This is a follow-on from my last post, where I announced my candidacy for Linux Australia Council. I’ve posted this to the linux-aus mailing list, but thought it wouldn’t hurt going here as it raises issues that I feel are fundamental to Linux Australia’s existence.
I’m a candidate for Ordinary Committee Member (shouldn’t that be Ordinary Council Member now?). Before I repeat the spiel I made on the Elections page, I’d like to talk about what I feel LA represents in out community. There’s the obvious linux.conf.au, which proves year-after-year to be a world-class conference. Linux Australia represents the FOSS community throughout Australia (and going by LCA2006, perhaps also New Zealand in a way). It brings together the disparate groups throughout the country/region and gives them one voice. The community is thus able to be more influential as whole.
This leads into my original spiel, where I extoled the values of scalability in our community. Through enhanced support of grass-roots groups, Linux Australia will be able to grow the community in a more sustainable manner..
One pattern I discovered when examining previous LA elections is the low voter turnout. On most years the total number (not percentage) of votes was around 65–70. Why is this the case? Do we need to be doing more to engage the community? Are we not well-known enough? Are we not transparent enough? These are issues that we should be addressing.
