I’m the new Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation!

I’m very excited – I am now officially joining the GNOME Foundation as Executive Director! 

Some background. The GNOME project is:

• a free and open source
  desktop – an easy to use, intuitive interface for your Linux or Unix computer and
• the GNOME development platform, a developer framework for building applications.

The GNOME Foundation is the nonprofit organization that helps organize and run the GNOME project. The GNOME Foundation members are all contributors to GNOME – hundreds of volunteer developers. They elect a board of directors (from their membership) every 18 months and have a large number of corporate sponsors who participate through an advisory board. My job will be to work with the board of directors, the sponsors and the community to help them further their goals of a creating a free and open source desktop and development platform that is used world-wide by drawing in more developers, sponsors and users.

As some of you probably know, my first experience with open source software was with the GNOME community. Way back in 2000, I was managing the HPUX desktop and we decided that having a free and open source desktop would be advantageous for HPUX users. I ended up working with Ximian (then Helix Code) and attended my first GUADEC in 2001 in Copenhagen. While I was checking into my hotel in Copenhagen, I met some guys in the hotel lobby (Havoc Pennington and some of the Eazel guys) and ended up spending the afternoon exploring Copenhagen with them. The next day at the conference was the day of the famous "You’re a girl!" quote. (She was very excited there was another woman at the conference.) I found the GNOME community extremely welcoming and passionate about their project. They got me hooked on open source and I’ve been spreading the word ever since.

So I’m very excited now to be joining the GNOME Foundation to help accelerate the adoption of GNOME – a free and open source desktop – by strengthening the Foundation and
attracting new industry members and community contributors. For more information you can read the press release or leave me a comment.

P.S. And if you are here at GUADEC, be sure to say hi to me and tell me what you are working on.