New Council have been elected! Thanks a lot for all participants - Community voting, candidates and, finally, new Councilors!

Results:
http://maemo.org/vote/results.php?election_id=20

Check if Your vote have been counted correctly:
http://maemo.org/vote/votes.php?election_id=20

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Council Election is running already - for 7 days, from 16th to 23th May, all Community Members meeting voting criteria, can vote for candidates.

If You're sure that You meet criteria, yet, You haven't received invitation to vote into Your mail account (registered in maemo.org), please contact X-Fade immediately. In any case, feel free to ask for help in this thread.

Links You may consider worth checking:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...e_declarations
http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...tion_Q1/2_2012
http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council

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As You may be already aware or not, it's last bell for nominations for another Council election.

Despite common opinions, Council doesn't have any "special tools". Really. The only difference from regular users that Council members have, is community mandate to talk with Nokia at Community behalf, and respect'n'trust - or lack of - from Community, that helps (or not, in second case) to coordinate projects, find solutions, settle small argues etc.

To do this effectively, Council really need as strong mandate as it may have - especially, considering Nokia's rude behavior (during last meeting with Council, they tried to disregard Council mandate, due to it being "self nominated", as they said - without election).

Having real voting really helps and motivates - seriously. This is where I ask personally - please, nominate Yourself, if You feel that You can contribute to Maemo. Don't worry about "not much free time" - no one here need to dedicated full worktime, it volunteer job I also feel - everytime when voting period comes - that I got much less time, that I should for work as Council member. Yet, contributing with what You can do is better than not contributing at all.

/Estel

// Edit

Best way to nominate is mail to maemo-community@maemo.org You can nominate Yourself or someone other (in second case, nominated person must also accept it in mail to mailing list).

For now, only SD69 and I were nominated. We need at least 2 other people, to have real voting, and 3 to get full 5-people Council.

// Edit 2

If You hate using mailing list as much as I do, I may forward Your nominations - yet, nominated people must accept it themselves via mailing list. That's life - despite being irritating, using mailing list isn't hard, and council members will use it to Communicate with at least few people/parties.

OK, as you insist, count with me. I already volunteered to Supertesters but up to now nothing has been done due to Nokia not responding at all.

Personally I'm a little concerned at the talk on the mailing list about forking the community to a new website. When people ask where it was discussed/proposed the response seems to be not in this thread with no pointer for another thread.

After Estel's above comment about "Harmatrash", if there was an election I'd be tempted to vote for the council to be dissolved rather than these people be seen to represent me.

Maybe if there aren't enough nominations for an election, there should be one anyway, with "dissolve the council" as an option?

First things first - I'm not a Council member (yet?). If You don't want me to represent Maemo community, vote for another candidate, or nominate someone else (and ensure that she/he will accept nomination). Nevertheless, I've deleted this comment, to not scary away those of faint heart

As for Your second question, the answer is simple - no. Council election rules are quite clear - Council members are elected via vote, and if 3 or less people are nominated, it's considered a consensus, and all 3 passes.

Personally, I would like to have good old fashioned voting.
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ivgalvez, nice to hear that. Please, send a mail to mailing list, with Your wish to candidate, ok?

/Estel

In real politics, every time someone says "we need a strong mandate" I tend to believe that what we actually need is "strong transparency". Coincidence or not, this is also what I think is the situation here and now.

Rude behavior from Nokia? As far as I'm aware Nokia is paying the maintenance bills of maemo.org (and http://apps.formeego.org ) asking... (what?) in exchange. We are happy this community exists and we are happy helping it to find its path onto the future.

When the Council was created we had reasons to keep some managed discussions in private. Cases that come to mind were invitations to an event where Maemo announces were planned, a couple of controversial apps that needed to be pulled from Maemo Downloads, a quote for the MeeGo launch... and not much more, really. Most of the discussion happened directly and transparently here and in the maemo-community mailing list, between Council members and whoever else wanted to be involved.

Now... announcements are not Maemo related, individuals can publish apps to Nokia Store and Qt Developer Network and Nokia Developer have both developer communities with ambassadors and champions.

Does this mean that maemo.org is irrelevant? Not at all! There is something precious and unique here, and it would be good for everybody to find the way to update it and evolve it further.

Does this mean that the Maemo Community Council is irrelevant? I don't know the answer - but in any case I believe that transparency is more relevant. I'll do my best helping on transparency.

I'm sorry, I missed your & SD69's nominations/candidacies on the mailing list (as the Council election rules quite clearly state). Could you paste the links, please?

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/

Following up on Jon's point, there's been talk of a "Plan B" and "maemocommunity.org" but requests for more information have been ignored.

There seems to have been a breakdown in communication between Nokia and the council (or certainly that appears to be the case to people like Estel and a breakdown in communication between the council and the community.

There have been zero posts to the Council blog - the official communication mechanism put in place after complaints here about a lack of transparency - despite numerous online meetings (and, one assumes, minutes/logs thereof) between the council & Nokia.

EDIT: To be clear, this isn't specifically pointed at Estel:

If there are candidates standing for election (AFAICT, there currently are not), my question to them would be: "do you agree there've been breakdowns in communication; and how do we fix it?" Give a good answer to that, and I'll vote for you. Don't... and I'll be rooting for someone else (and make sure a vote happens ;-))

qgil - please check logs from last Council meeting. If Nokia's representative response to SD69 isn't rude, then find a better word for it.

As for rest of Your post - +1, but I would like to highlight, that AFAIK both Nokians and X-Fade is extremely unresponsive during last ~9 months. It took 6 months to make them even *investigate* why one of main Maemo projects - kernel power - can't be promoted properly in repositories... They were literally ignoring every form of communication, that is in scope of Council. Another 2 months to "fix" it, just to have problem re-appearing after single new version upload.


also, AFAIK, there was only 1 meeting between Council members and Nokians (correct me if I'm wrong) during last Council 6 months period, and even that one wasn't finished. SD69 tried to arrange follow-up meeting, yet, he don't get any response, no matter how hard trying.

Lets face it - Nokia *is* paying the bills, but it makes things even worse. When Nokia doesn't respect community (I talk about current state, so "history" isn't of much relevance here), even people that are paid by them doesn't give a s...ingle sign of "I care". Having bills paid isn't any win, if it makes Your hands tied, due to issues with repos, lack of communication with "our Nokia friends", inability to get definite answer even in simplest cases, or - what's even worse - opposite answers depending on who (assigned by Nokia) You're asking (see mess about passing Maemo trademark to community domain).

With all due respect, I think You aren't much involved in current events, if You don't consider it "rude". ruse is lightest word, that can be used here.
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Despite fact, that all those things are very interesting and - sometimes - important, I would like to not have another "Future of Maemo" thread here - we got already plenty of them with many active participants (yet, when it comes to Council nominations, no one want to metamorphose words into action...).

If You, or anyone else feel that You could help Community - nominate Yourself! If You know someone that is capable, try to convince her/him to nominate. Great visions are OK, but I also hope for more people willing to do dirty, not-very-rewarding (currently) work.

/Estel

// Edit

Jaffa, You were faster I agree that leaving out Council blog wasn't good idea. Yet, after every Council action, there was report in "Ask the Council" thread here on TMO, which was used as main communication channel, during last Council period. I agree, that it's quite messy, to jump from one communication channel to another.

Generally, there were not much to report - writing again and again about "I've tried to contact Nokians on channel x/y/z, waiting for their response...". "I've proposed meeting to Nokians 3 weeks ago, haven't good any response... Re-sending invitation..." "We've been ignored by X-Fade and Nokians for 4 months, sorry guys, can't report any progress on any issue"... Heck, they were not able to give us even basic numbers about bandwidth usage from Maemo infrastructure!

don't get me wrong - I don't accuse Council members (well, SD69 was doing most of dirty work, if not all of it) - they just *don't* have tools in current state of things. IMO, it's time to change that, with or without Nokia support (of course, i prefer first option).

So, if You ask about communication breakdown between Council and Nokia - yes, but definitely from Nokia side. As for breakdown between Council and Community - can't agree, yet I must admit that communication was quite messy (probably, due to frustrating state of things to report...).

Going back to transparency - yes, I agree that it's one of most important things, especially, when considering big changes. After all, no one is planning to do it for group of 5 (?) people, and without supporting Community behind, it's a no-go. From my side, You can be sure, that - if elected - I'll write with details about every thing happening. In fact, you can expect rather *too much* of informing, instead of too less Yet, I can't promise that communication with Nokia will be re-estabilished, as it requires will from both parties.

In any case, I will be very cheerful, if You ensure that voting takes place
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I'll do a quick-search for mine and SD69 nomination, updating this post after a while.

// edit
I was slower again - thanks for the link!

Jaffa,

There were a couple of nominations on list:
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...il/005019.html

I'm not convinced that this solves the real issue of transparency however.

Jon

Indeed (emphasis added). If the Council don't like mailing lists, or can't commit to updating the blog the least they should do is post to the blog pointing to where they (i.e. SD69) are communicating. I'll point out that posting to the blog automatically creates a new thread on TMO in the Community forum, making it the best of both worlds. (I think it's bad form to reuse the same thread for so long, as the topics could vary so much)

A recent XKCD is relevant, including its tooltip:

Sure, Matti Airas doesn't seem to be involved in the community as much as Quim was. But that's because the community - unfortunately - is more stable, and he hasn't got the history in building it that Quim did. But that's where the council comes in: help rather than confront; communicate instead of stifle; empower rather than moan.

I think you touch on it here, though - and later in your reply:

Transparency about trying is important. As I've said since I came up with the idea of a community council - the concept is to facilitate others and enable people to do what they do best. If there was more light shone on the situation it would've been possible for folks like me & qgil to say to people "c'mon guys, there's supposed to be x FTE on this". Sure, that shouldn't be necessary - but what's more important, getting things done or being able to make a point when things have got even worse?

Similarly, transparency about actions within the community is important. "Plan B" and maemocommunity.org are both attempts to fork the community. There's been vitriol about the "success" of the N9 and Harmattan communities disrupting the vibe here (something that happened with the N8x0 and N900 when they were released as well); and spite about those who want to shut "maemo.org" down; and hints about conspiracies around formeego.org.

I think what this term, above all others, has shown is that being on the Council is hard. It is a responsibility and it is important to go that extra mile. "Continue doing what you're already doing" was a fine motto when we founded it and we had more candidates than positions. When there's a paucity of candidates, those who do form the council have a duty to live up to the expectations they've had in the past - not what they can fit in now.

I think there are plenty that would run, but lack the qualifications. For example, despite lots of posts, testing, scripts, hacks, etc, my "karma" is still below the minimum required to run. (Mainly because I haven't done much on the wiki or started up any projects in the garage area.)

Personally, it sounds like the few people that are active are too busy doing other things. That, and Nokia hasn't exactly been in regular contact with us anyway. I think we still need a council, but unless they get some way to light a fire under someone on Nokia's side, it's a frustrating job. Is it any wonder people aren't stampeding to volunteer for it?