Plone Foundation Board Elects Officers for 2012-2013
Meet your new Plone Foundation officers: Paul Roeland has been namedPresident, Érico Andrei Vice-President, Steve McMahon Secretary and JenMyers Treasurer.
The Plone Foundation Board of Directors held their first meeting on Thursday, October 18th and selected Foundation officers for the upcoming year.
The officers are:
President - Paul Roeland
Paul is an open source activist and tech coordinator for several non-profits. Currently working for the Clean Clothes Campaign in Amsterdam, Netherlands, his past involvements include Friends of the Earth, a film festival, and a range of events with the wider ICT4D and Opendata movements. This is Paul's second term on the board.
Vice President - Érico Andrei
Érico is CEO and co-founder of Simples Consultoria, a content management company based in São Paulo, Brazil. Being very active in Python and Plone evangelism in Brazil, Érico has organized two Plone Symposium South America (2009 and 2011), chaired PythonBrasil[7] (the Brazilian PyCon) and co-founded Associação Python Brasil as well as serving as their first Marketing Director. This is Érico's second term on the board.
Secretary - Steve McMahon
Steve is a partner in Reid-McMahon, LLC, a Plone consultancy specializing in work with non profits. He also does extensive volunteer work with the Davis Community Network, which hosts no-cost Plone sites for over 100 regional organizations. This will be Steve's fifth term on the Board, and fourth as Secretary.
Treasurer (non-voting) - Jen Myers
Jen is the Director of Accounting for Six Feet Up in Fortville, Indiana (USA). She has over 15 years of financial experience; 12 years in public accounting, followed by a 3 1/2 year stint as the Financial Controller at a software and hardware company. Jen is not a member of the Foundation Board, appointed in accordance with Foundation bylaws.
After the election, newly chosen Foundation President Paul Roeland shared some thoughts about the upcoming year:
I am excited to be working with the Plone Foundation board this year. As we enter the second decade of Plone, we are now a mature open source project, with a thriving community behind it.
The last year has seen a lot of activity: 12 major sprints in which code, documentation, user experience and automated quality testing all have been worked on. As a result of that, Plone is now faster, leaner, and easier to theme, while still very secure and extremely flexible. From small nonprofits to the largest of enterprises, Plone can help solve real problems for organizations of all sizes. It is also a true open source product, with the Plone Foundation as safeguard.
Our community is strong, and diverse. Last year has seen three large regional conferences on three different continents, showing that we are now truly global in scope. That was also reflected at our recent conference in Arnhem, which was an energizing and fantastic experience.
Of course, there are challenges as well. As with any large software project, keeping up with documentation, and providing an easy learning path for new people coming in, can be difficult. The community has recognized that, and is working on improving those areas.
Also, with a project the size and complexity of Plone, proper mechanisms for running it are vital. This year's Board will place a strong emphasis on transparency.
Besides that, we have already started working on making sure we get even more geographically diverse. This Board already has members from three continents, but we want to strengthen our ties with the communities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region as well.
That will bring on some new language and timezone challenges, but hey, as the old Hacker Howto said: The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved...