Hi All,
First, I want to say thank you again for those who have shown faith in me and my ability to add to what has become one of the greatest projects on the planet. Truly everyone I have worked with has inspired me and helped me believe in what we do.
I thought I would write a bit about myself and why I accepted nomination to the BoD of the Document Foundation.
My name is Joel Madero. I am 27 years old, happily married to my college sweetheart, computer hobbiest living in San Diego, CA (USA). After finishing my undergraduate studies I worked for the local government for three years. I ended this position in June to begin my next adventure, attending the University of California, Irvine - School of Law.
I joined the LibreOffice project late in 2011 after being a user of open source for some years, but was unable to find an inviting enough project to contribute to. As many other contributors, my first experience with LibreOffice was submitting a bug report - at which point I was encouraged by my mentors on the project to give QA a try. For the last two or so years I have been mostly involved with QA - helping to grow the team, triaging as much as possible, leading bi-weekly international QA calls, representing QA on the Engineering Steering Committee until beginning law school this fall, and helping begin the process of getting a North American team together. I try to be active in the user group as much as possible, and have even gotten the opportunity to put my very limited C++ skills to the test by committing a few patches.
What I would bring to the board (I suppose “my philosophy”).
I am a firm believer that FLOSS relies on a deep rooted community. I have spoken openly about my belief that we should encourage all users to “do what they can” to contribute back (either by contributing time or making monetary donations). On the board, I will use my time to encourage users to join, primarily by reaching out and showing how anyone can find a home on our project - including artists, computer hobbiests, professional developers, marketing gurus, or any other person using FLOSS software. Truly everyone can make an impact on the project. I will continue my efforts to encourage all of our teams around the world to connect and to establish relationships that make it easier to coordinate in our mutual efforts to improve Libreoffice. Lastly, I will continue to build lasting friendships with my colleagues - as these friendships are what I have found to make TDF an incredible organization and what I know has helped encourage others to give so much of their time and put in so much effort to make LibreOffice a success.
Again, many thanks to those who have mentored me and encouraged me to be a part of this organization.
All the best,
Joel
On 11/05/2013 02:47 PM, Thorsten Behrens wrote:
Hi, as another candidate, I would very much like to nominate Joel Madero for the upcoming board of directors election. Joel joined the project in 2011, and has since been active all over the place. He was especially instrumental in energizing the QA, with his spirit and enthusiasm, that built an outstanding team of volunteers working tirelessly to get our bug influx under control. Joel, with his focus area and being based in the Americas, would bring important perspective to the board. I’m very happy therefore that he (privately) agreed to stand, and ask you to join me in supporting his candidature. 
Cheers, – Thorsten
