Nominations closing soon!

[Raymond Smith]

Folks,

Below is a letter from Adrian calling for nominations for the board.

Cheers,

Raymond Smith
Secretary - AUUG, Inc

----
Hi folks, it's that time of year again when AUUG board nominations
are soon to close and I'm conducting the annual shaking of the
trees for people to nominate :)

First, some background of where we are at.

Last year we called for new blood on the board and a number of
people responded, including our first board member from Fiji.

This year we have a number of long-time board members retiring
(David Purdue, Gordon Hubbard and Steve Landers) and one of the new
board members (David Vincent) won't be able to continue. This means
there are a number of positions available, and I'd encourage you
to consider if you are willing and able to be involved in this way.

Over the last few years the board has been very mindful of the
changing environment that AUUG operates in, and is regularly
discussing the role and value of AUUG in a crowded and increasingly
specialised computing world.

And whilst the annual conferences and symposiums have been recognised
for the quality and diversity of their programs, there is no doubt
that the conference "marketplace" is increasingly being crowded by
specialised conferences, and commercial conferences that compete
for mindshare, if not budget.

The board is mindful that in this enviroment it is becoming more
difficult to run a quality conference using mostly volunteer workers
as we've done in the past.  We are hearing two viewpoints from
members in response to this - some are strongly encouraging AUUG
to continue running quality conferences (and to be willing to
to change the format to make them more affordable and practical)
and others are arguing that AUUG has "run its race".

We respect both viewpoints, but believe that AUUG does have a unique
role and place in the "pantheon" of technical computing organisations
- albeit in a different form to the past, and in cooperation with
the other technical computing organisations that we overlap with.

Amongst the changes you'll see are a "downsizing" of the annual
conference to become more like a symposium - but with the same
quality content. And we're seriously considering making the conference
span a weekend. Planning is underway for this years event and expect
an announcement soon.

Another initiative from life member Frank Crawford has been working
with Google to make the thirty years of AUUGN history available on
Google Print. This will both preserve that history, but also any
resulting revenue from advertising will be directed to the AUUG
Lions Award fund. Again, expect an announcement soon.

But we can only make these and other changes with the involvement
of members who can volunteer some time to share the load. An emphasis
for the board in the upcoming year will be to help members get
involved across a number of areas, with the broad goal of providing
value for all members and to continue the ideals of the organisation
- connecting, supporting and promoting people with an interesting
in Open Computing (that is, Unix, Linux and Open Source irrespective
of the platform it runs on).

So, would you like to be involved and help move AUUG forward into
its next phase (whatever that might be?) If so, will you consider 
nominating for the board?

The nomination form is available at
http://new.auug.org.au/resources/roles/nomination/download - and
nominations close April 14th.

Feel free to call me on 0417 346 094 if you'd like to discuss this
with me before nominating.

Adrian Close - President