Candidate nomination

[Charles-H_Schulz]

Dear members of the Foundation,

I would like to nominate Simon Phipps as candidate to the board of directors of the Document Foundation.

Simon is not only a former executive of Sun Microsystems and an Open Source Software renowned expert; he has been a contributor to the LibreOffice project and to the Foundation since its early days. He has also served at our membership committee.

I believe Simon has the right skills, the talent and the vision to be a great member of the board of directors of the Document Foundation. I would be happy if the members would elect him as a director.

Best regards,

Charles-H. Schulz.

[webmink]

Thanks for your proposal Charles. I’ve been considering it today and would like to accept your nomination.

My full name is Simon Phipps and I’m in my 50s, live in Southampton in the UK with my wife, have a grown family and work as an open source consultant. My current employer (Wipro Technology Ltd) is not a material affiliation as it has no interest in LIbreOffice or TDF. I own and lead a consulting company, Meshed Insights Ltd, which recommends LibreOffice to clients. I write for IDG InfoWorld and have covered LIbreOffice often in my articles. The email address I use for TDF business is webmink@documentfoundation.org

I’ve been associated with the project in varying degrees for 15 years, both in its original incarnation (where, as Sun’s Chief Open Source Officer, I worked with TDF’s eventual founders to try to fix the problems we both saw) and as LibreOffice (where I have served on the Membership Committee – running the first Board elections – and also helped the core leadership team with a range of strategy discussions over the last five years). I have been a TDF Trustee (member) since 2011 and included in its leadership core team throughout. At the request of the Board I have represented TDF at a variety of meetings such as the OSB Alliance in Germany.

I believe my long memory of the project combined with wide board and management experience elsewhere (I have worked at Unisys, IBM, Sun, ForgeRock, and MariaDB Foundation) will provide a vital and needed ingredient to the next Board, which faces difficult challenges arising from the growth of TDF and needs a strong mix of skills. In 2016 I anticipate having time to fully address commitments to TDF, as my 8 year involvement with OSI (as a director and as President) ends in March.

Best regards,

Simon

[webmink]

As I recall (and I do see in the announcement) a 75 word statement is needed for the election web site, so here is mine:

“After more than 30 years in the computer industry, I bring wide experience to the Board including management (at IBM, Sun, and others), open source (such as from 8 years at OSI including 3 as president) and LIbreOffice (15 years if association with the predecessor project is counted). I’ve been involved in TDF from its beginning, ran its first elections as an MC member, participated in core team discussions and represented TDF in negotiations.”