A little about me.

I am a Canadian born grandfather with 55 years of in-depth IT experience,. I have worked in several states around USA, ranging from the east coast to the west coast, from northern New York state south to Texas.  I worked for a while in Europe and now, I live in Montreal Québec, I am fully fluent in French, and can handle myself in conversational Spanish. The fact of having three languages and three cultures  is a great advantage that I can offer the Fedora community. Beginning with Fedora Core in 2004 and until this day I have been a Fedora Linux desktop user. My skills included teaching, managing teams of diverse developers and running my own consulting business. My team members and students have been from a few Arab countries, India, Latin America, and the Carribean. 

My technical skills.

As a graduate in pure and applied mathematics, I worked for many years as a system architect, capacity planner for large IBM mainframe banking and also performed network planning.  This diverse experience included setting up computer system monitoring, planning system upgrades and planning data center expansion. This work entailed working with suppliers and clients. For the 20 years preceding 2011, I was self employed, offering consulting services in Data Security (encryption, physical access, Manufacturing systems (ERP)). I Taught logistics and all the while involved with Linux based application development. My resume with details is attached for your perusal.

Why do you believe diversity and inclusion are important for Fedora?

At the present time, from my reading of the postingss from the various projects, I noted that Fedora is heavily slanted to US English, with narrow views of deliverables and with decisions about development that do not include any real end-user participation or end-user input. I noted two major user populations -- the university graduate, whose are up to age 25, and the 60 plus crowd of Fedora users, myself included. There appears to be a gap or fall-off of users whose ages lie between 30 to 55. In addition, I noted that there is no foreign blogging section for other participation by languages groups such as Spanish, French, or other. This absence of other language support has been a deficiency. Fedora needs to reach out to non-USA cultures.  In terms of diversity, visit the SUSE forums and wki and learn how they interface with multiple cultures. I would like to bring some of their outreach to Fedora.

Why do you want to serve as Fedora’s Diversity & Inclusion Advisor?

When diversity is mentioned, we have to ask if it is to deal with system technology, application packages, or with people. Fedora needs a diversity of applications, targeting the simple single user such as a child all the way to the more serious application for the hobbyist, technocrat and businessman. If you can't offer quantities of diverse applications, for the end-users, then who can Fedora attract as a developer and devoted user?

To find these applications from the world at large, taking the best of them and encouraging application developers (some of whom their mother tongue is other than English) is one role.

Regarding inclusion, men do not have exclusivity on intelligence. We need more women using and contributing to Fedora. I worked for women bosses, I worked with women specialists and customers, and I enjoyed those projects. I am bilingual, I joke in two languages, and I get by in the third.

What specific minority group(s) or issues can you offer insight about?

The province of Québec, and specifically Montreal, is a melting pot of peoples from around the world. In my long career, I trained individuals from a dozen countries. My students and co-workers (both sexes ) were Spanish, Romanian, French, Italian, Arabic, Filipino, Jamacian, Haitian and other. Québec is a French province. the second and third languages of the those third language groups are French and English. We live in a melting pot where keeping the mother tongue does not mean being less Canadian. Montreal is Europe in North America. Ubuntu, Google, Ericson, Ubsoft ( and other game companies) are here because of the diversity. My own family members include English, French, Spanish, Romanian, Polish and Hebrew mother tongue speakers. A very diverse cultural group seated many times at my dinner table.

What perspectives, experiences, or knowledge about diversity and inclusion.could you share with the Fedora community?

Intelligence, kindness, eagerness, family values is universal. As an example of understanding diversity, I was a college professor at a junior college (CGEP) teaching Logistics. The students in my class chose this area as a career because of being trilingual. Some were changing careers, others were new to Canada. I have a great empathy for their customs, different levels of knowledge, and different ways of viewing and attacking problems.

Do you have experience working across various cultures? (Cross cultural refers to various geographies, cultural groups, etc.)

Yes, I worked in France for a year, I spent time in Latvia (Russian), and in live bilingually in Montreal. We have the most tolerant and diverse melting pot of people from the four corners of the world.

In the opening statement I mentioned workload. I am on the east coast (NY time). California is three hours behind (gmt -7) while Europe is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. As I see it, the diversity role needs a proactive individual, flexible and when when required, to get up early and to work late in order to be in live contact (voice, video) with individuals from multiple continents and timezones. In your view, do you expect this one-man volunteer to do this for a long period of time?

To give us further insight, feel free to provide names and contact information for up to three people who can speak to your passion,  interest or experience with diversity and inclusion.

This list will follow after you advise me that I have been considered for the position. I am sure your comparison matrix will have many candidates.