.org and ITT, the debmaster etc.).

It just can't/won't interact with hundred of individuals with conflicting views, so we have a Council of community members, elected by the community, who have the ear of Nokia's maemo team and are entrusted with the best use of whatever means Nokia endows the community with.

Is this too much of a simplification ? Am I missing something essential ?...

a) It's a little too abstract for me. I can't base a decision in an election on "... entrusted with the best use of whatever means Nokia endows the community with". (Although this one sentence somehow fits my view of he council role.)
b) It contradicts what I believe (dont ask me when and where) has been said about the role of the council: that it is not a representative body and will not make decisions about Maemo together with Nokia. If it were, we as those who vote should better know what Nokia and the council talk about when the council members "have the ear of Nokia's Maemo team" and how these talks affect Maemo as a project.

My somewhat blurry picture of the council is that it provides a structure for those who want to work for the benefit of the community, a structure to organize their work and better coordinate their efforts. (Which, of course, means that being a council members brings you more work rather than more power.)

But, again... Look at the mailing list. Council members themselves aren't absolutely sure of their roles. Why should I?

The bottom line: The Maemo Community Council represents practically nobody except a bunch of programmers, and a few power users. When you compare that group to the number of people who have bought tablets, you get basically zilch.

It is a very important council, since those programmers are in many ways the lifeblood of the tablets. However, from the point of view of a user, the council doesn't mean much, not if you're a user who just wants to read Word docs on the tablet, or one of the other typical interests of the primary tablet purchasers.

What concerns me is that any rise in influence of the Maemo Community is likely to diminish the already miniscule influence of the users. The migration of this user-centered site to the Maemo whatever may be the death knell to the tablets. We'll see if that is true. Remember all those users who were chased away because they didn't SEARCH enough? We may come to miss them, eventually.