In May, I was elected the first Fellowship representative. In this
function I attended FSFE’s general assembly (GA) in Miraflores de la
Sierra and would now like to give you some insights in what happened
there.
The first and probably most important point is personnel changes. This
time there were unusually many. A whole new executive team was formed
that will give FSFE a new face.
After careful deliberations, the General Assembly has elected
Karsten Gerloff as President,
Fernanda Weiden as Vice-President,
Reinhard Müller as Financial Officer and
Christian Holz as Executive Director.
The former president and founder Georg Greve as well as the former
vice-president Pablo Machón will stay in FSFE as volunteers. Matthias
Kirschner, a long time volunteer will now be employed as Fellowship
coordinator. He will also work as the coordinator of the German team.
I would like to take the chance to congratulate the new team and to wish
them a lot of success in their new jobs. I am very confident that they
will master the challenges that lie ahead of them and that they will
bring FSFE and Free Software forward a great deal.
In my opinion, the entire GA weekend was awesome and a great experience.
I learned so much about FSFE and about how an NGO works. It was probably
better than every soft-skill seminar and it was free ;)
But on another note, I was surprised how much influence I had on the
decisions that were made. The GA is the highest decision making body of
FSFE and always aims to find a consensus. This sometimes makes the
decision making process difficult and discussion intensive, but also
ensures that all concerns and problems are addressed. There is also no
discrimination of GA members. My concerns and proposals were not treated
differently from the ones of any other member. This way I had
considerable influence on all the decisions made and was able to check
if the executive team does and will do its job properly.
I can only recommend to every Fellow to run for the second GA seat next
year. This is a great chance to directly influence the direction FSFE is
taking and to make sure that its resources are put to the best possible use.
There is also a press release introducing the new team.
Thanks a lot lot for reading all this ;)
Torsten
Right after the GA there was no time for me to relax. The LinuxTag 2009 in Berlin started right after it. As every year FSFE was present with an own booth and answered many questions by interested visitors. Some people even became Fellows right at the booth and some that were already fellows expressed their desire to organize fellowship meetings in their home town. The LinuxTag lasted four days and after every day was over there were tons of social events. The picture on the right shows the BBQ of Linux Works that was quite some fun.
More LinuxTag coverage is available at Matthias’ and Edgar’s blog. Like any other event, the LinuxTag had to end as well. What was left for us was to pack our booth and carry it through Berlin. This was quite exhausting but also fun. See you next year!
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