Hi, First I'd like to thank Henne for nominating me and thus encouraging me to run for a position on the openSUSE Board. Having thought about this for a few days I have decided to take the plunge and run for one of the 2 openSUSE board positions up for election. Below you can find a few words about me as an introduction. There is some campaign time left and thus you will hear more about me and the other candidates as we approach the elections. As I understand it there will also be interviews with all candidates that will appear on news.o.o in the next phase of the election cycle. My name is Robert Schweikert and I am a user of openSUSE, a contributor to the project, and a package maintainer. My focus of contributions varies based on my perception of "current topics" and longer standing issues and needs. Currently I am focusing on our package maintainer-ship model, see my talks at oSC12 [1], [2]. I believe if we can address these issues we can avoid future scheduling snafus. In the past I have contributed to various governance discussions such as membership, guiding principals and other topics. I also played a small role in putting the openSUSE Summit program together for our first event in North America. As can easily be concluded from my e-mail address, I work for SUSE. Within SUSE I work in the ISV Engineering team focusing on SUSE's relationship with IBM at the Software level. I also help other ISVs with issues they may have with their applications on SUSE. When IBM and ISVs do not fill up my calendar I contribute to KIWI [3] and actively participate in the LSB (Linux Standard Base) Working group [4]. On a more personal note, I live with my wife and two teenage children in Massachusetts, USA, about 45 minutes outside of Boston. Whenever I get a chance I ride the back roads of New England (as the North Eastern part of the US is commonly known) on my Harley and once a year I take a longer trip on the bike for a week or so to get away and let the Grey matter between the ears rest/reset. If elected to the Board I will try to encourage all board members to take a bit more of an active role as a board. As a member of the community I often have the feeling that the board is this hidden amorphous entity that just drifts along in the flow of the project. I'd like to see this change and have the board take on a more active role in the community to guide the project, actively solicit involvement and leadership in areas where action is needed. For example I think it would be great if we as a community can stand up a mentor ship program. I believe active leadership by the board would have a major positive impact on such an initiative. I also believe in setting people up for success and think the board can also help in this area. While collectively we have done a great job in "making it easy" to contribute we have also, IMHO, created many areas where "paralysis by choice" exists and/or it is "hard" to contribute because "it is so easy" or there is no guidance. I believe the board should take an active look at those areas of the project and actively solicit ideas and action to address the issues. Thanks for your attention, let the campaigning begin ;) Later, Robert [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5HFNVEVLSc&list=UUXPcicLBLCOpPEk-hC6yyzQ&index=27&feature=plcp [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqWwxXDu_Y&list=UUXPcicLBLCOpPEk-hC6yyzQ&index=35&feature=plcp [3] http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:KIWI [4] https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/en/LSB -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org