Seven Candidates in Race for Three Vacant Board Seats

With less than two weeks to go until the ballots open on Monday, February 4, 2019, openSUSE News and the Elections Committee are running a “meet your candidates” series. Questions were sent out to the seven Candidates. The questions and answers will appear in the News, one Candidate each day, in alphabetical order.

You can find out more about the Elections at the Official Wiki Page.

Meet Sarah Julia Kriesch

Intro/Biography

The Candidates were asked to give some biographical personal information, such as birthdate, age, their work, their openSUSE contributions, their hobby, and more, as they saw fit.

My name is Sarah Julia Kriesch. I am 31 years old and a work-experienced Student in Computer Science with a pre-education as a Computer Science Expert for System Integration. I had worked as a Linux System Administrator for an ISP and a Linux Systems Engineer at a Cloud Computing Provider for 4 years.

Sarah Julia Kriesch aka AdaLovelace, incumbent

I am watching my studies as further education in Software Development, I have received the scholarship Aufstiegsstipendium to do that. Firstly, I worked as a Working Student for ownCloud besides my studies. Currently, I am a Student Research Assistant at my home university.

I learned using Linux at the beginning of my dual education in 2009. SLES 10 was my first Linux distribution. I wanted to know more. Therefore, I went to the oSC 11 as my first Linux conference. I met a fantastic openSUSE Community and learned more in 1 week than in 3 years in my education company. So I wanted to join. I was not allowed to contribute to openSUSE during my last year of education, because my education company did not want to see that.

They filtered Google after all contributions in forums and communities. That‘s the reason for my anonymous nickname AdaLovelace at openSUSE. I had to wait for joining openSUSE again until my first job in 2012 where I worked together with Contributors/ Members of Debian, FreeBSD and Fedora.

I started with German translations at openSUSE with half a year of work experience. Most of you know me from oSCs (since 2011). I was Member of the Video Team, the Registration Desk and contributed as a Speaker. Since 2013 I am wiki maintainer in the German/ English wiki and admin there. I report bugs if I find some and create feature requests.

Since 2014 I am an active Advocate in Germany. I give yearly presentations, organize booths and take part in different Open Source Events. I have switched to events in the UK during my Study Abroad Semester in the last year. In addition, I am the Global/ German Coordinator Localization and one Founder of the Heroes Team.

I contribute and support if I watch something needed. The open source education is such a case. So I founded the Working Group Open Source at the Nuremberg Institute of Technology because our lecturer for Linux Development has left our university a short time before my first day there. I am teaching foundations for open source development, Linux installations, shell programming and more together with my team and community volunteers.

Other universities have forked this concept for Computer Science with open source workshops. Additionally, we are bringing openSUSE forward at different faculties at our university. We are working on our IT project to migrate the Linux laboratory to openSUSE Leap with Kerberos this semester.

Why you are running for the openSUSE Board?

I am staying behind the openSUSE Community and want to have happy Community Members. My role in the openSUSE Board has been to do right decisions and to resolve conflicts. I support if somebody needs that. I represent openSUSE and receive feedback from our users. I want to continue that all.

2018-2019 Election Poster contributed by Aris Winardi

Two years are more quickly left than you can imagine and I am running for re-election for the openSUSE Board!

What impact would you like to make as a member of the openSUSE Board?

I try to receive new Contributors to our community with education. Qualified new Contributors are required to receive promising future prospects for openSUSE. Additionally, I want to concentrate more on the well-being of the openSUSE Community. You don‘t receive new Contributors if you don‘t have the correct climate in the community. I want to build that on the introduction of the Board publicity by our elected Board Members in the last year.

That would improve the collaboration and respect within openSUSE. Another election pledge is the switch from DVDs to USB flash drives in the marketing material.

Why should openSUSE members vote for you?

I am well connected inside and outside of openSUSE with a big open source network. I know most important people in the community and desire to create the best decisions for you with the view of a Computer Scientist with Sysadmin experience. I am desperate to become a long term openSUSE Contributor. So I don’t want to change the Community.

I have been an openSUSE Board Member in the last 2 years and you know me in this position. I am much obliged to be an elected Board Member for additional 2 years.

What’s one thing people would find interesting about you that is not well known?

I am educated by communities and want to do so, too. I contribute to open source to improve the world.

Contact information

Email: sarah.kriesch AT opensuse.org
Blog: https://sarah-julia-kriesch.eu
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahjulia.kriesch
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-julia-kriesch-16874b82
Connect: https://connect.opensuse.org//pg/profile/AdaLovelace
Github: https://github.com/skriesch