[TriLUG] Justis Peters for Steering Committee

[Justis Peters]

Dear TriLUG Members,

It has been an honor to serve as the Chair of the TriLUG Steering 
Committee during the 2011-2012 term. Please consider voting for me 
tonight, to serve another term on the Steering Committee. Below, you can 
find a copy of my most recent edits to 
http://trilug.org/wiki/User:Justis#Why_Vote_for_Justis

Thank you for your consideration and for your involvement with TriLUG. 
We are all blessed to be part of such an amazing community.

Kind regards,
Justis

------------------------- sourced from 
http://trilug.org/wiki/User:Justis#Why_Vote_for_Justis 
----------------------------

=== I Care ===
Open Source and Linux are extremely important to the technology 
ecosystem in the Triangle. I want to help TriLUG thrive because it helps 
our future. I owe much of my career to open source and hope that even 
more people can say that in the future.

=== I Have Experience ===
Since becoming Chair of TriLUG in May of 2011, I have made our Steering 
Committee meetings shorter and more effective. We get more done in less 
time and we typically leave with a smile. We have a deeper pipeline of 
speakers and typically have our meetings planned a month or two in 
advance (sometimes more). We have also gained many more volunteers, 
beyond just the Steering Committee, and attendance to our meetings is 
strong.

Those achievements are the product of the existing TriLUG Steering 
Committe and our amazing community. My leadership style is somewhere 
between "steering" and "cheerleading". I have had a lot to cheer for 
over this past term and am very happy with where we're currently headed.

We have a great new series of hands-on workshops, with many thanks to 
Bill Farrow for kickstarting it. I am further inspired by seeing how 
people like Kevin Otte, Lenore Ramm, and Scott Hall have taken the 
format and run with it. If this also inspires you, please imitate their 
example. Let us know what you'd like to see TriLUG become and we'll do 
our best to enable your success.

Likewise, we have intentionally focused on local speakers. It is 
important to me to encourage local talent and personal contributions. We 
could have recruited speakers from afar, but why do that when we have 
such amazing people here in the Triangle? I am really pleased with how 
that strategy has played out. It has paired very well with the hands-on 
workshops, too, since it gives everyone a chance to get involved instead 
of simply consuming. Open source is powered by us and I am inspired to 
see so many of you living it by example.

Whether or not I get elected for another term on the Steering Committee, 
I am honored to be a part of this community.

=== I Cross-Pollinate ===
I attend a lot of tech-oriented meetups in the area. In a typical month, 
it's probably 5-10. I'm always telling people about upcoming TriLUG 
meetings and try my best to cross-pollinate groups. I also keep TriLUG 
informed of interesting upcoming meetings.

=== I Have Linux Cred ===
I first began using Linux in 1993, when I tried Slackware. It took 28 
floppy disks to get all the source code, including X windows, and it 
took forever to compile the contents and install it. It was, however, 
very worth it, and I was immediately at home with the command line.

During the late 1990s, I had a series of jobs that dragged me back into 
the Windows world and I almost ended up getting an MCSE. Fortunately, I 
landed a job in 2000 with a web hosting company who let me tinker with 
their Linux servers. In 2001, I began work for a startup (Oculan) who 
gladly let me run Linux as my desktop OS and let me write software that 
ran on Linux appliances that we built. Since 2001, I have used Linux as 
my primary OS for server, workstation, laptop, and netbook.