Two years ago I ran for the LOPSA board of directors on the central
idea of increasing LOPSA membership.  I sought to improve our member
customer service processes by responding to requests as quickly as
possible and reducing the time it took to handle memberships generated
from our conferences, especially the Cascadia IT conference.

What I didn't know, but have learned during my time as a board member,
is that many traditional membership-based organizations are having
trouble retaining members, let alone increase their membership base,
when competing against the many options for finding like-minded people
via social media and other Internet-based services.  What this means
to me is that we in LOPSA need to embrace these services, improve our
relevance to the system administration community, and reach out to
communities outside our traditional core audience of UNIX/Linux system
administrators.

Most importantly, though, I want to continue my focus on service to
LOPSA's members, and represent your desires for what the organization
should accomplish, through my participation in the LOPSA board of
directors.