[OSGeo-Discuss] Our huge thanks to Jeff McKenna

[Venkatesh Raghavan]

Dear All,

Jeff McKenna has tendered his resignation from the position of President
and Board of Directors on personal grounds.

Jeff is a pillar of OSGeo, being a lively presence at Open Source
Geospatial events since the early days of MapServer User Meetings [1].
He was also a key person at FOSS GRASS User Conference [2] where the
idea of having a joint conference combining GRASS GIS, MapServer and
other FOSS4G [3] communities was mooted which fruited in the form 
FOSS4G-2006
held in Laussane [4]. Jeff has been a constant companion and a source of
inspiration during our decade long OSGeo journey.

During his tenure on the OSGeo Board, Jeff has traversed across the globe
spreading the message of OSGeo and sharing his passion for FOSS4G. He has
gone to remote corners of our planet to get local chapters started and
patiently interacted with diverse audience ranging from under-graduate
students to top leaders from academia, industry and government. Jeff has put
community before self and worked relentlessly to bring worldwide reach to
our Foundation. Combined with his rare passion, Jeff possesses a unique 
knack
of understanding and assimilating different cultures which has greatly 
helped
in nurturing diversity in our communities.

Apart form his groundbreaking work in representing OSGeo globally, he has
also made time to produce excellent documentation and packaging for some of
our leading software products. Jeff's dedication and passion will continue
to motivate all members of our foundation.

The board received Jeff's request on 12 December 2015 and asked him to
reconsider his decision. At the 30 January, 2016 Face to Face meeting, after
careful consideration of his reply, the OSGeo Board has motioned and
unanimously accepted his resignation. The board also passed a motion to
formally express our sincere gratitude for Jeff's immense contributions to
the OSGeo Foundation in his capacity as President and Board Member.

Jeff McKenna continues his engagements with the OSGeo Foundation as a 
Charter
Member and as PSC members in several of the Foundation Projects. We look 
forward
to seek his advice and active participation in our future endeavors.

Thank you from all of us, Jeff and we look forward to your contributions 
to OSGeo
in the years ahead.

BoD, OSGeo Foundation

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/Conferences
[2] http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/grass04/
[3] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G
[4] http://2006.foss4g.org/