Dear Mr. Potts:
It is with regret that I cannot help here, much as I would have been proud to. First, I don't know enough people in the overall group to make any kind of informed decision for such important positions. Second, my personal situation already has too many other problems and instabilities in it to feel I could do that kind of responsibility adequate justice. >From time to time, I do what very little I can, but I cannot make any specific commitments to anyone. I was trained as an electronic technician in the 1960's and have a wide and varied technical background in electronics, electricity, industrial process control as well as PC hardware and software. I would say about 95% of what I know has been independently self-taught, not from a lot of formal education. I do not have a university degree. Most of my formal education has been at the equivalent of community colleges.) Unfortunately, this ability was always vastly under-recognised because I suffered from a history of bad parenting, but I can find nobody who knows of anyone who has done the same with that area of life, having come from such a bad beginning. Notwithstanding having made the best I could of a bad situation over most of a lifetime, this has had very negative financial and other consequences, and has had much less than ideal true general supportiveness form society in general, hence the current unstable and limited situation. At age 65, no usual employer is interested and age discrimination laws simply aren't effective enough to bother with. Nonetheless, I continue to follow this with what time I can, and informally spread the word for Oo in 3 languages (English, French and some Spanish). If and when better opportunities come my way, I will then be able to make the all-round best I can at the time, notwithstanding a strong personal moral code which must take priority, yet expressly avoids dogmatic elements and seeks to make the best of all religions and cultures, in the suburbs of a city which for many decades has never had a language or cultural majority. I often tell people, "If you live in Montreal, you don't have to spend money getting on an airplane, the whole world is on our doorsteps, 50 or more languages in a day!" Naturally Oo fits this environment ideally! Recently we have seen some less than desirable messages on [discuss] due to posters looking for free support, and others unhappy with some of those posters less than polite postings. Along with these you will find a few of my remarks on the subject. I hope you can find some ideas to help us all that we can brainstorm. Best Regards, Bruce Martin. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: February 27, 2010 11:32 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Cc: council; Drew Jensen; Sophie Gautier Subject: [discuss] Call for Nominations for Community Council Seats All, On behalf of the Community Council, I would like to announce the new round of elections for the Council and start the process by asking the OpenOffice.org Community members to nominate those they think would best contribute both to the Council and to OpenOffice.org. You may nominate yourself. Consider doing that. Or nominate someone you think has been particularly valuable for the project; he or she need not be a developer! This cycle, like the first one last year, is important. OpenOffice.org is ten this year and the eyes of the world are looking upon us with eagerness to see how we work with business, government, education, and individuals. Your voice, your input, your experience is needed to take OOo into its next decade. The rules for the process are detailed in a wiki on the subject.[0] I won't bore you by repeating them here; please visit the wiki page. Several categories of OpenOffice.org contributors make up the Council, for a total of ten persons. Those categories cover the breadth of OpenOffice.org and are detailed below. All but one, the permanent Sun/Oracle representative, are elected by community vote as stipulated in the Election Process Proposal. That seat is held by Stefan Taxhet. The terms of Pavel Janík, Martin Hollmichel and John McCreesh have reached their end and their seats are up for election. On behalf of all, I'd like to thank them for their long and immensely productive contributions to the Council! The seats open for election include a Native Language Confederation Representative (the seat now held by Pavel), a Code Contributor Representative (Martin) and Product Development Representative (John). Community members only vote for those who will represent the constituency: developers vote for the developer seat, product development for that seat, and so on. You will receive an email informing you of your constituency; this is based on your role in the Project. Details about the nomination: ================== The nomination process is normally allotted one week dated from this post; however, the last time we went through this, last year, we were asked to give more time for nominations, and so this time around, we are allowing two weeks for nominations commencing 1 March and ending 15 March at 24:00 UTC. We will be using tried and true technology for the actual voting: the Survey machine, and only Community Members will be allowed to vote. Results will be posted in accordance with the published Election Process Proposal and a copy of this message will also be posted to the wiki at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Items/call_for_no minations_201003.[1] A commissary will help coordinate the election process, and I'll serve in that role. The observers will be Sophie Gautier and Drew Jensen, as with last year's election. This announcement will be posted to the relevant public lists, as detailed in the Election Process wiki:[email protected], d...@native_lang.openoffice.org, [email protected] as well as [email protected] and [email protected]. Again, consider nominating yourself or someone equally interesting. We need energetic contributors who understand the Project and have a sense of its dynamic and potential. The world is changing--we know that-- and to make sure it changes for the better, join us on the Council. Louis [0] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Items/Election_Pr ocess_Proposal [1] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Items/call_for_no minations_201003 -- Louis Suarez-Potts, PhD Community Manager OpenOffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
