[OSGeo-Discuss] Nomination for OSGeo Board of Directors: Jeff McKenna

[Jeff McKenna]

Thank you very much for this nomination Mike, I really appreciate these 
kind words.

I would be honored to represent all OSGeo members on the Board of 
Directors, for 2011 to 2013.  Indeed this is a great time to look back 
on my term on the Board from 2009 until now.

I was thinking back to then, when I came across my nomination for the 
Board in 2009 
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Member_Nominations_2009#Jeff_McKenna). 
  Thank you to Julien-Samuel Lacroix for helping me to represent OSGeo 
these past years on the Board.  And what a great few years.:
- I was very active in FOSS4G Sydney, Barcelona, and now Denver.
- I traveled to OSGeo-Japan many times (enough that my usual order at a 
local restaurant is now a special listed on its menu as the "Jeff Set")
- I traveled to other local chapters like OSGeo-Vietnam and OSGeo-China
- I worked with other OSGeo Board members living in countries like 
India, Germany, United States, Italy, and across Canada.

I have always chosen to focus on the annual FOSS4G event, and I will 
continue to do so.  One of my proudest achievements is bringing FOSS4G 
to communities around the world, including Cape Town, South Africa in 
2008.  I put my heart and soul into these events, and have done so since 
2004.  You will never see me as the visible face of these events, but 
scratch the surface and you'll find my comments, my recommendations, my 
guidance.  As the chair of the OSGeo Conference Committee sometimes I am 
in a very hard position, being the messenger for wonderful hosting bids 
that are turned down that year (think of the Netherlands bid for 2010, 
or the Brazil bid for 2008).  I enjoy working with and meeting all of 
these great OSGeo community people, and I appreciate each and every 
experience.

But as you know times are changing: the OSGeo Foundation in 2006 is much 
different than the OSGeo Foundation in 2012.  Revenues are scarce, 
everyone is much busier, Open Source is being used by anyone and 
everyone, and the calendar seems to move faster and faster.  I feel 
we're now in a critical time for OSGeo.  For those reasons the new Board 
of OSGeo will play an important role in how the Open Source geospatial 
industry moves forward in the coming years.

Any why wouldn't I want to be a part of that on the OSGeo Board?!  I 
would love to continue to do so.

So my friends, as Lorenzo Becchi would say, "a big hug".

Thank you for your consideration.

-jeff

On 11-08-04 4:17 PM, Smith, Michael ERDC-CRREL-NH wrote:
> I would like to nominate Jeff McKenna to the OSGeo Board of Directors. Jeff has been an OSGeo Board member, a founding member of OSGeo, OSGeo Conference Committee chair, MapServer PSC member, FOSS4g Workshop Committee member and founding co-chair of the OSGeo Ottawa chapter. Jeff is very active in the MapServer, GDAL, FOSS4G, and OSGeo communities. He is responsible for running the ever popular WMS Benchmarking effort. Jeff is a tireless advocate for open source, open collaboration and is a big (ha!) welcoming presences in the OSGeo community for many first-timers. Jeff is responsible for the very popular MS4W Mapserver distribution, which is a mainstay for windows users of MapServer. Jeff is a graduate of the prestigious COGS (http://www.cogs.ns.ca/) and is the president of Gateway Geomatics. He has worked extensively with many international OSGeo chapters over the years. And he is a damn nice guy.
>
> Mike
>
> -------
> Michael Smith
> Remote Sensing/GIS Center
> US Army Corps of Engineers