Hi, I'm putting my name on the election list at the last minute :-) == About Me == I've used Linux since the mid '90s (although, truth be told, I mostly stuck with FreeBSD and BeOS on my desktops until the 2.4 kernel was released). I've worked for SUSE/Novell since 2005, when Novell bought Immunix, the company I worked for, and folded us all into the SUSE group. A few years after that, I moved to Nuremberg to work on SUSE Studio. My involvement in openSUSE has mostly been behind the scenes - I was a mentor in our Google Summer of Code participation in 2011, an admin for our Google Code-In participation that year, and an admin for GSoC in 2012. I wrote the "imagewriter" program that a lot of people use to write live openSUSE images to USB keys[1], and I also wrote the Android app for viewing the openSUSE Conference and Summit schedules this year[2]. == Goals on the Board == I think that one of the biggest opportunities openSUSE is missing right now is a program to connect interested people (students or not) with mentors from our large pool of skilled community members. I don't mean a schedule-based program like the Google Summer of Code, but a year-round way to connect someone who is interested in working on a project that uses Technology Y with someone who knows Technology Y and would be happy to spend an hour a week as a mentor. Or someone who wants to package some obscure application, or who wants to help translate software but doesn't know how to start, etc. That's something that has been kicked around as an idea for the last few years, and it's certainly something that could be put in place by people who are *not* board members, but perhaps if it were a board initiative, it could get better traction. == Summary == If you vote me on the board, I think I'd be a good choice. But if you elect one of the other candidates on the list, I think they'd be a good choice as well. It's a unique democratic situation - you can literally choose a name at random from the list of candidates, and your choice will be a good one. Have fun, Matt [1] - http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick#Install_ImageWriter [2] - https://github.com/mbarringer/suseconferenceclient -- Matt Barringer, Software Engineer SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, DE GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)