Hello everyone. Hello. So while waiting for the top of the hour for starting, I will paste in the chat the order and as usual we will follow, like for the other sessions, the order of candidacy. And I will keep my camera off for saving a bit the bandwidth. In the meantime, I'm looking at the list of candidates. Ida is there, Sophie is there, Jean-François. I don't see Jean-Baptiste, Answaldo is there. I don't see Mike. Mike was there. I've seen it a few seconds ago. Ah, okay, yep, now I can read. Sorry folks, indeed, I can see him. But at least I don't see Ennio. Then Franklin, no, it's not here. Franklin is leaving probably. Yeah, at this time probably, yes, like him at least. It's three or four o'clock in the morning for me. Yeah, Daniel is not here. Eliane is there. Paolo is there. Andrea is there. I don't see Björna, but... Björna's got a work activity that he's still at and he doesn't know that he'll be back in time for this. Okay, well in any case, if some candidates will join later, we will do as during the last session, we will give them in any case a chance to present themselves. Then looking at the list, Simon is there. If the core I didn't see him, then I guess missing and the last one is missing too. I got a message from Quor over in my chat saying that he's still driving home and he'll be back a bit later. Okay, thanks Simon. Well, in any case, it's three past seven UTC or three past eight CET. So I think we can get started. So like for the other sessions, the format will be with a two-minute introduction presentation per candidate. We will follow the list. And after this round of introductions, we will open up to questions from the audience. If you want to ask questions directly on the chat, you can type there or if you want, you can also directly open your mic and ask your question. In any case, please raise your hand for speaking. And with that, thanks again for joining. And okay, there's an initial question from Ion. The links to the candidate statement, of course. And thanks for the reminder. I had it open and I forgot to paste it. So this one is the list. And on the message, there is also the link to the nomination of each candidate. Okay. There is also another hand raised. Yep. If only do you have something else to ask or is it something for later? Sorry, it was a question. Okay. So if it's a question for later, I think we can directly start with the introduction. Okay, then Italo, the stage is yours. Okay. Good evening, everyone. I think everyone knows me. My name is Italo Vignoli. I'm Italian, as my first name suggests, basically in Italy. And I'm one of the group of the founders of LibreOffice. I was involved in OpenOffice before. And the objective of my candidacy is to try to bring back the spirit of the document foundation or the spirit of the LibreOffice project, which was quite different from what we have seen during the last few years. We, of course, had a different situation around the project was different. There was commitment and enthusiasm that I've not seen during the past few years. And a climate, especially within the board, that was completely different. There were different opinions, but the objective was to find a consensus before any decision was taken. And I think that this is what the board should do, is reaching consensus and then take decisions. And this will be my commitment if I will be elected. And that's my summary. Thanks, Italo. Reading the question from Simon. So for this session, we didn't specify a specific translation language to use. So the idea is that, given that we have a mix of other needs, if there's the need to translate something, we can try to do it. Otherwise, the idea is to stick with English. I don't know if... Okay. Fine. So next is Sophie. Hello, everyone. Thanks to be there. I'm Sophie Gautier, also a founder of the Document Foundation. I'm contributing to the project since the beginning, providing a French translation of the YNHUB, of the product, and other several translations, and other tasks for the French community. I'm working for TDF as part of the team for 10 years now, currently as a Foundation Coordinator. I support the place for LibreOffice. We work collectively, which contains the main actions we will take at first. And as it all I would like to bring back the spirit of the Foundation, as it was at the beginning, and have a vision for the future of the community and the product. That's it. Thanks. Excellent. The next in the list is Jean-François. Hello. My name is Jean-François Nifniker. I came to LibreOffice and previously open office when my employer decided to take the plunge in 2005. I am a 90 support specialist. I had to learn the tool in order to teach LibreOffice best practices to my colleagues. To do this, I wrote numerous documents and how-tos, and then shared my knowledge on news group and forums, which is what I still do. In my opinion, usage and users should be at the center of IT concerns. That's why I gladly support the plunge for LibreOffice because it puts a lot of emphasis on users and communities. They are the lifeblood of TDF and must not be neglected. We need them, and we must earn that trust. Transparency is the key to material trust. In short, like Italo and Sophie, I'm looking for the enthusiastic TDF we used to know working collectively for the better. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Next is Jean-Baptiste, but I don't see him, so we have Osvaldo. The stage is yours, always two minutes. Good afternoon. I'm sorry for my voice. This is the first day of COVID, so I'm quite bad. Okay. My name is Osvaldo Gervasi. I come from the Italian community, and I am part of documentation and translation of the Italian group. In my life, I'm a professor at New University and presently also director of course in computer science. My goal is also to involve young people, particularly engineering and computer scientists, to approach so beautiful software like LibreOffice. I am enthusiastic of joining the pledge for LibreOffice, and I met and be part of this group is really fantastic. Considering the issues we are raising, we consider all members of the community equal, and we want that each community, each local community can be supported for their activities and their wishes. Each of us is very important for the potential that each of us express. There are people that are doing a lot in this sense, other less, but we need all people together in a friendly climate, cooperating for the goal of improving LibreOffice and TDF. I guess that the technology advancement we are observing impose us to renew also the software in order to cope with the challenges we have to afford. Thank you. Okay, thanks a lot. And the next one is Mike. Hello, everybody. I've just got Corona a few days ago, so my voice is a bit rough, but I'm still here. A lot of you know me anyway. Of course, I'm Mike Saunders. I've been working at the Document Foundation since 2016 in community outreach and marketing and other projects as well, but I've been involved in free open source software since the 1990s, working for computer magazines, advocating free software, advocating open source and community building as well. I'm here with the pledge for LibreOffice as well. Let's get back that enthusiasm into the community, into the projects as well. It should be a really, really good, fun project to be in. Whatever project you're in, all the different things that can contribute to LibreOffice as well. It should be fun. It should be exciting. And we have this goal to provide the software, provide LibreOffice to millions of people around the world, make it available. The end result of our work should be available for everybody to use. And that's the motivation we have to work on it.  It's got to be exciting. And something that we all want to do. Thanks. Next is Daniel that is not here. So we have, you know, Franklin is not here either. Daniel is not here. Eliana, the stage is yours. Two minutes for you. Okay. Hello, all. Thank you all for being here. My name is Eliana Domingos. I am 15 years old and I live in Brazil at Rio de Janeiro city. I am a member of the document foundation for 11 years. I was in the board of directors in 2014 to 2016. And I am part of Brazilian LibreOffice community. In the last few years I was involved in the organization and management of the Brasilia Latin meeting and in creating videos and banners for the Marico Latin meeting. I promote LibreOffice in Brazil at social media and events. I created and worked in the LibreOffice magazine using LibreOffice Draw during its 27 editions available at week. I will share the link here in the chat. I am presenting my candidacy for the board because I believe the foundation needs change and to represent diversity of our members. I would like to highlight some challenges for the next board in my opinion, which are fixed issues raised in the audit report, return to the tenders and listen more to the users' wishes. I will be very happy to have the opportunity to be on the board once more and serve the foundation. Thank you very much. Thanks Eliana. The next one is Paolo. Hi everybody. I am Paolo Becchi. I am Italian and living in Luxembourg. I have been working in IT for the past 45 years and dedicated about 20 to open source software. I am currently a member of the board in TDF. I am the president of the largest hacker space here in Luxembourg and a member of many other open source organizations with national and even international reach. When I have a bit of time, I run a company which is specialized in open source cloud infrastructure working with local governments, many European institutions. I am also an advisor for open source digital sovereignty and other matters like for example the Cyber Resilience Act for the Ministry of Economy. So pretty busy in various fronts. The LibreOffice is not part of the core business of my company. I put a lot of effort in TDF because LibreOffice is one of my passions. So that is why I would like to continue to be on the board to fix many issues that we know we have. Several of my objectives are listed in the pledge for LibreOffice which I naturally fully support. I am pretty sure that it is going to be fun, exciting and especially productive to work with other people that support the pledge in the new board. Thank you. Thanks. The next one is Andreas. Two minutes for you. But you are on mute and we can't hear you. Sorry. Hi all. I am Andreas Mandager, 16 years old. I am living in Duisburg, Germany. I am unrelated to anything with TDF or LibreOffice. I am a poor volunteer on this project. I am a member of this project of LibreOffice and OpenOffice org before since 2002 and worked in very different areas from documentation where I started to infrastructure. So I know this project very well. I was for about six years on the board from the inception of the foundation to 2016-18. I support the pledge of LibreOffice because I hope to get the project back to something that is very inspiring and the user and everyone can contribute freely and with fun to this project again so that we go forward and make a better project in different areas and different platforms although that we support the civil society with good and fun OpenOffice software. So that's it. Thanks. The next one is, okay, Björn is not here. So Simon, the stage is yours. Thank you very much, Marina. Hello everybody. I am Simon Phipps. I have been involved in the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects right from the beginning. I was at the launch event in Monterey and I'm passionate about both open document format which I helped get established at OASIS and helped to promote through to an international standard and also LibreOffice where I was the hidden friend of LibreOffice at Sun Microsystems while Oracle was breaking everything. I joined TDF as soon as it was feasible to do so and served with the membership committee first of all running the first election and then went on in subsequent years to serve on the board of directors twice. I have no affiliations whatsoever with LibreOffice anymore since the end of Sun Microsystems and I'm here because I think LibreOffice is profoundly important that having document creation and maintenance tools for ordinary citizens is fundamental to being able to participate freely in a democracy. Because of that I'm very keen that the document foundation gets away from all the squabbling and partisanship we've seen over the last two boards stops engaging in activities that lead to conflict of interest and instead focuses back on LibreOffice again. We need to rescue LibreOffice from the fate that it will suffer if we don't invest in developing it. We need to make sure that it serves users of the future individual end users, not businesses not companies that want to avoid paying for their office suite but ordinary individual citizens in their own language in their own expected way of working on the platform that they use only in a modern world of networking. Because of that I think that the most important thing we can do after we have settled all of the squabbling and partisanship which is something that we can easily do by, as Itala said, focusing on consensus and as everybody else has said or will say focusing on transparency. Then we need to double down Simon, sorry. software. There is a link in the chat which has got my proposed starting point for that vision. Thanks Marina. Okay, let's try please to stick into the two minutes otherwise we are missing the time also for questions and so on. Okay, then I saw Core joining so stage is yours, two minutes and please try to stay into the two minutes. Yeah, thanks Marina and please help me with keeping in those two minutes. Sometimes I'm brief and sometimes I'm very verbose. I've been joining this open source community back in 2004 with the open office org community. I started a small company by then in the Netherlands and in my spare time I've been contributing to all sorts of things. One of the first ideas was in the we had special interest groups with some name I've forgotten at the open office org time. My idea was a sports special interest group because all those people being fanatic at the screens and getting older and older people tend to learn that having enough physical activity is very important too and this really is worth 40 seconds. I've been contributing with voluntary in all areas but what I'm still doing right now is sometimes joining UX meetings where in these all interests of all users that make effort to put in their ideas are evaluated. John in the meeting here, hi John you're one of the people joining there too and one of the other things I'm doing in some years I'm active in the board of directors and currently we are extremely busy trying to finish the last bits around the new tendering procedure we are busy doing the best as possible to heal the problems that grow over the last decade and that results in the knowledge outcome that's not so positive as we know but we are working on that and I stand for the new board and I encourage a lot of things from the pledge it was with joy that I saw Simon's new idea and one of the things that I hope we can fix in the community is trying to overcome the moments when we are fighting when we are not so happy together it happens but what we could do better I think is learning to get over it in a respectful way that helps us that's it for now I think and maybe there are questions yeah thanks for that then the next is Haike but I don't see him and the same applies to Laszlo Laszlo was ill yesterday and I poked him but it sounded all not so present so that should be the reason, sorry for that yeah it's quite common these days it's not the only one unfortunately okay then looking at the chat there are the first questions so I would like to just follow the order of those questions and for the answer feel free to raise your hand and from there we can start the discussion please in the answer try to of course express your concept without taking too long so we can have a discussion also with all the other candidates okay so the first question is from I mean the first of a set of questions from John I'm going to read it so it should be easier also for the recording so the first question is I think the use of sorry single user office suite is coming to an end with the likes of hyper connected suites such as Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 what will TDF do to ensure these key points a key point is not overlooked who wants to start first think Paolo was first probably for less than a second so Paolo and then Simon probably yes well yeah you're absolutely right it would be great to have a plan to actually being able to you know go over the single user kind of limitation there are several ways I believe there are some technologies that could be used I think I propose a while back to look at naturally wasm I think some members of the ecosystem actually are already looking at all the protocols actually to look at direct exchanges between the various desktop version that cool allows for cooperative editing one of the thing I was looking at I saw matrix I think it's go even a file sharing or storage sharing protocol build into it but that does not create a full let's say hyper connected suite I agree with you on that so probably there are other technologies we should look at or maybe even agreements that we should look at to expand you know the reach of the office in other device in the pledge naturally we have a sort of plan to actually go to mobile web platform we have to work together actually to find the right way of doing it and to do that well naturally we're going to have to satisfy not only the single users but naturally work together so we public sector education sector and so on it will make sense to have a hyper connected let's say office suite based on a liberal office Simon? Yep so for everyone's convenience I've put in the chat a link to a document that talks about this question I think the two points I'd like to emphasize are we exist to serve the general public and that means that I'm not sure that a liberal office online is a direction that TDF should be taking but it is essential that we work out how to do collaboration user to user and through other online platforms and it's also essential that we work out how to fit in with other ways of dealing with information the challenge with doing this is everybody has an opinion and this is always the classic challenge of listen to the users the question is which users do you listen to and the majority isn't necessarily the right answer either because often you need innovation that doesn't look appealing when you first see it and has to be evolved to look good so the way to handle this is through product management and I believe TDF should have an executive staff that has got a development function including product management that is directed at the highest level by the board on behalf of the trustees but is actually performing that role of accumulating user input prioritizing capabilities and then genuinely innovating with collaborative capabilities that don't require you to be a cloud service provider in order to use them I think that's the most important thing the board has to do after it's settled all of the presenting problems that we can all see are obvious and are deeply regrettable. Thanks Marina Thanks a lot so next one is Sophie so on that I think that we have a charitable mission to ensure a lot of associations and other projects that are using online or mobile suites and I think we are very important in this area we need to be there when I see a lot of I don't know if you know from Assoft which is the French association which is organizing Châton I mean skater in English but the friend in Châton and it's a network of cloud offering and they most of the time they offer only office another thing is that Android is the first always used in most countries for example also in Africa where nurses are using Android to push their data on servers when they are in the country in the landscape so we have a real function for these people to give them an Android version that can use everywhere that's it Thanks Korra I think it's worth to repeat one thing that Italo spelled out in one of the previous town hall meetings let me phrase it completely differently at the name LibreOffice where you can look at the wider community and what is offered by the wider community also using LibreOffice technology that's clear what I mean and if you look at Sophie it could completely justify that you mentioned the only office product that looks open source isn't really but still that people left and right prefer I know a bit what efforts are behind the relative success of Collabra Online with LibreOffice technology on various platforms and what it costs in terms of effort etc to be successful there over the non open source competition it's extremely challenging and it's thanks to the cooperation that it works and really on the positive side if you look what that brings into extra development that also benefits LibreOffice I think that's something we have to be very glad with and have to somehow to celebrate and see how we can use that factors multiplier still that doesn't mean that there's no discussion and no development but let's please be wise and look at the picture in the broadest sense and with all flower nuances that's in front of us Thanks Anyone else any other candidate that wants to comment on this question Andreas I find it very important that LibreOffice is that we have online versions and collaboration versions that has named LibreOffice and LibreOffice has to live the future with this collaboration versions and also I know that also in Europe many people have only Android or mobile that they use for every task they do online and so it's important that we have an Android version because if we don't have that then we will be irrelevant sometimes because desktop is not always the main users maybe it's in our office but many people don't use have no computer no desktop computer to use for office or for documents Thanks Paolo Oh yeah, thanks well, thanks Andreas for bringing that up because finally enough I've been a mentor a few weeks ago in a competition for start-up and actually the group I was mentoring was dealing with say, data exchanges actually in Africa where most people do not have any desktop and very often also connectivity is very difficult to get sometimes some people go to work for a week to go to the nearest town to actually then connect to the internet so actually having something that works on a mobile device being a tablet being a phone is I believe very very important we well thanks also to Michael Becker we published the LibreOffice on Android which is a very good start at least for the document with some basic editing capabilities so in a way really put the first steps in that will be nice to see many more people in the community actually participate in the development of the Android version thanks, next is Italo you are muted Italo I think that having online versions, android version it's necessary but we should look at what we have now in terms of offering and start from there because if we don't recognize that we already have a cloud version it's called Collabora Online or Collabora Office or whatever you want to call it and it's working as customers so I think what is reasonable it's to start from there working with the people that have developed that software and improve and make it better and find a solution to have an offering based on that software that can be provided to other markets or other areas I'm sure that there are possibilities in working together to reach consensus on building upon what we already have and the same is for Android I'm using Collabora on Android and it works so I don't see why we shouldn't start from there I'm not a technical person so I don't I cannot give a technical opinion on that but I see this product working as I see a product on the desktop working and I think we should work all together in finding solutions that can improve LibreOffice in respect to the current position which is already a good one work and improve the interface if needed work and improve features if needed and I totally agree on having someone doing proper product management about LibreOffice because we are missing someone that is looking at the market talking with customers talking with users talking with authorities and potential users in governments and other areas without forgetting individual users that we serve and bringing LibreOffice forward it's difficult to provide a short statement now I think that we have the opportunity of putting together a group of people that is able to push LibreOffice and the Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project forward and if needed use the professionalism which we have in the community to improve that what I've seen in the last few years is a board that was too close to the project not speaking enough not talking enough with the project and I don't think that that is a way an open source project can make a progress open source is about sharing knowledge not about trying to overcome on others because of different ideas I think that what makes me still an open source advocate is that even at 70 I can learn from younger people because we share knowledge and I think we should make more efforts in sharing knowledge and improving the project by sharing what we already have and improving what we already have not by reinventing the wheel or going back because we have we find some issues in other solutions every software can be improved so we can work better together okay thanks Italo and just as a reminder let's try to stay around two minutes with the replies otherwise it's also difficult to follow the replies the next one is I don't know if you have another question or a follow up comment it's just I would like to read one of the several questions I posted but I want to ask you which one is there one you want me to start with or just do the first one actually I was going with the order that we have in the chat so I had others from John but I mean if we want to change a bit the format it's okay so I'll just ask the first one okay go for it so many of you have mentioned as your goal for running restoring the atmosphere of trust and of course sorting this crisis or semi-crisis we're in audit report etc but assuming we've managed to put that behind us or putting that aside what are your individual goals not as the entire board what do you yourself believe that you will devote time to doing as a member of the board as opposed to everybody else so what will you focus on Carl do you want to reply or well I have my hands raised to answer to another question so what do you suggest Marina that I wait a moment still the people that I'll ask now have replied I think that's okay let me just check if the others that raised the end are waiting for reply to ILO to the previous question I will try to IEL me too Simon me too I'm happy to talk about IEL Carl is it okay for you if we switch topic or you want to comment on the previous one it's okay please go ahead thanks then I mean you were in the waiting queue so if you want should I start then if Carl doesn't want to pick this question yeah yeah yeah I can raise my hand later no problem please go ahead okay then Paolo okay right well I will also understand that yeah there is a lot to unpack naturally in relation to the to the audit so that probably it's just gonna keep us busy for a bit but in terms of other things too well there is plenty because then at the end especially with my work with various institutions European institutions and so on there's a lot of connection that we can make to that start so the other part of the project connecting also to the comment that Ithalo made for example in terms of sharing knowledge and get us all the people involved once naturally we have a board that is a kind of able to focus actually in different tasks well we can already start using for example the hospital alliance of which TDF recently became a member today we actually we had a meeting with various educational organization today it was the Dublin the Trinity College in Dublin that was presenting but so other universities were present where the presence of Libre Office well TDF will help actually in bringing together all this organization that we are connecting all over the world to the hospital alliance but also European institution because this is a natural that is growing in many other parts so that could bring in skills, opportunity for example that we are developing so with the university here in Luxembourg to create courses get people actually involved also in development in general and hopefully so developing in Libre Office and actually get the funds from the various called around there's plenty of those at the moment there are hundreds of millions of euros we could tap in to then create the development team bring in so product manager that actually could start developing all these various elements component to start experimenting with mobile or web application or web technologies where actually we are going to be able to provide Libre Office on these all these various platforms so it would be just a starting point if we work well together then at this point we can achieve all these goals all the goals that are so in the pledge that's my point of view Thanks I think before as well that there was Simon Hello Yes I think that it was another photo finish with me and Paolo so my day job working for OSI involves dealing with the European institutions and Paolo is right that there is a lot of opportunity but he is over optimistic about how easy it will be for us to get money from there I think that over the coming years it will be challenging to get significant grants directly from the European Union I do think there is a lot of opportunity to get grants from grant making organizations as I have been mentioning to John in the chat and to achieve that I think this comes on to what I would like to achieve on the board over the next two years I think we need to treat the staff as a professional executive organization and not have a board that is constantly interfering in their work we need to have a board that supervises and gives clear directions and so one of the things that we will need to say do as the board is to direct our executive director to establish a development function to achieve the specific product goals of the foundation as a member of the overall ecosystem alongside or in parallel with the other ecosystem companies I think another thing that we will need to do is to direct to the executive director to create new fundraising capabilities so for example to get hold of all that grant money you need someone on staff who is going to be a grant maker who understands how to meet the requirements to achieve the grant and then how to satisfy the reporting requirements in order to get the money because typically you get paid at the end of the grant not at the beginning of the grant and the third thing I would like to do on the board is to have a board of directors which is much more behaving like a normal board of directors that is to say it is abiding the rules of order it is respecting previous decisions it is acting collectively and taking responsibility for its collective decisions it is not constantly reopening settled matters it is transparently publishing its thoughts and work on white papers and it is conducting meetings that have got proper preparatory materials that are made available to the trustees I think that is a very important thing to do so three things one of them is to respect and professionalize the staff not to say they are unprofessional at the moment but to treat them as an executive staff not as discrete functions the second thing is to professionalize the function of the foundation so have a development and product management capability and have a fundraising capability and thirdly to professionalize the board of directors and to bring experience to bear on how to settle disputes and how to achieve consensus or at least get the dissenting directors to agree to commit move on and settle their differences through a different mechanism other than by blocking or reopening business Thanks I think the next one is Walter I as mentioned in my introduction of course in my role I guess I can be the right person to establish connection with the academia and trying to bring to the project new energies new students in the past Fabio Piochetti made a significant improvement in the system we have this facility with thesis and projects and I guess we can benefit from it however I guess my statement clarify the various point I I want to increase the donation but most of the most important point subscribing the pledge for a liberal office where a lot of point has been described clearly evidently my idea I have served twice in the past once as the director the second as deputy my goal is to restore inside the board a calm climate and a respectful climate we all of us committed in order to respect the user the members the trustees and let them have a voice and as mentioned we want the board to be completely transparent and we commit ourselves to translate the decision made so that people outside can have a clear idea of the path we decide to to make with this decision as to be clear to the community and this is one of our most important commitment Sophie yes so to reply to Eyal I don't have specific goals in the board other than the most urgent and important for me is to deal with the issues and the next that will come because we will have an audit in 2023 but I not interested in working with the European Commission I'm already an open source expert for the European Commission so I don't want to go there for more politics what I really would like to do is just work much more with the community get their feedback on what they are doing when I see what I said yesterday the content of the Luka conference in Indonesia it was so great there are so many ideas that we don't take into account at the moment I would like to work really transparently with the community and also with other orgs like from myself to Charity and so on we have a lot to do with them we have a lot to do with the other organization and that's what I would like I'm always a person from the community and I will stay this person open and transparent that's it I appreciate it Yes thanks I am some sort of newcomer in the TDF organization but I'd like to do what I can do what I have been doing for years and what I can do is being and though we hope communities can express themselves I'd like to be an echo to these opinions and share with them what the board is doing for them that's it Any other comment on the question seems no then let me look at the chat for the internet question so always from John this one it's more on the design of LibreOffice so the question is there are many negative opinions regarding the dated and Microsoft Office 2003 interface that LibreOffice defaults to what will the board do to ensure that attractiveness and design in the future of the product and Mike Thanks for the question John we can talk a lot about design aspects of LibreOffice but that's a bit beyond the scope of this call as well but I think it's an important point because at the end we're all working on something in this staff in the board in the community the volunteers as well the ecosystem to make something that people want to use so design is super important because we're all working on the micro on the team working in design as well and design community as well but I think this does relate to the fact that we do need to have an attractive product that people want to use because that's the source of donations as well for us and spreading the word about LibreOffice as well it helps to spread the word having something people like to look at and genuinely want to use but I think it's also an opportunity in the pledge as well to improve the tendering process as well we tend to tender out coding projects in the last few years have things about coding as well but why not tender out things with user interface design as well I think the tab to notebook by user interface is pretty good but it needs some work on accessibility in order for it to ever become the default user interface that would be ideal in many cases but it does need some improvements to accessibility so potentially tendering these things out not just tendering code features out and programming tasks but tendering out something to design this as well that's one way to get the tenders back on track get them out to a broad audience as well and involve more people then obviously programming is incredibly important to the future of LibreOffice but there are so many other aspects as well that's unexpected fast I expected a long queue but hey it is indeed an interesting question about the user interface and basically it shows us one of the challenges of both challenges and opportunities of our open source way of working we allow all people with great ideas to join and to work on that and if you look at which brings in rich choices but not necessarily the best for everyone the other side at a different level is if you look more to a deeper level then on top of that each user focusing solution can build of course his own interface one of the things I would like to point to as well I took the initiative I think more than a year ago to bring in the idea to have 10% of the tendering budget available for trustees themselves so not via the process that's within the engineering steering committee we're all bringing the ideas work and etc but 10% of the budget available for the for the broader community to propose things that they would like to work on so one of the things for example as Mike said could be improvements on the user interface together with the interoperability expert that we luckily have on the team that's it Simon thanks Marina always waiting for my cue so this is John's question wasn't it so John the challenge here is that the board of directors has no authority or ability to do anything about the user interface or the attractiveness of LibreOffice because TDF broadly speaking has minimal contact with changing that now on the staff we have Heiko who does a tremendous job acting as a mentor and doing some user interface and design work and I I mean or of the amount he's able to achieve given the challenges but I think if we want to make sure that LibreOffice remains a modern piece of software for the 21st century and not the 20th century the only way to do that is to have product management on the staff and that's why that's key to what I would like to see us do once we have got the distractions of the current crisis out of the way we really do need to direct our funds at delivering things for end users and ordinary citizens in the community in their local language and on their local platforms and not mess around with making it easier for cloud providers or helping corporations save some money on their desktop productivity software so the big challenge there is working out how to influence the attractiveness and design of LibreOffice and I propose doing that by having product management and devoting some of that 3 million euro plus war chest that we have to kick starting a staff function to design a great product for the future. Marina Thanks any other replies from the candidates on this topic? No, then let me skip to a different question just for trying to follow the flow so always John is asking in a period where office suites are commodity items how will the board ensure that LibreOffice is the choice not simply on cost but desire for the many millions of potential users. Paula Yeah well that is a difficult question in a way well both in how to get a proper strategy and I think probably Italo and Mike or the best person to help us in developing the strategy but also you know how to get people to say I really can see using that I really want to be part of the community I really want to use a product that is cool in a way well then naturally we're going to have to work a lot on localization so actually everybody can actually use it especially I think when I was developing the proposal for the new developers I look at some figures it looks like we are not serving probably a billion users because of the various languages the various dialects that are not yet fully fully served but then actually we go to work a lot more on the brand awareness or spread even more the brand awareness that's why I saw this connection that I was talking about with the various network of organization that want to promote push open source as something that is good for society so even connected to the digital sovereignty which from a kind of political message seems to be working pretty well especially with various institutions or some people think that digital sovereignty is probably a bit too politically charged so looking at technological autonomy that will help so then naturally the more liberal office is going to be spread possibly also with new and improved interface the more probably we are going to have users that so even billions of users will find it good actually to use a community platform like liberal office Osvaldo I think that in the present time we are going back in several aspects of our life the war in Ukraine for example bring us behind let's say 50 years and it seems that the same trend is also happening in technology with the arrogance of the big players of IT I guess that highlighting really very careful that liberal office not liberal only in the name but it provides freedom to people because do not it take care of sensitive data personal information and so on is a sort of battle that even if around us only few people care I guess this is fundamental to highlight the strength and the beautifulness of our product Yes I think we have a lot in our community we have an online version from the Taiwanese community we have wonderful design provided by the Indonesian community also the Brazilian community is able to do a lot in design in marketing and we should really empower them to be more present, less shy and be a real part of the international community we can do we can achieve a lot but we are separated constantly. Co, Yeah, thanks Marina I fully agree with previous pre-cance that brand it's very important visibility of your brand it's also a trap I think some market systems was assignment could confirm that some market systems that being recognized as a great brand is wonderful, but doesn't automatically turn users, also administrate in users, et cetera, in those willing to contribute to a level that's close to significant in return for the benefits they make. So the idea of giving everything away for free, that that will bring automatically the necessary revenues, I would be very careful with that, but proven business successes with that, of course, are always interesting to see, maybe we can learn from that. On the other hand, we do know that over the years in our foundations, we developed means that are successful, that bring in funds, that allow us to have great infrastructure, supporting translation, local communities, all sorts of activities, also supporting development now on CDF side, aside from the tendering that we hope to start again. And then we look at indeed the notching people to make donations, the balance we found in making, in that people make a donation for the convenience they get for the use of the app stores, stuff like that, so it's really the balance that we have to look at. And Sophie mentioned something from an online version in Taiwan that I am not well informed about, but if there's an actual online version that contributes, of course, that's amazing and that's something that needs to cooperate here, absolutely. Italo? So I'm talking about awareness of LibreOffice, I think that having open source will never be as sexy as proprietary software, especially if we talk about desktop software and because the unbalance in terms of economic power is incredibly big. So we can do better in terms of communication, of course, you can always do better, but I don't think we will ever be in terms of awareness on the same level of Microsoft Office or Google. These companies are using millions of dollars or even billions of dollars in marketing and communication. Of course, we know that the situation in some areas or at some point of view is unfair, but this is the result of 40 years of history and reverting 40 years of history is almost impossible. So I think we can improve, but I don't think that one of our objective should be to mimic Microsoft Office or proprietary offerings in terms of marketing. We don't have the money and we will never have the same amount of money. I think we should focus on our potential users. So look at the niche of users that can be interested in the strong points of LibreOffice. That would help a lot and of course we can do better there, but not to the level of Microsoft. I don't think we will never get there and this is not just giving back in front of the company is being real in terms of economic power. Thanks, so Bjorn given that you joined only recently, if you want you can also have your two minutes introduction presentation like you know already from the previous sessions. Thank you, would love to do that as in right now, Marina. Yeah, if you want feel free to go right now. All right, then I'll smash in and I don't know what deep specific topics you were in because I sneaked out of Christmas party to be here. So yes, let me quickly give you an update on who I am if you don't know me. So I'm Jan-Michaelsen, I'm from Germany. I am not a founder of LibreOffice but one of TDF. Back in the days I actually changed jobs for that. So from Oracle to Canonical. And I was on the board for quite a while for eight years and hoped to retire back then but given the recent developments I decided to come back and my hope is to bring with this LibreOffice and TDF especially again to back to focusing on bringing open source productivity forward. I'm unaffiliated in that I'm working in a company that does nothing with LibreOffice. I contributed to writer, Ubuntu packaging, extensions and the build system, lots of areas over the years. So from deep down also QA for example in the beginning so quite, I know quite a few areas of the project and I think LibreOffice, we need to clear vision again for the project like something that we can agree on and that is a specific set that we can reach so that we can actually say after a year or two yeah, we're working towards that and we have progress in that area. Because if we have too many things to do we will not have such a measurable impact in that we actually reach something in a specific area. As I said, I'm unaffiliated in my day job. I work in a company that does mostly e-commerce services or build e-commerce systems in the cloud and I'm a team lead of software engineers there. So that's what I do in my day job and you might have seen the new era manifesto that I and others work together on and published and the discussions and questions that were on board discussed were very encouraging. So I'd like to foster that more and get us into a constructive discussion on what to do with the project and the foundation. And yeah, as last thing I did quite a few events back in the days. For example, I organized hack fests quite a lot also or not only in Germany but also in other countries so all over the world. Yeah, so that's me. Thank you for giving me that extra time especially since we are already past the official date. Don't worry, so just as a reminder also for you that given that you joined only recently we are trying to keep the answers from the candidate always around the two minutes. I'm trying to check the time. So also for the next replies, please all of you all of you try to keep an eye on the time. I would prefer to not interrupt you but if you're going too long, I will. So you are informed. If that was long, no, sorry. No, it's okay. You went longer but yeah, I mean, it's fine. You played already your bonus. Let's say this way, okay. So going back to the questions. The previous one was around how to continue to attract those users. So maybe this is connected. I don't know if any one of you wants to pick this one and the question is, is it good enough that we do LibreOffice like it has always been done? What needs to change? Kor, go for it. Yeah, yeah. And please allow me to bridge it to Hossain's question that which is a bit lower in the chat but I don't know if it's by five centimeter or five meter but do we need to continue or to change and Hossain asks that there's unfinished features and improvements, et cetera that somehow are not touched anymore or only very slowly. And I think that's also a part of the situation we are in with limited resources and that only sometimes by big projects or big brands or big bumps there's new money to build new stuff or to finish old stuff that was new at that time. So apart from maybe focusing on certain developments that has been discussed before, I think it really is something that's a new board and must be aware that making choices in our really small community, it is important. And then focusing on new stuff or on a specific direction, I think that is likely to be more successful than trying to do work that already is being done by our wider ecosystem. And the more and the better indeed developers and development that we can bring in, that is valuable but still it means focusing. You can't, if there's work for let's say 50 developers and you have maybe with some good luck, the opportunity to hire three, five, whatever that you need to bring up to speed, we have to be very, very careful in making choices there. Thanks, Osvaldo? I guess we have several ways to innovate the project. Of course, we have to continue in some sense what we did till now because it's a very strong, efficient, powerful and very, very efficient way of doing, but we are stimulated by the advancement of technology, the artificial intelligence, we will change our life very, very soon. So I guess we can take a look and try to revive. Also maybe the software in the sense how the user interface, the user experience, Aigo is doing a tremendous job and very, very good job. However, I guess it's something we have a lot of space in order to improve things. Any other comment? Then let me move to these other questions. And in particular, so the question is over the next period the board will govern over what are the key challenges that all the nominees expect to face? We have another photo finish, I think was Paolo. Yeah, I mean, challenges, shall I mention the obvious one? Maybe not, but that is let's say a technical issue. I'm pretty sure that if, so specific steps and naturally following correctly and to the letter, so the advice that we are getting from a professional that know how to deal with these kind of things, then some of the major issues we see will be sort of, they still problematic, but we're gonna get through that. No problem with that. Probably the other biggest issue is actually to regain trust that is one of the things probably that unfortunately has been missing, but I don't wanna answer the question that Ayal put in the chat just now, but anyway that that is, we got to get some mechanism to actually show that what we are doing is actually correct that we go in the right direction we don't hide the things from the trustee, the country. We have to cooperate with the trustee and share the issue, the difficult decision as we have to take. Even if that means that individually the directors will need to reach out. After we sorted that, so after we recombine the community have a board that works correctly together in a friendly manner, I think then we can overcome any possible challenge. Sufi? Yes, about what said Paolo the obvious. The main challenge for me is to bring back to the board the enthusiasm and the energy we find in the community. I'm working with members each day in all time of the day and they are apart from one and two or two they are very enthusiastic and very full of energy and full of ideas and this is what we should bring back to the board and I hope that for this term, but the one after there will be a lot of members wanting to be in the board because it's a real way to exchange with the community and build a future for the product and the foundation. Thank you. Björn? I'll try to keep it short. I hope that the challenge would be that CDF or that GBAF and LibreOffice focus on again building open source productivity tools together and not talking about that or talking about people talking about that or talking about people talking about what people talking about and nobody actually doing the creation of open source productivity and development anymore in any form of contribution there. I think that's really the focus to bring back that thing and that I would kind of contradict Sufi there in that the board should be... If we reach that goal, the board would be so boring that nobody really would want to be in there because everyone wants to build LibreOffice and make it better and not be on the board to talk about making it better. Thanks. Thanks for that. And you are just giving me the assist for the next question. So the question is, how do the candidates plan to increase diversity in the companies and the individuals applying and being awarded tenders and make the flow into increasing the diversity and size of the ecosystem? Paolo? Yeah. I mean, that requires probably a more complex and longer answer, but the issue that actually we see generally we see because naturally there are some people who are actually experts in dealing with some specific code is that it is a big task. I mean, it's complicated to start and develop complex things for LibreOffice. So one of the things that naturally we should do is to kind of try to separate tenders in smaller chunks, try to simplify some of the tasks to attract, especially smaller organization or single developers for whatever it's possible. Once they start, then hopefully they're gonna be able to start addressing more complex issue. Then also thanks to Ilmari and the rest of the team naturally they should be able to say cooperate with others and actually deliver more complex code. This is one of the thing. Then creating naturally a level playing field for everyone in terms of tendering dice surely important. So everyone should feel like there is no preferences or there is nothing that could stop them actually in winning the specific tender without thinking that maybe some of the people have more let's say inside their knowledge than others. So that is one of the important task that at the moment we are dealing with with the property expert that we should follow to the letter. So we have a mechanism to ensure to everybody that their tenders is gonna be dealt with the same way as the others and there's gonna be no preferences or opportunity for other to actually win the tender that more than others. Thanks, Carl. Yeah, I think it's a very important topic that Paolo also responds to and it gives easily especially depending on how you phrase the challenge we focus, it gives easy, it can easily cause confusing and misunderstanding, uncertainty, doubt even among possible contributors and it is one of the... Recording has stopped. Recording has stopped. Oh, why not? It is one of the reading the pledge and I've referred to that twice in the previous town hall meetings. It's one of the items that I thought deserved some further explanation because information... Recording is on. Thank you. Information for tenders always has been openly available to all interested, et cetera. But there are clearly challenging that have to do with dynamics of organizations that have capable developers in house, et cetera. Anyhow, let's be careful to think that it's easily or that there's anything in the past boards that try to keep tendering closed. There are even clear examples in the past where developers, managers from ecosystem companies did help newcomers in the ecosystem to learn them developing for LibreOffice code, et cetera to make them able to work on tenders. That those examples failed have somehow to do with the big dynamics of venture capitalism picking out companies that are a tree to them, et cetera. But it's clear that the intention and the efforts that have always been put in by the ecosystem to grow the ecosystem. Oh, and that's also currently now when it's me and Thorsten who are working on a strategy to go growing the ecosystem. The goal is that for more than a year everyone is able to join whether you will be choosing in the board or directors or not, doesn't matter. You can always join. So the focus is there. Let's please work on it. And I placed a link in the chat where there's the answer in detail to some of these questions. Thank you. Andreas. So if you know TDF is a charitable organization and so one of the goals that we are why we are in this status is that we are providing education. And so I think it's one of the missions for the next term that we train people to work on the code. And so improve and widen the field of potential people or companies that can contribute to the ecosystem. So our goal is not only training users but also training others to work on code and other tasks of LibreOffice and the projects of the foundation. Got it. Yeah, that's completely true, Andreas. It's an education and more specifically also a training education and on source, it is very important. Simon was right. It's one of the important contributions that Ilmar is making around this most recent conference. Gabriel from the board has not only been organizing well with the team, obviously, the conference. He has also put a lot of effort with Hossain and others in getting more contact with the university. And we had a lot of LibreOffice hackfest over the past to train people. And I think it was a switch shark, Björn here, who did made a lot of contributions to that too. And maybe it's a bit dull that I say, yeah, we already did this. I'm not saying, we did it and it was not good enough. So why bother? But yes, these are ideas that we need to work on. Maybe we need to make choices because you can't do everything but we definitely need to do the things and make the choices to improve so that we can have more success in the future. So I'm all for it. Thanks. Now, switching a bit the topic. So I was asking about the transparency and the publication of the decisions from the board. I mean, it was also quoting part of the statutes. And the question around the topic is what do you believe the new board should do to rectify the previous board's flagrant, sorry, and continuing violation of these statutes? And what will you do individually if the board decides by majority role to keep some information confidential indefinitely? So here. Yes, I believe there is no reason to keep information hidden indefinitely. Maybe there are some topics that have already been in board. There are some topics that should be discussed privately but the outcome of the discussion should be public at any time. And I already gave you some example. Ask me anything sessions. We tell also in the page that we will translate the minutes of the meeting. We will publish them, it's obvious. And have sessions with the native language communities and there is a lot of ways to empower people to be actors instead of being in the wild without having any information. This is the best way to provide rumors and to spread rumors instead of real information. So being really open and sharing the information as much as we can and as much as we should is my way to view the things. Thanks. Next is Andreas. The important thing for the next board is that we publish minutes in time and also we have put in the pledge time from a week. We want to have after one week the minutes public and we want to provide them in different languages so that the local communities can see everything what's in the meeting and read it and get some knowledge about what's going on inside the board, what are the tasks, what are the decisions and I think it's very important that our community, our worldwide community is able to follow the board and to know if the board is doing its job properly in a good choice and what I miss is also that we have only short parts of the board meeting that is public and the most topics are hidden behind and not published in time if there is no reason for being private. That's very, very problematic for the community because it could not follow the process in the board. And know who is, if the board is doing its task really good or not. Paolo? Yeah, I don't know if anybody noticed. Yeah, I agree that there should be a lot more transparency or more information shared. Something you can probably notice is that there is a lot of information shared, something even publicly. Not sure there are some elements, for example some current legal discussions probably should be published once we actually finally sort out everything making sure that our legal counsel is satisfied with what the board did because naturally nobody in the board is a legal expert in many of the kind of legal areas that we have to deal with so naturally we have to rely on our legal counsel and other specialists to deal with certain things. So once that is clarified then part of it should be naturally made public and I agree, I also see internally that yeah, there is a lot of information unfortunately has not been published yet. Decisions, comments and other information and I think the new board should actually review certain situations of decision like we did for example in 2020 to review a decision realize that probably it was not the case to carry on with a specific decision and shelter it. This should happen as well with the new board because especially when you have a certain situation where there is a kind of group thinking forming so not looking at the various angles or the various issues of a specific situation sometimes the decision may not be completely right. Hopefully so with the new board with people with different ideas and different points of view to the problem we will review some of the decision we will check if they are so right for the time and so publish some of the information that needs to be published and continue to do so in a much more transparent way so hopefully there's going to be no need at all for a single director to just call out to the trustee and say well guys I think there is a big problem can you please contribute to that can you please make the board accountable for what they are doing because that is all I ask scrutiny we can make mistakes so if more eyes look at the situation is better and accountability that's it. Thanks. Any other comment on this topic? Oh, sorry I thought I had raised my hand. Okay sorry Kor. I might have clicked wrong but yeah I want to question to Andreas I know you regularly not always but try to join board meetings you will have noticed that one of the regular items there is getting improving the minuting which is somehow quite tedious in the current setting and it's not to say that I'm happy with the current state and we don't need to improve for our form but having them ready apparently improved for publishing in one week and then for multiple languages please bear in mind that you will need to hire so you need to spend donations I think that's the value we will go and I'm with Sophie that when she states that some of the information that lies behind discussions is especially needed to be that you can't open all the information right away especially when discussions are ongoing one of Paolo's favorite topics clearly from the decision that the board took that apparently is not fully what has been advised by the Council would we be willing and would it be fair and respectful to all let's say all parties involved to publish that kind of information to trustees so that a case by case can judge what the board did here actually makes sense because apparently there was no clear reason to do some significant etc. despite rumor spread if that is really the level of discussion that we need to get trust to the board I think it's more in the direction of what others already said in how proper board should be functioning and the fact that apparently there's one single director currently who I think finds it necessarily to open I'm finishing to open discussions I think it's something about the director thank you for letting me finish Marina I'm finished it's not only a matter of finishing in time but it's also a matter of trying to keep the discussion in the right way so please let's avoid to have flames for no reason 10 minutes before the end of the sessions please I reply to questions that Paolo puts to table and I think if Paolo accuses others I try to reply thank you so we have 10 minutes to go and I would like to move to a different question this time is a question to Simon from Hossein and he's asking details about that proposal to reorganize how the board works in relation with the team the question is what will be provided to the product manager to make the requirement in reality in proprietary software they should have money and many developers to make their plans in reality I'll answer that in the chat Marina you could do another question the answer is in the chat but people that will simply look at the recordings it's not a given that we'll have a chance to see what you replied so the answer to the question is in order to have TDF be able to direct the capabilities and quality of LibreOffice it needs to have staff product management in favour of empowering and trusting the staff to execute on a broad set of instructions from the board of directors go gather market requirements and community requests prioritise their spending against a budget to hire developers QA and others work closely with the community to do localization and documentation so not act in places where people are eager and capable of contributing and I believe that as we do that as we refactor and revise LibreOffice for the 21st century I believe we'll see an uptick in donations in just the same way as has happened in the Thunderbird community where they have quite remarkably seen millions of US dollars of donations come in as a result of them hiring staff and prioritising the making the product of what the community wants so that was what I answered to in the chat we need to direct the staff to do the job and then trust them to do it and give them the budget to hire the people who will go do that activity Thanks for that Sophie Directing the staff is complicated because you have people who are contracted and can be directed, they work for the foundation and not for the board The second thing I think is that encouraging people and empowering people letting them know what is happening and what the board has to do what is the daily job of the board and what they have to achieve and is a way to go for the board It's not something that should be closed and nobody understands they have a superpower because nobody understands what they are doing the more you share the more people understand and is educated to this politics and day to day and making we need to share that much more than by the past and this I repeat will make the task to be in the board interesting to the trustees That's it Simon I think you want to reply I do, so Sophie I agree with you about how important it is to engage with the community the community is the most important thing in the document foundation it was what we gathered together around the code right at the beginning of the project I think it's vital we do that I don't know who you think the staff work for the staff work for the trustees the board the job of hiring, supervising and paying them and as such the staff work for the trustees through the board when you say the staff work for the foundation that's what you mean then we're in violent agreement when I say I think we should be trusting the staff to go do that work I fully expect that we'll have a staff that will go consult with people work with the community that's the very essence of the skill set of the staff is to work with community in that way and so I'm not quite sure where your opposition to trusting the staff and empowering them to make the product better comes from that's obviously going to be in collaboration with our fantastic community that's obviously going to be with the design teams that are spread across the various countries the graphic design skills in Brazil that's obviously going to be with the ecosystem companies who will work on the same core code nothing I'm saying does away with all that fine work that is already happening and that you Sophia doing so much to enable but if we don't invest in LibreOffice then it will go stagnant there is only so much you can achieve by localization and design we need new features as well we need collaboration in the product we need it modernized to work with new ways of what new platforms and new ways of working it needs some kind of artificial intelligence interfaces and that will only happen if LibreOffice chooses to do it and for LibreOffice to choose to do that it's got to invest and hire people who are capable of doing it I think that this board election is so critical we need to see people elected who know how to get that done rather than just looking back to the past Marina Thanks Simon Next is Paolo Just a comment looking at the list of the people actually are candidates for the board to see quite a few that actually know what to do actually are in contact with the community and have all the experience actually to deal with things actually coming to the board while being also in the board and saying guys this is what's coming out from the community so interacting directly within the board not the board saying you should do something or directing people to do something we have the information the proposition we have the call for innovation or features and so on directly within the board that is the very nice things that I see in this group I think we are pretty much kind of sorted from that point of view then naturally empowering the team so helping them out with somebody that then is dedicated in evaluating and coordinating the various tasks that is something that probably will come so directly from the team and say well this is actually what we need this is what will allow us actually to move forward Simon If you'll tolerate one more answer Marina It's okay I feel free to go I've served on quite a few boards in the open source and free software community and I've seen quite a lot of different styles of working What I hear being described by quite a few of the candidates here is what I would call an activist board that is a board that has a very high workload that is responsible for the work of the charity rather than just for directing it and my experience is that organisations that have activist boards have a maximum amount of effectiveness they can have so one of the things that we have done at OSI over the last few years is we have converted it from being having an activist board into having a supervisory board with an executive staff and I'm very keen that TDF takes that direction as well and gives Florian the authority to get done what the foundation needs rather than having a board that feels that it has to constantly be second guessing interfering in staff actions and taking other steps which indicate that it is full of activists and I'm a little concerned by some of the things I hear people saying because they're talking about very high levels of work for the board in generating transparency I think transparency for a board is absolutely essential apart from in the places where it's illegal and that can only happen if the board's workload allows it to be transparent and so going forward into the future I'm very keen to see us have a supervisory board that works on behalf of the trustees projecting the vision of the foundation and then having an executive staff whose job is to work with and through the community to achieve that vision that's the direction we should go and I think the thing that's been harming TDF over the last few years has been a confusion in that area a desire and a practice of having too much to do something in the board and not enough empower the staff to achieve something and that's the big thing I would like to fix as a director if the community privileges me with a third term on the board, Marina So we are on the top of the hour Bjorn? Yeah, maybe shortly to that I think the focus stuff is really important and the community being free contributors that can walk away at any point in time you cannot tell the community to do something I think, Marina, you wrote something like that in the chat but I think actually it doesn't work like that you can just excite and propose a solution that everyone wants to work on and we have to still keep in mind that staff and community is still a bigger force that's just not that easy to direct and staff needs to help the board in finding the community to work on one thing that is delivering that thing and that one thing for all of us because it's great if ten people work on ten separate things but if they take each ten years it will take ten years to get these ten things actually to everyone so having these ten people work on one thing in one year and then on the next thing in the next year is what actually makes everyone happier with their outcome and again the community can do whatever they want so the real task is excite the community to work on these things together and bring things forward in direction thanks ok thanks well we are overtime so given that in the chat we still have a lot of questions first of all thanks everyone for joining the candidates, the community everyone that was engaged in the discussion and about the questions that are still missing in the chat I would like to collect all of them and send it to the candidates so at least even if it's not a live answer you can see what the candidates think about your questions in the forum and with that I want to thank you all of you again thanks for those three sessions live sessions with all the candidates thanks for joining thanks for being around and for being so passionate about our foundation so thanks again bye bye thanks bye


Shack Fu has been a running gag in the gaming community going on 20 years now. One big reason is the very forced attempt at the time, by mainstream corporate America to make Shaquille O'Neal the latest and greatest marketable superstar athlete, a successor of sorts to Michael Jordan since he did the whole retirement thing to go play baseball.  His movies were terrible, his rap album was seen as a joke, and his video game, uh, wasn't exactly well received either. I really think though that this is one of those instances where people just absolutely load the idea of this game more than the game itself, because it's actually not that bad. In fact it's not even half as bad as people like to say it is, it's just that the idea of Shaq Fu on the surface is so absurd and so forced, and it didn't help that there were a gazillion one on one fighting games out there anyway, so this just felt like one more hanger on trying to leech off something popular. Also believe me, this was up there with Bubsy in terms of how much this game was advertised, if you bought a gaming magazine there were at least two ads in it for Shaq Fu, so overexposure and subsequent burnout also played a big part in why this game is hated by so many. As for the game itself, the Super Nintendo Edition anyway, since that's what I have, it's fine. No, it's not worth going out of your way to play or track down, despite it going for an average of only 450 on eBay, and yeah there's a lot of fighting games I'd much rather play instead, but Shaq Fu is largely inoffensive, as long as you ignore the story, which features Shaq going into a dojo in Tokyo, getting sucked into another dimension and rescuing a boy from a mummy. Sure, okay, whatever. In Versus mode there's seven fighters to choose from, everyone from Shaq himself to the evil mummy, to a couple monsters, to a catwoman person thing, to a magician. The graphics, backgrounds, and sprite work here are actually very good, kudos to the game for making unique looking characters instead of doing the lazy sprite swaps. But all of the standard stuff is here, hard punch, quick punch, hard kick, quick kick, as well as move boost and taunt. I'll give Shaq Fu this munch, it's got some personality, it's a weird personality, but it does have one. Anyway, pressing back or forward while holding the move boost button allows your character to kind of teleport a short distance, and that'll be useful because jumping in this game is terrible. You either jump straight up or leap across the screen at a set distance. One thing I have to mention about the fighting gameplay is that it really feels like there's a delay between when you press a button, or a direction, and when it actually happens on screen.  You do kind of get used to it, and also bear in mind that the people that made games like Flashback and Out of This World also worked on Shaq Fu. If you think of this game in those terms, the way those games play, it's a little easier to digest. It really seems like they were going for something huge here the same way those games did, but it just didn't work out as a fighting game. Don't get me wrong, Shaq Fu is perfectly playable, it does feel awkward at first though. It's worth pointing out by the way that there is a blood code in this game. There's not a lot of blood, but it does unlock some mildly amusing finishers. So yeah, Shaq Fu isn't very good, but it's far, far from the worst game ever. I mean, how can anyone call it that when the SNES port of Pit Fighter is right there? There's also horrible crap like Street Combat and Rise of the Robots, so this isn't even in the top 3 worst fighting games on the Super Nintendo, but the legend lives on, for better or for worse, to the point that a sequel was crowdfunded and is being made right now. Boy, people sure do love their irony, don't they? There's also weird stuff like Shaq Fu.com, whose mission is to destroy all copies of this game. Okay, I'm not sure what that's supposed to accomplish, but whatever. Shaq Fu is ultimately a harmless, forgettable fighting game with a couple notable strengths, like the graphics and animation, and it's got a lot of weaknesses, but there's really not too much that's offensive here. But hey, if you simply can't get enough Shaq Fu, the Genesis has 5 more playable characters, a few extra stages, and a longer story mode, so there you go. If you're looking for the worst game on the Super Nintendo, Shaq Fu is not it. Go play Pit Fighter instead. Wait, no. What am I saying? Don't play Pit Fighter, it's horrible. Don't play Shaq Fu instead, it's better than Pit Fighter.


I've heard when it comes to venereal diseases the wealthy people are so wealthy they don't get crabs, they get lobsters. Do you have a preference to lobster versus crab? I like them both. Yeah, I don't eat them. Because if you get Alaskan king crab legs that are big mama jambas, they're pretty comparable. But I don't, I mentioned this before, I don't like eating things that look like they're alive self and so breaking open the crab leg is not something I enjoy doing. Oh, gotcha. I have had both and I love both. They're both delicious. They are delicious. I actually... I don't like doing that. I've had, just like I don't eat eating the wing off the bone. I don't like doing it. Oh, so it's the same kind of deal there. Same thing. I don't like doing it. So the lobster out of the tail would be easier than the crab out of the leg. No, the legs were pretty easy to get to meet at. No, I meant as far as you being able to mentally get beyond it. No, I think the legs are easier than the legs. The leg is easier. Yeah, I would say that with Alaskan king crab legs they're massive. They're massive. It's a great place down your Long Beach called Captain Jacks that makes... Captain Jake Sparrow. Incredible crab legs. Anyway, what are we doing today? We're doing a food video. Yeah! Oh, that worked out perfectly. This is a Chennai Amazing Street Food Tour. Great. It's a very interesting and mouthwatering tour of street food in parts of Chennai. They have covered some nice food joints. Maybe we'll help you... Yes. Help you in your food tour visits in Chennai.  Do you know what world we live in right now? We're not allowed in. Ever, literally two weeks after we got home from the last trip, which was in March of 2020, e-visas were no longer issued to Americans to come in and that's been that way ever since. So once India starts allowing us back in as tourists, we'll come back. It's not just India. No, no, no. It's not just India. It's all over the world. Here we go. We're in Chennai, India, and this place has the most incredible food. So we're taking you on a huge food hunt today. Are you British? We're hunting down Chennai's biggest street food and some local animals to bring you some mouthwatering Indian street food. This video is part of our huge India series and we're exploring some of Chennai's most dynamic spots to bring you the best food of the city. That looks like a Uriani with what? It has some kind of sour cream. Uriani is one of this amazing food. I'm Thomas. I'm Ashina. You're very tasty. We hope you're hungry. Let's eat. I am. I am hungry. Actually, I'm hungry, yeah. Remind me of the scene in Uriani. This part of the beach is lined with this restaurant so let's go and get some fried fish. Oh, that's going to be amazing. I don't like that. Look at that sizzle. Now I'm going to watch fried fish for dinner. Long John Silver's. Yeah, Long John Silver's. I've heard of that a long time. These stalls are brilliant. They're covering the beach. It's really beautiful down here. Cheers. All over the sand. You just sit on the sand, put in your order and your fish comes out. And the fish is all lined up in little cabinets in front of the stalls. And there's a pretty good variety. So we've ordered a mackerel which has been fried and some anchovies. Some little whole anchovies. Both of those have been covered in spice. They were already marinated in some spice. When they went on to the hot plate, they got covered in a dry spice mixture but were really covered in that dry spice mixture. And then a ton of oil was thrown on to the hot plates as well. Then they just been left to shallow fry in that oil. And then it's particularly the mackerel that was really lining up around the side of the hot plate. And you can see the little bird inches on the tail. So there was a lot of heat going on. I've never had a fish that looks like a fish. Anchovies first. And both of these come with some fresh red onion and a little sauce for the mackerel. I don't think they're just talking about the tail connecting. Put some lime on to these anchovies. Give it a little bit of a zing. That's probably the worst red onion. Like a grab leg or a pet. That's the worst red onion. Also I don't really like fish that much. So sorry. Wow. The fish was like the white grotto sauce. Of course I prefer the texture of the anchovies because all the bite is just not enough. I don't think I've ever had an anchovie, to be honest. So you get a little... You have to be careful. You've got to be careful with the anchovies. And the outside is a little bit crispy. It's all that spice. From the camp? No, it's not. I think sardines are better out of the camp than anchovies. Inside it's just super soft still. So it's really well cooked. Put some more. I think a big handful of these at once is the way down. It's delicious. A little bit spicy from the chilli. Just a little bit of the fresh, mild spice. The fresh sweetness, the unenjoyable sweet. The limes, if you'd get here, if you were the saladist. A little bit of the hoisin' bay snap. Wow, that was a good bay snap. You want to try the mackerel. You're going to rip off some of this mackerel. So it's a very oily fish. So it should be really moist flesh. Wow, that peeled off so easily. It's boiling hot. Put some onion on there. Squeeze a lime all over it. Let's get that done. This flesh feels really, really crispy. It's about eating fish with a bit of skin. So it's really crispy in the flesh. It's really juicy. Wow. Oh yeah. That was amazing. Really, really lovely. A little bit of crunchiness on that flesh. Oh, the skin. Can't get my fish and skin rough. And then the flesh is just super, super juicy. Onions again, a little bit of freshness and crunch. The spice mix is great. It's really gritty. It's a really thick spice mixture. So it's got a good bit of chilli kick. But it also adds texture, which I really like. It's adding a bit of crunch to the fish. Now I'm loving that mackerel. This is giving it the best. So good. Another big handful there. A little bit oily. Put some onion. Oh man. The taste of those and the location. Put that together. The sound of the ocean behind you. The waves crashing on the beach. Being in the sand. That flavour just... Nobody ever sees flavour in us. The good spice. This is the perfect, perfect combo. What cool thing do you have to do in general is sit on the beach and eat this fresh fish, throw it on the hot plate. It's a huge queue. So let's go and do it on the line and grab our passers-by. Whoa. Up there at Eatery there's a separate line for women so I was able to buy passers whole queue and just cut my order through. So I've got my ticket. I'm going to grab a plate of banana leaf. Why? Just to be nice. Big looking banana leaf. How good does this thing look? It looks amazing. And it's just piles of rice as you can see. And then huge bits of juicy looking banana leaf. There's also some tomato in there and a ton of spices. I would eat that. But it's huge. And they're loading up banana leaves. This is Don Beriani. So the meat is marinated and then cooked together with the rice over a slow heat. I have got to get it to the stand. So that's good. Look. I've got a beautiful dextra. And it's just a really beautiful fragrance. I'm going to show you just how tender this meat is. So look, I'm barely prodding it and it's just falling apart. It's coming clean off the bone. Look at that. Clean off the bone. Wow. Definitely think they're pretty. Tomato, tomato. So good. A beautiful. Like in bucket. I've got that great. Oh, man. Oh, man. The curd is like creamy and sort of softened the flavor. It sort of drowns out that spice. That's good. It's kind of destroying this flavor of Beriani. And I can't tell you how much it is. So I mean it, about half of it and it's not starchy. The rice is really light in texture and the meat off the meat. Check out this piece here.  I'm just going to pull it apart. Look at these bones. They just fly out of it. Look at these bones. Okay.  The rice is a little bit of bite still and the flavor of all those spices and this is what we were eating. Most people seem to be taking the Beriani area where it's impossible but we're eating it and it's just this kind of room we're all cleaning up against the counter and just chopping down this Beriani area. Ooh. And check out the crowd over here. It's going in our next snack. Next stop is this restaurant for some South Indian snacks. We at South Indian snacks in Delhi. South Indian breakfast in Delhi. That makes sense, right? I did it. It's a South Indian restaurant. They serve their food in the traditional way. It's a banana leaf. So they dump the banana leaf on your table and then lay it up really rapidly. They just come flying at you and dump all the chuckings on your plate. This makes me miss eating it in there. The thing we came here to eat was gorgeous. It's a great meal. We decided to get a raw dosa which is this humongous looking dosa filled with chilies. Underneath there there is an idly hiding just a little raw dosa to see. What? That was rude. Okay. We just ended. Felt like I just got slapped virtually. I guess it went to breakfast as opposed to street food. And here's a really nice idly. I've made idly. How did it turn out? It turned out nice. So I have an idly stand. So it's a specific stand for cooking the idly. Just idly. It's an entire thing that you put because you steam them. I literally have a contraption. It's literally just for idlies. And it takes up so much room. But yeah, they're delicious. What I was going to say was you want to be impressed. You should watch Andrani and probably any Bengali eat fish. Because the way she can navigate through and eat the meat and leave the bones behind is a work of art. It's a work of art. I've eaten fish with her and I look down and she's still all intact. So you've never eaten a fish with the head on, the fins? I absolutely wouldn't. It seems gross to me. That's how they came out of the water. But it's the same thing with the lobster and whatever. Have you ever been fishing and killed fish and then eaten the fish you killed? I didn't specifically cook the fish myself.  They did it on the boat. When I was a child in Hawaii I caught a big ol' makimahi about that big. So you wouldn't eat fish head? I'm so sorry. I don't like fish. Although I have had some good fish because in my older age I will try almost anything. Because I'm like I don't think I'm that picky but there's a few things. You're definitely not a picky eater. The taste of stuff that is fishy is the texture. But if a fish tastes fishy I could vomit. So do you like oysters? I think I had one of my dad's who had a fancy restaurant when I was in South Carolina a month ago. It was good. That was probably the first time I ever had an oyster. You would like textured though. It's like a snot ball. It's a little slimy. But if you get really good oysters because there's a lot of different oysters around. The more expensive or fresher a fish is the better it is. And the less fishy it will taste. I didn't like sushi but I've gone to sushi restaurants with my family and they all love sushi. And for the most part there's still some fish on sushi that I can taste it even though they can't. It literally makes you want to vomit. That flavor and then artificial cherry flavors repulsing. In the drinks they have waxy candied cherries. I had to test those. I think they're nasty. I feel like I'm eating something 100% artificial never should have occurred but fish man. Of those two things as much as I like mutton biryani if I had to choose between those two if we were there I'd be at the beach. I know you'd be at the biryani, I'd be over at the beach. Mutton biryani on the beach but not the biryani from the film biryani. Anytime I see somebody making biryani like out in the open I'm like I want to see more I want to see more of that actress and she was so good. She was so good. Let us know what are the food videos we react to and wherever we come we're coming to South India so probably Chennai will be in that stop. It's a massive town Thanks for eating there. Let us know what we should eat down below.