Steve McMahon

Plone integrator, developer, trainer, past board member, and long-time community volunteer.

I'm finishing my fifth term on the Plone Board, having been secretary for most of those years. I'm willing to do it again if you'll have me.

Last year, I endorsed the proposals contained in the Plone's Next Decade manifesto as a list of things I wanted to work on. Some progress has been made on that list, but much of that still needs work. In the rest of this statement, I'd like to revisit the items on that list and evaluate what we've done and what still needs work.

Foundation membership

We wanted to bring new blood to the Plone Foundation by raising its visibility and making it clear to active Plonistas why the PF is important. I don't think we've accomplished this yet, but I'm hopeful that raising the profile of the foundation in sprint sponsorships will yield eventual benefits. I do think we did a good job of soliciting membership applications, and the membership committee did a great job in processing them and making recommendations.

Project leadership & Committees

Plone's next decade proclaimed that individuals shouldn't get to own portions of the project beyond their ability to move it forward. We did appoint our committees afresh, and managed to shake up a couple of moribund projects, but I think the real test of this principle is going to come for the next board. It will have to deal with the fact that shaking up leadership did not, in some cases, produce much progress. Marketing, in particular, remains an area of great concern and continues to need new participants.

Sprint funding

If the 2012/2013 board can claim a great success, this is it. I think our more aggressive funding of strategic sprints has had big, very visible payoffs. It's also helped bring new and diverse contributors. We should do it again, even bigger if we can.

Public goals, fundraising, openness and transparency, board communication

We got an innovative budget done in a reasonable time. The budget planned spending and raising more than we have in the past. I think we did a good job of telling folks what we were doing on the budget. I think that helped with the fundraising, and will help even more in coming years. The budget ended up working well and will provide a good starting point next year.

We also adopted a conflict of interest policy and did a good job of keeping up with correspondence, agendas and minutes. We opened a board IRC area, and I think we were generally available. I'd like to see us revisit the conflict policy and improve it a bit.

Diversity and Local Communities

We want the Plone world to be richer in voices and backgrounds. The board began work on this with the appointment of a diverse, representative set of advisers. But, I don't think we made as much use of them as we could.

We had a great bloom of South American participation, but I think that most of the credit for that goes to long work by past boards and South American Plone activists. Let's keep it up.

I don't think this was a great year for attracting more gender diversity in our participants. We've just got to keep working on it. New ideas are welcome.

Seconded by: Érico Andrei, Maurizio Delmonte, David Glick, Matthew Wilkes, Florian Friesdorf