Board Member Nominations 2018

The Board Member nomination (part of the Election 2018) will be open from 2018-10-29 to 2018-11-11 (two weeks). The list of nominees for the 2018 Board Member Election is maintained by the Chief Returning Officer (cro at osgeo.org). This page is write protected and can only be edited by SysOps. 
The following nominations have been received for the OSGeo Board in 2018 through the Election 2018 process.
* The nomination period ends on [23:59 GMT on Sunday 11 November 2018.
* This list is presented in the order nominations were received. 
* Candidate statements and support by OSGeo participants or members, if they have been provided, are linked to immediately after the candidate name as a bulleted list.
__TOC__
== Michael Smith ==
; Nomination by Daniel Morissette
I would like to nominate Michael Smith for the OSGeo Board election.
Mike works for the US Army Corps of Engineers Remote Sensing GIS Center of Expertise and has been a long time power user, supporter and contributor of MapServer, GDAL/OGR, PDAL and other OSGeo projects. He is a member of the MapServer and PDAL project PSC's and was actually one of the instigators behind the PDAL project, the GDAL of Point Clouds. He is also a FOSS4G regular and has not missed one since the 2003 MapServer Users Meeting AFAIK.
Mike has been active on the OSGeo Board since 2014 as treasurer. The great job that he does behind the scene as treasurer doesn't get noticed publicly by the members, but it includes several tasks and responsibilities which are instrumental to keeping OSGeo running smoothly.
In addition to his experience within OSGeo projects and its community, he also brings to the board the perspective of government organizations, which is a very important group of users and contributors of OSGeo software.
Plus, the voice of reason that he brings to the day to day operation of the board is also of great value.
All this makes him a perfect candidate to continue serving on the board. 
# https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Michael_Smith
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-OSGeo-Board-nomination-for-Michael-Smith-td5384287.html
* Seconded by: Adam Steer, Luigi Pirelli, María Arias de Reyna, Till Adams
== Angelos Tzotsos ==
; Nomination by Astrid Emde
I would like to nominate Angelos Tzotsos for the OSGeo Board again. He is already in the board since 2016. It is a great pleasure to work with him in the board and also in the OSGeoLive project.
Angelos is well known in the OSGeo community. He is the chair of the OSGeoLive project and a project steering committee member for the pycsw and ZOO-Project. He is a core developer for the GeoNode project and a packager for several projects. He is also an individual OGC member.
Have a look at his OSGeo Advocate page to see several other projects he is involved in:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Angelos_Tzotsos
Angelos is a remote sensing expert with background in surveying engineering and software development. He has a good expertise and knowledge about OSGeo software and technology.
Angelos is very structured, reliable and he gets things done. It is a pleasure to discuss with him and he makes well-considered decisions.
He encourages other people to work with OSGeo and he is very motivating.
It would be great to have him in the board again. 
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-OSGeo-Board-nomination-Angelos-Tzotsos-td5384804.html
* Seconded by: Luigi Pirelli, María Arias de Reyna, Sandro Santilli, Cameron Shorter, Till Adams
== Nicolas Bozon ==
; Nomination by Maria Antonia Brovelli
I would like to nominate Nicolas Bozon for the 2018 board elections.
Nicolas is an active OSGeo member from Lyon, France. He is using and promoting OSGeo and FOSS4G since 2006 and has developed a global approach of open source. He is Charter Member since 2011 and Marketing Committee member since 2012.
I had the pleasure to collaborate several times with Nicolas since we have meet each other in 2010. As an example, he was a key person for the FOSS4G-Europe 2015 communication and marketing.
Nicolas co-founded ZOO-Project and is part of its PSC since 2009. He is also the creator of mapskin, the geospatial webfont.
He attended many FOSS4G events since 2008, for which he is often helping on organization and marketing.
Nicolas is maintaining an extensive network of users, developers and researchers within OSGeo and beyond, in the broader geospatial community.
Active at the chapter, conference and committee levels, Nicolas is strongly committed to open source and has inspiring visions for our foundation.
Given his strong experience, his international profile and excellent communication skills, I believe Nicolas would be a great addition to the OSGeo board of directors.
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-Nomination-of-Nicolas-Bozon-td5385272.html
== Malena Libman ==
; Nomination by María Arias de Reyna
Malena is a long time member of the Spanish OSGeo Chapter (on the Geoinquietos Argentina brand), although she has been elected as charter member only this year. She has been working with the FOSS4G Argentina (as chair on the latest edition), and OSM communities in Argentina including GeoChicas. She recently represented the Argentina Chapter at FOSS4G 2018, and joined the OSGeo Marketing Committee. She has a Technical Degree on Geographic Information Systems by the University of General Sarmiento and she has worked with the national SDI of Argentina for several years. She has been advocating for open source and open data for years both in her work and in her free time. Malena has inspired me a lot with all her work on the community of GeoInquietos Argentina and I'm sure she will be a great asset for the board. She is a strong woman with a free spirit, just what we need to fight for Open Source in Geospatial.
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-Nomination-to-Malena-Libman-for-the-Board-td5385358.html
*Seconded by: Vicky Vergara
== Tom Kralidis ==
; Nomination by Bart van den Eijnden
It is my pleasure to nominate Tom Kralidis for the OSGeo board. The first time I met Tom was at the MapServer User Meeting in Ottawa in 2004. This goes to show that Tom has a long-standing involvement in Open Source Geospatial.
He has been an OSGeo charter member since 2007. He has contributed to numerous OSGeo software packages, such as MapServer, GeoNode, QGIS, PyWPS and OWSLib, and he is the creator of pycsw. He is also on several Project Steering Committees (PSCs).
Tom is also a longtime member of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), where he was the lead contributor to the Web Map Context specification, and is currently involved in development of the emerging Catalogue Services 4 standard. Tom is a strong proponent of open standards as is evident in his numerous efforts as a developer and power user over the years with OSGeo tools.
Tom currently works at the Metereological Service of Canada.
Given his diverse background and dedication to open source and open standards, I think he would make a great OSGeo board member. 
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-board-nomination-for-Tom-Kralidis-td5385982.html
* Seconded by: Luigi Pirelli
== Steven Feldman ==
; Nomination by Eli Adam
I'm nominating Steve Feldman of the UK. He has already confirmed to me
that he will accept the nomination but you can double check with him if you
want (he's in cc).
Steven first became involved in OSGeo in 2012 when he was invited to chair
FOSS4G in Nottingham by the UK chapter. Since then he has been a Charter
Member, a former chair and now active member of the Conference Committee,
vice chair of FOSS4G UK, Treasurer of the UK chapter, has lead 2 Travel
Grant Programmes and has been an (at times noisy) advocate for OSGeo. He
brings an analytic and commercial focus and passion for the community to
all of his efforts on behalf of OSGeo.
I've had the pleasure of collaborating with Steven on various projects
through the years and can't recommend him enough. He's logical, smart,
funny, enjoyable, hard working, effective, aware of the bigger picture, and
capable of completing the details. He posses a depth of knowledge and life
experience of great value to OSGeo. While possessing such background, he's
also relatable, cutting edge, and connected. Steven also connects with
newer community members to include and mentor newer community members. It
is with great enthusiasm that I nominate Steven Feldman for the OSGeo Board
of Directors!
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-OSGeo-Board-nomination-Steven-Feldman-td5385983.html
* Seconded by: Luigi Pirelli, Tom Chadwin, Till Adams, Cameron Shorter
== Victoria Rautenbach ==
; Nomination by Astrid Emde and Jeff McKenna
It is our honour to nominate Victoria Rautenbach for the OSGeo Board of Directors.
Many will know of Victoria’s effort and passion through several OSGeo educational activities, where she helps young students and young professionals become introduced to the OSGeo community of projects. She is both an administrator and mentor for this year’s Google Code-in contest (working with pre-university OSGeo students aged 13-17), and she has also been a mentor for the Google Summer of Code the past years (working with university OSGeo students). She also helped with the UN OpenGIS initiative as well.
For her day job Victoria Rautenbach is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
She is a member of the ICA-OSGeo lab at the University of Pretoria since its inception in 2012. She is very passionate about the use of open source in education and also the increased use of open source in developing countries. She teaches at the University of Pretoria and makes use of open source GIS products in all the Geoinformatics modules that she teaches.
She has organized a number of OpenStreetMap mapathons and arranged student team participation in open data quests in South Africa.
Victoria would be a great asset to have on the Board. Please welcome her onto the OSGeo Board of Directors.
https://www.osgeo.org/member/rautenbach/
Support
*http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-OSGeo-Board-nomination-Victoria-Rautenbach-td5386088.html
*Seconded by: Nicolas Bozon, Barend Köbben, Serena Coetzee