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Meeting talk:2012 AGM/Candidates/Kerry Raymond

Statement about me

Educationally, I am a Bachelor of Science Honours (Computer Science) and a PhD (Computer Science). I also have a postgraduate diploma in Personal Financial Planning. More relevant to WMAU, I have completed and passed the Company Directors Course run by the Australian Institute of Company Directors, which covers a range of strategic, financial and legal issues, see here for the full list of what it covered. As a result, I am a Graduate Member of the Australian Institute for Company Directors. I have served as a director on a board for the past 10 years (I am on the Council of the Women's College of the University of Queensland).

Professionally, I am a Professor of Computer Science at Queensland University of Technology, where my main duties are in research management (large collaborative projects, grant writing/reviewing, e-research, mentoring). I will be retiring (semi-retiring) at the end of 2012, giving me more free time for WMAU activities than I have had previously. Earlier in my career, I spent many years involved in international standardisation, which gave me the skills to work effectively and achieve completion on large projects involving people from many countries and many organisations. I have also recently been involved in a lot of discussions with the national and state GLAMs, so I have some good insights and good contacts into that sector. Naturally I have served on many committees in the university sector (too many!).

Wikipedianly, I am best described as an "ordinary editor", mostly working on Australian content (with particularly interest in Brisbane local history). I am not an admin or anything like that. However, I think this is perhaps a positive as it is the vast community of Australian "ordinary editors" that WMAU needs to engage if we want to achieve any large scale projects here in Australia. I also actively contribute through my personal web site to aggregating and providing information for use by family historians(content that is generally not suitable for Wikipedia for reasons of lack of notability).

Why am I standing for this position as "general member"? I feel I have a range of skills (governance, strategic, financial, establishing and running large collaborative projects) that is perhaps lacking in the committee's skill set, and from later this year, I feel I will have more time available to make a contribution in this way.

Happy to take your questions! Kerry Raymond 21:49, 15 November 2012 (EST)

Questions

Hi Kerry, I see you have yet to post a statement given that it is now after 1800 AEDT and the voting opens tomorrow I have a few Questions?

  1. What skills can you bring to the committee?
  2. Was there actions of the current committees that caused you concerns?
  3. what activities do think WMAU should be focusing on in the coming year?
  4. without naming or identifying the candidate is there any one who you concerns about working with to further the goals of WMAU?


Thanks Gideon Gnangarra 19:58, 15 November 2012 (EST)

Thanks for your questions, Gideon.

1. Skills. Please see my statement above (which was not available when the question was written).

2. I would like to be elected on my own merits, rather than by being critical of others. However, the changing of the funding basis for the chapter and conflict of interest issues in this and other chapters have caused me some concern. I fear if we don't get our house in "squeaky clean" order, we are at risk of losing funding leaving us unable to pursue our mission in relation to open knowledge for and about Australia.

3. I think we need to work on finding scalable ways to tackle projects drawing on a large base of volunteers (not necessarily those who are WMAU members). We seem to find ourselves flying the "usual suspects" all over the country because we can't draw effectively on local volunteers. I also think we need to have processes in relation to proposals that either decide to go ahead and do it or definitely decide not to; a lot of proposals seem to linger around and get tinkered with but never reach a conclusion. I think we also need to communicate better with the WMAU membership and the broader "friends of WMAU" (as we might call them). For example, I learned of some of big dollar value items in the 2013 plan only by reading the funding request to WMF, such things should not come as a surprise. This should not be interpreted as a criticism of the current committee; it takes a lot of time and effort to run things well and our committee members do not have huge amounts of spare time (after work and family commitments are attended to).

4. I have had to work with many people not of my choosing over the years in international standardisation and large collaborative projects. I have done a lot of professional development with titles like "Dealing with Difficult People", "Emotional Intelligence" etc. If emotions are running high, I try to stay focused on the substantive issues and ignore the barbs. There is a saying "you can't always control what you think but you can control what you say"; I try to remember this (but hey I am only human too). Kerry Raymond 21:49, 15 November 2012 (EST)