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[Linux-aus] Nominations and their spiels for the LA election
Hi all,
even though I urge everyone to log into the LA membership page to pore over
the details of the election and also to get ready to vote, I wanted to post
the voting dates, the nominations and their spiels to the public mailing
list for the communities' information.
Dates
=====
Nominations 01/12/2006 00:00 to 31/12/2006 23:59
Advertise Candidates 01/01/2007 00:00
Voting 09/01/2007 00:00 to 16/01/2007 17:30
Results 16/01/2007 17:31 at the AGM
Description of positions
========================
President (1)
Responsible for ensuring the smooth running of LA according to the LA
vision. The President often has to speak on behalf of LA to the press, other
organisations, and the community. The President effectively need to keep the
committee and other individuals enthused and progressive in their work for LA
and the wider community.
Vice-President (1)
The Vice President supports the President in all Presidential
responsibilities, as well as taking over in these duties when the President is
unable.
Secretary (1)
The Secretary must ensure all member details are kept up to date and
accessible. The Secretary also takes the minutes and ensures that the minutes
are accessible. The Secretary is responsible for any necessary correspondence
between the members and committee.
Treasurer (1)
The Treasurer's job is to maintain smooth running of the organisation from
an accounting point of view. All monies are to be collected and payments
authorised. Correct books need to be kept showing the financial affairs of the
organisation. The treasurer typically also has to work closely with the LCA
(http://linux.conf.au) team to ensure that LCA is properly funded by LA.
See Section 17 of the Constitution for full details: http://linux.org.au/about/constitution
Ordinary Committee Members (3)
The Ordinary Committee Members help with the running of the organisation,
help push initiatives that fall into the scope of the LA vision, and generally
keep some sanity in the organisation.
Nominations
===========
Please note, these nominations are not the final candidates, as some people did
not accept their nominations, but for the record, they are all here. I have
marked all actual candidates with a CCC below.
President
---------
CCC * Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au) was nominated by:
o Stewart Smith (stewart@linux.org.au)
It would be good to see Jon continue in his role as President
o Andrew Donnellan` (ajdlinux@gmail.com)
Jonathan has done a good job in his
current role as LA president and I
would like to see him reelected this
year.
o Donna Benjamin (donna@mel8ourne.org)
Yep - jon should continue in the top job. I don't see his energy waning,
nor his steady leadership needing refreshment. jon for President!
* James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com) was nominated by:
o Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au)
I'm seconding the nomination for James as President even though I'm
intending to run for that position myself because I'm sure that if
elected he would do an excellent job. He's been a one-man army over
the last 12 months.
o Andrew Swinn (andrew@swinndesign.com)
A prime example of someone willing to make an impact on the world with
Linux and FOSS.
Vice-President
--------------
Note: Jon had accepted his VP nomination, however as he is running uncontested
for P, he will automatically be removed from the VP option for the voting
process.
* Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au) was nominated by:
o Stewart Smith (stewart@linux.org.au)
If not P then VP!
o James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com)
On the outside (and I do consider it an outside chance) chance that I
actually do win the Presidential spot, I really feel that Jon's
experience and knowledge should not be lost to the committee.
Hence I am nominating him for the position of Vice President.
CCC * James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com) was nominated by:
o Stewart Smith (stewart@linux.org.au)
I think James' enthusiasm for the community, LA - especially the openness
and relevance of the organisation would be valuable in such a role where
he has the ability to get things done.
o Stephen Walsh (steve@nerdvana.org.au)
James' drive and energy would be a boon to this position. Having the two
J's in the hot seats is a Force to be reckoned with.
o Donna Benjamin (donna@mel8ourne.org)
James for VP!! I think that jon and james would make a good pair at the
helm of LA - however I reckon jon has held steady as president over the
past year and should continue on as president. However james vision and
energy deserves the recognition and authority that an office bearer
brings - and so I nominate him for VP.
CCC * Pia Waugh (greebo@pipka.org) (Accept Nomination) was nominated by:
o Anthony Towns (aj@azure.humbug.org.au)
Pia's passion and pizzazz produce a potent prepapration for a proactive
and purposeful posse. Pia is proficient at public promotion and persuading
the priviliged, without being either pliant or prone to prevarication.
My proposal: purloin Pia, pint-sized prodigy and PC poster-girl, as
perennial VP!
o Julien Goodwin (jgoodwin@studio442.com.au)
Hope to see Pia continue her excellent work with LA.
o Donna Benjamin (donna@mel8ourne.org)
Linux Australia needs Pia's energy. She should continue in her role as
Vice President. Pia's belief in the pillars of Open bring focus to her
work for the FOSS community. I am pleased to nominate her for the
position of VP.
Secretary
---------
CCC * Anthony Towns (aj@azure.humbug.org.au) was nominated by:
o Stephen Walsh (steve@nerdvana.org.au)
AJ performance over the last year has shown he is the "man for the job",
and I think LA would benefit from his continued placement in this role.
o James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com)
aj, has been a good secretary for LA this past year and I believe he
should continue in the role.
Treasurer
---------
CCC * Terry Dawson (terry@linux.org.au) was nominated by:
o Stewart Smith (stewart@linux.org.au)
It would be good to see Terry continue in his role as Treasurer - ever
improving the organisation of LA's finances. I feel it is important to
have continuity in this role.
o James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com)
Terry has done an excellent job this year of getting his head around the
LA finances. I think he should continue in the position.
o Janet Hawtin (lucychili@gmail.com)
Ordinary Committee Members (3)
------------------------------
* Stewart Smith (stewart@linux.org.au) was nominated by:
o Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au)
Stewart's long commitment to LA has helped make it the org it is today.
* Pia Waugh (greebo@pipka.org) (Accept Nomination) was nominated by:
o Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au)
Alternative allotment in case AJ's alliterative allusions to Pia's
acuity alas affords not the ammunition for more authoritative appointment.
o Silvia Pfeiffer (silvia@silvia-pfeiffer.de)
Pia is a a very well connected and loud voice for the Australian Linux
community. Without Pia, LA would not be what it is. Through her, LA is
part of an international network of Linux organisations, a part that has
taken us out of isolation. Pia is the hear and soul of Linux in Australia.
* Michael Davies (michael@msdavies.net) was nominated by:
o Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au)
Past Committee member, Mr LCA2004, and a well-balanced and respected
member of the FOSS community: what more could we ask for?
CCC * James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com) was nominated by:
o Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au)
I'd hate to lose James' presence on the Committee just through failing
to make either P or VP, so this is a backup/insurance nomination.
o Karin Purser (fireflysummer@exemail.com.au)
I see the true commitment that James has for the FOSS community. His
passion and enthusiasm has been displayed clearly in the past year. I'm
sure he will show the same, if not more, if elected for the year to come.
CCC * Karin Purser (fireflysummer@exemail.com.au) was nominated by:
o Stephen Walsh (steve@nerdvana.org.au)
Karin's work on the Podcasts and radio programmes shows her commitment
to getting FOSS out there and known, a strength and experience LA should
harness and use before someone else does.
o Scott Sinclair (scott-linuxau@sbs.id.au)
Karin has played a big role, with James, to get LUGs and the like to
co-operate with each other, and would as such be an asset to the
committee as a OCM.
CCC * Stephen Walsh (steve@nerdvana.org.au) was nominated by:
o Craige McWhirter (craige@mcwhirter.com.au)
I'm seconding Steve for his depth of experience in the Free Software world,
combined with his enthusiasm, work ethic and willingness to go to great
lengths to make the LA presence at trade shows as successful as possible.
o James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com)
Steve Walsh has been active in both his local community (better known as
CLUG man) as well as the greater LA community volunteering at both Linux
World and CeBIT, as well as other LA events. I think we should harness
this energy and use it for our own purposes.
CCC * Janet Hawtin (lucychili@gmail.com) was nominated by:
o Craige McWhirter (craige@mcwhirter.com.au)
Janet has been a champion of Free Software awareness and representation
with government bodies and politicians. It is a role I hope she will
continue and expand upon which is why I'm seconding her nomination.
o Karin Purser (fireflysummer@exemail.com.au)
Janet is an asset to the FOSS community. Her passion, enthusiasm and
drive have been evident since her appointment to the committee.
o Pascal Klein (klepas@klepas.org)
Janet's continuing work on covering the trek of our digital rights here
in Australia and her strong commitment to FOSS as well as Creative
Commons/Free Culture give her an edge that deserves recognition and puts
her amongst the best in our community. I think she has done a great job
in her work in the past and will continue to do so in future which is why
I third her nomination.
CCC * Pascal Klein (klepas@klepas.org) was nominated by:
o Craige McWhirter (craige@mcwhirter.com.au)
Whilst young, Pascal will learn a great deal from the great team around
him and as such represents much of the future of Free Software. Being
young is also an asset, as Pascal will bring added enthusiasm and a
fresh perspective to Linux Australia. Hopefully he'll be asking questions
on issues many of us currently take as given.
o Janet Hawtin (lucychili@gmail.com)
Has been active in Ubuntu group.
Interested in education and advocacy.
* Marco Ostini (m.ostini@uq.edu.au) was nominated by:
o Clinton Roy (clinton.roy@gmail.com)
Marco has consistently shown great zeal for the principles behind OSS and
would be a stabilizing and motivating force for LA.
Spiels
======
President
---------
* Jonathan Oxer (jon@oxer.com.au)
In my spiel for the last election I talked about some of the challenges
facing the FOSS community, and then ended with: "my objective is to provide the
community with a healthy, growing organisation that provides the resources
necessary for the relevant people to solve each of those problems for our
collective benefit."
While we've made a lot of progress so far and Linux Australia has
continued to grow in size, relevance, diversity, visibility, credibility, and
activity, the organisation we have today is still just scratching the surface
of the possibilities that are open to us. I'm pretty chuffed about everything
that has been done over the last few years but what really excites me is how
much further we can go. FOSS is continuing to mature both technically and in
terms of acceptance; our community is also growing and maturing; and Linux
Australia needs to continue to grow and mature with it. I envisage an
organisation that in just a few years has many thousands of members who are
provided with a wide array of services and whose collective voice is heard and
respected by the people who right now won't even give us the time of day.
With this in mind, if re-elected to the Committee there are four main
areas that I intend to focus on.
Firstly, over the last year I've become increasingly aware of how little
interaction Linux Australia has with various external groups and with LUGs in
particular. LUGs are the lifeblood of the FOSS community but despite the best
efforts of many people they are still too disconnected from LA and from each
other. Over the last 12 months I've spoken to people in many different
FOSS-related contexts such as conferences, LUGs, and at Software Freedom Day,
and been surprised how little they know about LA. That has to change. Recently
we started inviting LUG organisers onto the Committee teleconf and it's been a
great success so I'd like to see that continue, but I'd like to take it one
step further and actively connect with LUGs directly by having LA
representatives offer to present a "Meet Linux Australia" talk to as many LUGs
as possible over the next 12 months. That can extend to other types of
organisation as well such as local PC user groups but our main mission has to
be to support LUGs so they should be the initial focus.
Secondly, we need to examine how Linux Australia relates to the extended
FOSS community. This is a critical issue that I don't have a specific answer
for but we need to think about it very hard: the number of people involved with
FOSS on non-Linux platforms is increasing rapidly and many people who would get
a lot out of Linux Australia avoid the organisation because of the name. I've
personally spoken to many people who I am sure would have the time of their
lives at LCA and get a huge amount out of the LA mailing lists but won't even
think about getting involved because they run FOSS on Windows, or MacOS, or
Symbian, or *BSD, or OpenSolaris, or whatever. Should we rebrand Linux
Australia or LCA to remove the Linux focus? Personally I don't think so. We'd
be diluting ourselves too much at this stage of our development. That doesn't
mean there's nothing to be done though: maybe the time has come for a more
generalised FOSS organisation of which LA could be a part, or even just for LA
to be more consciously inclusive of those who have made the step of using FOSS
but haven't switched out their underlying OS. This is an open question that we
really need to examine in the next 12 months.
Thirdly, one of the topics that has come up a number of times is member
services. The question to ask when growing an organisation is what value and
benefits it can provide to members: why should people join anyway? What do they
get out of it? In addition to the existing intangible reasons it's about time
that we started providing some tangible reasons too. Setting up an online store
with LA merchandise, providing email addresses for members, and providing
subdomains for projects are fairly obvious ideas that have been raised recently
and will all likely happen very soon. If we look ahead to an organisation many
times larger with more diverse income then other possibilities open up
including production of an Australian FOSS magazine; different types of events
to complement LCA; and far more extensive lobbying activities. Some of those
may sound like pie-in-the-sky ideas but even with the resources we have right
now we could be providing far more services to our members than we currently
do, so let's start with the easy ones and work up from there.
Finally, something that is becoming more important day by day is the
necessary but unsexy work of planning for and managing the scalability of the
organisation. That includes setting out clear organisational policies and
processes; documenting those processes; assigning authority and
responsibilities for specific tasks and projects; and overseeing projects and
subcommittees. This is the stuff that has to be taken care of if the
organisation is going to avoid imploding. I certainly don't want to create a
bureaucratic monolith but an organisation without processes is like a software
project without documentation. That's fine when the project is small and just
starting out but larger projects shouldn't rely on inherent discoverability:
smart ones smooth the way with user and admin documentation, design documents,
coding standards, and FAQs. Organisations are the same and it's critical that
we continue to appropriately scale up the boring bits of organisational
infrastructure as we go.
Linux Australia is already a vibrant organisation with a lot of energy. I
believe that if the Committee pays careful consideration to those four areas it
will continue to rapidly grow and evolve, and I'd love the opportunity to be
re-elected to the Committee to help make it happen.
Vice-President
--------------
* Pia Waugh (greebo@pipka.org)
Linux Australia has come a long way, particularly in the last four years.
I feel my efforts in jump-starting LA at linux.conf.au Perth (2003) have paid
off, and with the efforts of great committees and community members, LA is now
a vibrant community with many active and inspiring contributors and members. In
only 4 years we have increased membership from 5 to 1200, gotten into the ears
of industry and Government, brought together a largely geographically dispersed
community and created a transparent and trustworthy organisation that assists
its community by being a tool for community development and FOSS in Australia.
Now we need to work especially hard to take LA to the next stage. I would
like to accept the nomination for VP and my aims for 2007 include: to empower
our community further for growth and local representation; to get FOSS onto the
agenda of Australian Government and mainstream media; to create a better
relationship between the Australian FOSS industry and community; & to create a
way for FOSS groups to participate freely that aren't specifically "Linux".
This last point is really important, there are many groups out there that are
part of the FOSS community, but aren't Linux specific (eg - Perl, Python, Open
Solaris), and LA needs to find a way to be more formally inclusive of non-Linux
FOSS groups so we can all be stronger together.
These aims are not short term. I am committed to LA for the long haul as
I see the community voice of FOSS as being especially important now and well
into the future. As our entire lives become more and more digital, trustworthy
and sustainable technologies are vitally important. This is an important part
of my personal commitment to FOSS and LA.
I hope to serve as VP with Jon as President as I feel his well-balanced
and stable leadership is complimented by my energy and connectiveness. I hope
to continue to serve the Australian FOSS community, and help take us to the
next stage in a strong, trusted and participatory national community focused
organisation.
* James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com)
After much thought and such I've decided that I'm not going to stand for
President. Jon has been doing such a kick buttock job so far and I don't want
to stop the run :)
On the other hand I do believe I can achieve a lot in the position of VP.
In terms of what my plans are in the role, it all boils down to 1 thing.
Making sure that LA stays the premier community body representing the FOSS
Community. This will require a lot of hard work and building of communication
channels between both our brother/sister orgs as well as the other players in
the area such as government and business. Thats only one area, but I don't want
to bore you with more unless you ask :)
Before I finish, I would just like to say that fitting into the shoes of
VP is going to be hard (if I win it) considering the previous occupant. Not
only were her feet a hell of a lot smaller than mine, but she has made such an
impact on the org. Rock on Pia.
Secretary
---------
* Anthony Towns (aj@azure.humbug.org.au)
Keep on keeping on.
In particular:
(a) improve record keeping and financial handling for projects like lca
and software freedom day and new/other projects.
(b) improve hosting and admin arrangements for la services
(c) support other projects, and generally making la more open and useful as
time permits
Treasurer
---------
* Terry Dawson (terry@linux.org.au)
Thanks for the nomination.
I'm keen to continue to work to complete the objectives I set for myself this
year:
- complete the documention of the processes and procedures associated with the role.
- establish clear and logical relationships with the LCA treasurer role and that of
other major LA-related projects.
- automate tasks where possible.
Ordinary Committee Members
--------------------------
* Stephen Walsh (steve@nerdvana.org.au)
I've been a member of CLUG since late 2004, and Meeting Coordinator since
mid-2005. I was one of the LCA volunteers at 05, and have worked with Pia on
the 2006 Linuxworld, Cebit and Education Expos, pimping FOSS and LA to the
masses. If elected, I intend to continue this pimping, hoping to convert the
people of this wide brown land to the FOSS way of life.
* James Purser (purserj@k-sit.com)
See my speil for VP :)
* Janet Hawtin (lucychili@gmail.com)
Hello I am interested in finding ways to respond to the AUDMCA copyright
act, and to try and put pieces together to try and build some support for
teachers interested in using open source technologies in schools. Cheers Janet
* Karin Purser (fireflysummer@exemail.com.au)
I would like to accept my nomination for ordinary committee member.
I do not have any grand plans for the direction of Linux Australia as I
believe it is already on the right track.
I have smaller ideas for connecting the community more, by means of
having an open pathway for User Groups to communicate both with the Linux
Australia team and each other which I believe will give many the opportunity to
contribute and have more input on different projects.
* Pascal Klein (klepas@klepas.org)
---
Many thanks all, and good luck to all the candidates! The results will be
announced as part of the LA 2007 AGM at linux.conf.au:
Date - Tuesday January 16th 2007
Time - 17:30
Place - Mathews A at UNSW (as a scheduled part of linux.conf.au 2007
http://lca2007.linux.org.au/Programme)
Cheers,
Pia
--
Linux Australia http://linux.org.au/
"There is no darkness but ignorance." - William Shakespeare