openSUSE Board Welcomes new Chairman: Vincent Untz

This week Alan Clark announced to the openSUSE Board that he is stepping down from his position as Board Chair. His duties in SUSE keep him increasingly busy and SUSE has decided, after almost two years, the time has come for someone else to take on his role.

So, after thinking about what skills are most relevant for the openSUSE Board right now and who would fit in best, SUSE managers Michael Miller (Marketing and Product Management) and Ralf Flaxa (Engineering) have announced at the openSUSE Summit opening that they brought in former GNOME Foundation Chairman Vincent Untz to take on the role as chair. The Board is very pleased having someone with the skills and experience of Vincent on board.

Experience

SUSE looked for somebody with respect and trust from the company and the community as well as skills relevant for the openSUSE Board. As you can see on his openSUSE user page Vincent has been around in the project, currently active in the Membership officials team, organizing GSOC, leading member of the GNOME team and as ambassador at various events. In the past he has been on the openSUSE Boosters team, the openSUSE Conference Program committees 2010 and 2011 and the Board Election Committee. Outside of openSUSE he is of course best know for his positions as Director, Chairman and Release Manager for the GNOME Foundation. Within SUSE, he now has his head in the cloud, having been involved in delivering SUSE Cloud, SUSE’s first cloud solution powered by OpenStack.

Welcome!

With the openSUSE conference starting soon, the decisions on the release process to be made and the elections for the openSUSE Board coming up soon, there is plenty thinking and doing ahead for the board. Vincent is someone who fits in with what openSUSE tries to accomplish. His involvement with organizing and pushing the collaborative Desktop Summits and freedesktop.org, his release management experience and his involvement in various projects within and outside (open)SUSE show he has what it takes. The board is therefor very happy to have him join them!

While it is sad to see Alan leave and we'd like to thank him for all he has done for the Board and openSUSE in general, we're very excited to see Vincent join us. He's somebody with lots of knowledge and energy and he is a great addition to the team!

I'm very excited to join the openSUSE Board as chairman! The openSUSE Board is uniquely positioned to help organize and manage our growing community, and work on the future of our awsome project.

Both Alan and Vincent Untz as well as number of the other openSUSE Board members are at the openSUSE Summit right now. If you’re there, go and look them up for a chat about where openSUSE is going. If you can’t make it, they will surely be at the openSUSE Conference in Prague in October!