Running for Lang Representative at the Community Council

I thought it might help if I’d post here my “official” information page for the OpenOffice.org Community Council Elections. This page can be found on the OpenOffice.org wiki.

A few words on Charles-H. Schulz My name is Charles-H. Schulz and I have been a contributor to the OpenOffice.org project since its 1.0 release. I live in Paris and have been working in several IT-related jobs. Today I run a small consultancy in the fields of Free Software and Open Standards. I’m not really what you will call a technical person, but at least I know how to use a terminal and, among other things, start OpenOffice.org from there. In fact, I even know how to start it as a server in “headless” mode, more accurately. By the way, I’m running a Fedora 11 on a quad core HP computer as my main machine, a two years-old Mac Book Pro you might see me with if you go to Orvieto, and as of very recently a Samsung with Android on it.

My other areas of interest include litterature, History, philosophy and organic food, among other things.

So why am I writing all this? Because we are in the process of electing some of the future members of the OpenOffice.org, and I’m running as a candidate in the Native-Language category. The rules of renewal of Council members are a bit complex, but there are different types of possible candidates that may run, and I’m running in one of them this year. It is the first time I’m running for the Council.

What does Charles do inside OpenOffice.org?I’m doing several things inside OpenOffice.org . I have somewhat of a strange title “Lead of the Native-Language Confederation”. It sounds like it belongs to Battlestar Galactica, but it actually is a very OpenOfficeish thing. What this means is I’m in charge of organizing and helping new and existing communities of OpenOffice.org developers, users, marketers, documentation writers who speak in their own native-language. These communities are called native-language projects. They work with the entire project and are one of the key factors of our success. When I took on that role, they were about 5 of them. Now, they’re around 100. Serving as a volunteer in that position makes one both a player and a witness of how the OpenOffice.org community works. On the one hand I have a social and administrative task, on the other, one should not stop there: you have to look for more volunteers who may start new projects. That’s a fascinating job.

I have also done other things inside our community. I was among the founders of the Business Development project (aka bizdev) and I am also very proud to be a co-lead of the ODF@WWW project. It is an incubator project that fiddles with ODF documents online, and allows them to be edited real time on a wiki and inside OpenOffice.org. In fact, this project is very important for the future of OpenOffice.org, and for our final goal, which is world domination.

What would Charles do in the Community Council?That’s a good question, isn’t it? My first duty, as a “Lang” representative, would be to represent the worldwide communities of OpenOffice.org. I’m not going to make promises like a politician, because this is not a campaign: it’s an information page. So I’m just going to explain what I think I could do there and how I could help. So my first duty would be to express the point of views of these worldwide communities to the Council, which means explaining their issues, their needs and wants. I will also have to work with the other Lang representative (because there’s two of us at the Council) and help the Council run our project. I should also try to get a bigger perspective on things, because OpenOffice.org is not just the addition of all the interests of categories, people and organizations that make up the project. It’s something bigger, more beautiful and more powerful. We are on a mission, and our mission is twofold: make OpenOffice.org one of the best Free Software for the future, and have fun. Because if you don’t have fun, well, you won’t even finish reading what I’m writing. More seriously: The future might be tough. But it’s going to be exciting, and in the end, I think we’re going to have a pretty awesome project, a project with a strong basis and foundation, that will genuinely be a great place for its people and its supporters. At least that’s what I will also try to help with at the Community Council, and I will consider myself satisfied if I remain true to these objectives and to the value of software freedom and true openness.