Board Election/2008/Platforms/Peter Linnell

From openSUSE

Draft

Introduction and Biography

Personal: American living in France permanently. Married and soon to be dad.

Professional: It consultant for companies and focusing on intergrating OSS software in mixed environments. I support clients who use openSUSE and SLED/SLES in their production environments.

Open Source Activities:

Where do start ? :)

I am most proud of helping to start Scribus, which has become the defacto open source app for professional page layout and PDF export. Within Scribus we have grown an vibrant and very user-focused community where both newbies and experience professionals are welcome. Knowing that I have been working on Scribus since 2001 and still very much active, shows that I can make a sustained committment to a project.

I started OpenICC to have a common working area for graphics applications and associated projects to collaborate on standards, as well as working with outside vendors and groups. From this, concrete progress has been made to enable color management work on Linux Desktops.

With regard to openSuse, I was one of the first testers (guinea pigs? :) for the OBS, which has become one of openSUSE's unique and powerful features. I regularly participate on IRC as mrdocs and have added docs for the Build Service.

One other major contribution I have made was being one of the first instigators and organizers for LGM. Libre Graphics Meeting LGM Web Site This enabled open source graphics developers and users to meet for the first time face to face. Such meetings are real community builders and cooperation amongst open source grpahics teams could not better.

Major Issues

Please list any issues you feel are of a high priority that need to be addressed by the Board and how you would like to address them should you be elected

Community Building - The openSUSE is relatively small given the total number of users. We need to implement several things to improve our outreach to potential members and to continue to retain the current active members.

Marketing - openSUSE is arguably one of the very top distros, but we do not really get that message across well. Having Zonker on board is a big first step, but there is more to do.

Minor Issues

Please list any issues you feel are of a medium/low priority that could be addressed by the Board and how you would like to address them should you be elected

I think we need to think about and communicate better about how to participate. E.g what should be the criteria for non-Novell people to participate in areas like the Build Service and Desktop teams.

Role of the board

Please describe your vision for the Board and how you would like to see the Board shaped under your tenure

My role on the board is one of concilator and enabler. That is to help community members to participate and have their voice heard. I do not see the board as an area for technical decision, but one to represent the wishes of the community and to be a spokesman for the community.

Why you should vote for me?

I bring a perspective of being able to balance the corporate concerns of Novell, but also a deep understanding of making a vibrant, growing community. As well, being an "upstream" developer, I am also aware of the barriers "upstream" faces when working with distributions.

Moreover, I have substantial (10 yrs+) professional and community experience in organizing conferences and events internationally. This includes seeking outside sponsors and participation from both corporate and non profit associations. Being a good board member requires being a good listener, being diplomatic. Those are qualities I am sure my friends would agree are strong with me.

Aims/Goals

Please list your aims and goals for both the openSUSE project and also the openSUSE distribution. You may highlight specific projects within openSUSE or sow the seed for new ones.

One of my goals would be to make an openSUSE Developer/End User Conference a reality. There are few better community builders than face to face meetings. As an old airline ad said "You cannot fax a handshake".

One other principal goal is to work to improve the mind share about openSuse as a distro and as a community. We need to highlight its overall friendlyness and the number of very knowledgable folks now a part of it. There is tremendous potential for community building, especially among non-English speakers.