Statement 2015
Me
I'm still a Computer Engineering undergrad student, radio hobbyist (focusing more on SatNogs project stuff now), and two-stroke moped rider/tinkerer.
Hcoop
After spending a year as president, I've come to realize the problems of Hcoop are a little different than I thought they were. The board (including myself) needs to be more active in either directly helping or finding ways to take some of the burden of running the coop off of Clinton. Really finding any way to do that seems to be the main goal.
Secondary is to enact the MemberLoans scheme as soon as possible, in order to enable expansion to a new server and the expansion of membership that it will hopefully assist with.
Statement 2014
Me
I'm a Computer Engineering undergrad student, radio hobbyist (SDR, Ham and Shortwave Listening), and two-stroke moped rider/tinkerer. I currently run Arch Linux, and have done some server management and software development work at my previous job.
Hcoop
It seems the main goal for the coming year is an expansion of membership, as it has been for previous years. As such, I think we need to take a three pronged approach.
- We need to take on the immediate task of making sure applications for new members are processed in a timely manner, and I am personally committed, as a potential board member to respond to applications within a day of receiving them.
- We need to attempt to rectify problems that have caused members to leave. (And establish an exit survey if there isn't one already to figure out what those problems are.)
- We need to actively recruit new members. I'm pretty open on what people think might work for this, but possibly targeted advertising (reddit, somethingawful forums, etc.), producing/distributing promotional material (stickers, etc), and personally reaching out to linux-y friends and coworkers.
Other
I do understand the difficulty in attempting to create new software while also maintaining, updating, and fixing current problems. As such, I don't want to put too much emphasis on the immediacy of this. However, I think it might be useful to revisit AdamChlipala's idea in his Election2008 speech as a long term goal of HCoop.
"Create another side of HCoop that is more friendly to non-Linux geeks, without harming all the good stuff that we Linux geeks love. From the start of my design of the latest DomTool, I've kept on eye on how a simple graphical interface for it can be built; I hope that I can help some of the Web 2.0 impresarios among our member base implement something pretty along these lines."