Your views on the fellowship interviews

[Sam Tuke]

The new series of fellowship interviews[1] has now been going for several
months. Chris Woolfrey (interviewer) and I (editor) would appreciate any
comments and general feedback on the interviews published thus far, or views
on their direction in future.

Please reply before Wednesday 09.03.11.

Please share your views on any or all of the following:

1. Do you read the interviews regularly?
2. Do you find them interesting or informative?
3. Do you find them entertaining?
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community? Should
they?
5. Do you believe that they focus strongly enough on FS?
6. Do you believe that they focus too much on FS?
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more effectively
promoted?
8. Do you have any strong recommendations for future candidates?
9. Any other comments?

Thanks,

Sam.

British Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe

1. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/
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[Matthias Kirschner]

Post by Sam Tuke
1. Do you read the interviews regularly?

Yes.

Post by Sam Tuke
2. Do you find them interesting or informative?

Yes.

Post by Sam Tuke
3. Do you find them entertaining?

Mostly no. But I do not read them because I want to entertain myself.

Post by Sam Tuke
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community? Should
they?

I think they are interesting for people in the Free Software movement,
and sometimes for people from other Free culture movements. In my
opinion the main focus on the Free Software movement is good.

Post by Sam Tuke
5. Do you believe that they focus strongly enough on FS?

Yes.

Post by Sam Tuke
6. Do you believe that they focus too much on FS?

No.

Post by Sam Tuke
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more
effectively promoted?

When we adept the Fellowship pages to the new fsfe.org design we should
show pictures of interviewed Fellows with a short text linking to the
interviews. They could rotate.

Also a better navigation between interviews (e.g. instead of dates
candidate names) would help.

Regards,
Matthias

[Andreas Tolf Tolfsen]

Post by Sam Tuke
1. Do you read the interviews regularly?

Yes.

Post by Sam Tuke
2. Do you find them interesting or informative?

Absolutely.

Post by Sam Tuke
3. Do you find them entertaining?

Not very much, no.

Post by Sam Tuke
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community?
Should they?

I think they have a two-fold objective: The first to ?show the people
behind the software?, and second to bind the community together. It's
generally a nice thing to feel you know the person, and it's also a nice
way for us to promote the Fellowship and free software.

Post by Sam Tuke
5. Do you believe that they focus strongly enough on FS?

Current level is fine.

Post by Sam Tuke
6. Do you believe that they focus too much on FS?

Ditto.

Post by Sam Tuke
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more
effectively promoted?

We should explore getting the Atom feeds included on more planets.
Maybe GNOME, KDE, FSF, &c.

Post by Sam Tuke
8. Do you have any strong recommendations for future candidates?

Maybe we could do more personal questions too? Like, what editor do you
use? Are you using exclusively free software to do your work? (If so,
how does that work out for you?) Are you missing any free software
programs? What in the free software community needs focus? Which OS
are you using, why?

Post by Sam Tuke
9. Any other comments?

I think you've done a great job on the interviews so far, and I hope you
are planning to continue. It might also be worth looking into the web
server logs of what posts are the more popular, what terms are searched
for the most, &c. That might give you a better idea of what people
enjoy more.

[Karsten Gerloff]

Hi Sam,

thanks for the survey!

Post by Sam Tuke
The new series of fellowship interviews[1] has now been going for several
months. Chris Woolfrey (interviewer) and I (editor) would appreciate any
comments and general feedback on the interviews published thus far, or views
on their direction in future.
Please reply before Wednesday 09.03.11.
1. Do you read the interviews regularly?

yes

Post by Sam Tuke
2. Do you find them interesting or informative?

yes, very

Post by Sam Tuke
3. Do you find them entertaining?

hm. More informative than entertaining, but that's very ok -- when
I read those interviews, I usually want to be informed, not
entertained.

Post by Sam Tuke
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community? Should
they?

The interviews were conceived to show that there are real people
behind the Fellowship. So while having them appeal to people
outside the Free Software community would be nice, it's not
essential. They should be accessible to those who are interested,
but who haven't yet been part of the community for a long time.

Post by Sam Tuke
5. Do you believe that they focus strongly enough on FS?

Yes. An important effect of the Fellowship interviews is to show
that Free Software is everywhere, that it's a common thread
throughout technology. And the Fellowship interviews do an
excellent job of showing that.

Post by Sam Tuke
6. Do you believe that they focus too much on FS?

see above

Post by Sam Tuke
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more effectively
promoted?

Good question :-)

We're already doing many of the obvious things.

How about trying to get them syndicated with some larger
publication, like computerweekly.co.uk?

Post by Sam Tuke
8. Do you have any strong recommendations for future candidates?

Not off the top of my head, but I'll think about it.

@everyone: If you have an idea for someone who should be
interviewed, please let Chris and Sam know.

Post by Sam Tuke
9. Any other comments?

keep up the good work!



Best regards,
Karsten
--
Karsten Gerloff [ ] <gerloff at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe [ ][ ][ ] [http://fsfe.org]
President | | [phone]
Your donation powers our work! [http://fsfe.org/donate/]

Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. is a German Verein registered
at the Registergericht Hamburg (VR 17030).


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[Nicolas JEAN]

Post by Sam Tuke
1. Do you read the interviews regularly?

Try to, am kinda late these days.

Post by Sam Tuke
2. Do you find them interesting or informative?

Abzolutely.

Post by Sam Tuke
3. Do you find them entertaining?

Inspiring would rather be the adjective I'd use.

Post by Sam Tuke
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community? Should
they?

They must not, they could, and as others said, it should not prevent you
from sleeping if they don't.

Post by Sam Tuke
5. Do you believe that they focus strongly enough on FS?

Yep.

Post by Sam Tuke
6. Do you believe that they focus too much on FS?

I just can't get enough.

Post by Sam Tuke
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more effectively
promoted?

Propose the interviewee to translate the interview in his/her language,
if that's not English, so that we can reach people in his/her country.
I'm always pleased to meet new countrymen activists!
It's something of a job, but maybe it could work out. In case it
actually gets translated, don't forget to translate (~0 work) the news item.

Post by Sam Tuke
8. Do you have any strong recommendations for future candidates?

Not yet.

Post by Sam Tuke
9. Any other comments?

You're doing a great and necessary job!

Cheers,
Nico
--
Nicolas JEAN - Intern, Web coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfe.org)
Is Free Software important to you? Join us! (http://fsfe.org/join)
Document Freedom Day 2011! http://documentfreedom.org


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[Ciarán O'Riordan]

I read them sometimes.

What I find interesting is reading about how people with other focusses
perceive free software.

I like when interviewees talk about details and real world examples. The
Leena Simon interview is a good example, it was interesting to read about
free software views within the Pirate Party and within Freedom not Fear.

I think questions should to focus on the interviewee's direct experience and
not get too general.

And I like getting an overview of the state of the art in a domain. (see
answer to Q8)

Post by Sam Tuke
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more effectively
promoted?

It would be good to have a page with the list of interviews. With the
current page, you have to scroll through the text of all the interviews to
see the titles. It would be good to have a list of links

* Fellowship interview with Massimo Babieri
* Fellowship interview with Anne ?stergaard
* Fellowship interview with Alexander Kahl
* ...

Also, most interviews are with people I don't know, so the title is
"Fellowship interview with [name of someone you don't know]". It's hard to
guess if the interview will be interesting. Maybe a better format would be:

* Interview: Massimo Babieri on free music
* Interview: Anne ?stergaard on government software usage

And my above suggestion for a page with a list of links would be even better as:

* [title]
Massimo is an IT manager and musician, publishing free music...

* [title]
Anne has been involved in government lobbying on free software issues...

* [title]
...

Then it would be easier to see which interviews are of interest to me.

Post by Sam Tuke
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community? Should
they?

I think they probably don't, and probably shouldn't. I don't have a strong
opinion on it but I think the target audience should be Fellows.

Post by Sam Tuke
8. Do you have any strong recommendations for future candidates?

Maybe a good way to choose interviewees would be to first choose a domain,
such as something that's in the news, and then try to find someone who's
active in that domain.

For example, there's lots of free software for doing animations, but it's
difficult for a newcomer to know what the best tools are - which packages
are actively maintained, which have recently added cool features, etc. An
interview with someone who's done film production with free software could
cover this.

LWN's Grumpy Editor's Guide to [Whatever topic] could be a good style guide,
but it could be improved by getting that type of info from someone who's
directly involved in that domain. (And in most cases, a power user would be
more interesting than a developer.)

I think domains are more important than specific packages, but if there's a
package/project with a large impact and they're making an explicit effort to
focus on freedom, then an interview could be worthwhile. I don't mean KDE
5.0 (they've been doing freedom for yonks, it's not news), but Libre Office
might qualify (broad impact, and a freedom and community focus is new for
that code).

[Federico Bruni]

Post by Sam Tuke
Please reply before Wednesday 09.03.11.

sorry, I'm late... but I want to give my feedback :-)

Post by Sam Tuke
1. Do you read the interviews regularly?

Yes, until you announced it in this mailing list.
October 2010 was the last time:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2010-October/008897.html

Please announce every new interview in this mailing list!

Post by Sam Tuke
2. Do you find them interesting or informative?

Yes, definitely.

Post by Sam Tuke
4. Do you think they appeal to people outside of the FS community? Should
they?

No and I think they don't have to.
Well, if it happens, the better.

Post by Sam Tuke
7. How could the interviews be brought to new audiences / be more effectively
promoted?

You could create also some video interviews, for example during Free
Software conferences. 3 videos per year would be fine. It's not an hard
job and you may reach a wider audience.

Post by Sam Tuke
8. Do you have any strong recommendations for future candidates?

Not now.
If I have it, I'll let you know.

Post by Sam Tuke
9. Any other comments?

Thanks for your work!