Accepting nominations for LA VP

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! – AJ Towns

Best nomination post ever! Thanks AJ 🙂

Nominations for the Linux Australia election are still open, but only for a few more days. You’ll need to log in using your membership information to nominate and later to vote, so check it out!

I’ve been nominated for VP and after some serious deliberation have accepted the nomination. In 2006 I was largely unable to achieve my LA goals due to being absorbed with helping run linux.conf.au (only 3 weeks away!), however I am keen to help take LA to the next level in 2007. My pitch is below (and will show up on the LA elections page once elections open):

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 as a strong, trusted and participatory national and community focused organisation.