[OSGeo-Discuss] Board Candidate Introduction

[Michele M Tobias]

Hello everyone!  I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Michele and I was nominated to run for the OSGeo Board by Adam Steer.  I started working with QGIS in 2008 and since then have grown in my skills set and use quite a few open source geospatial tools in my research.  I've been attending FOSS4G conferences for many years and really appreciate the work and cooperation that this community has.  It is an amazing group of people!  I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Here's what I posted on the elections page with the manifestos:

Michele Tobias, United States (OSGeo profile: https://www.osgeo.org/member/tobias/)

About me
Creativity weaves its way through everything I do. Originally from near Los Angeles, I currently live in Davis, California, USA, where I work at University of California Davis' DataLab. I love my job working in spatial data science because of the variety of things I get to do - research projects, advising on research workflows, and teaching workshops. All of these require creativity and problem solving.

Trained as a biogeographer and ecologist, I am constantly learning new skills and applying them across disciplines. Recently I’ve worked on history, medicine, agriculture, and water policy projects. And I get to work with a variety of open source tools - QGIS, PostGIS, R, Python, Inkscape… I started using QGIS in 2008 while working on my PhD and branched out from there as I needed other tools.

My vision
When I’m helping a researcher decide on a workflow I frequently tell them: use what works. I’m an advocate for using the right tool for the job and not committing to using just one tool. But people need to know what tools are available and what each tool is meant to do. I want to help people make these connections between what’s possible and what works for their needs.

What you have done within the community in the past
OSGeo California Chapter Member, organizer of meetups, tabling at events (since 2009)
QGIS US Users Group (since 2019)
QGIS North America 2020 online conference Organizing Committee
FOSS4G (International & North America) Workshops & Presentations (Denver, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Dar Es Salaam, San Diego...)
Maintain a library of open licensed open source geospatial workshops on my GitHub account (since 2017)
Lead developer of the Literature Mapper QGIS plugin, a tool for georeferencing Zotero citations (since 2015)
Related: Organizer of #maptimeDavis, University of California GIS Week online conference Organizing Committee, #GISChat weekly Twitter chat

What your interests are in terms of the board
I can be a bridge not only to academia but also to local and state government on the US west coast and have experience with leadership in US-based non-profits.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce
I would like to explore options to help people learn about what's going on inside OSGeo. There are so many important initiatives and programs going on, but it can be hard to know about them and know how to get involved.

I would also like to help connect learners and non-coders to the broader OSGeo community.

What role you would wish to fulfill on the board (if any)
I am ready to take on any role I am needed to fill.





Michele Tobias, PhD
GIS Data Curator
Data Management Program<https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/service/data-management/>
UC Davis Library

161 Shields Library
(530)752-7532
mmtobias at ucdavis.edu<mailto:mmtobias at ucdavis.edu>
ORCID: 0000-0002-2954-8710<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2954-8710>

Pronouns: she, her, hers

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