User:Cjl

Chris Leonard, PhD

You might also know me from as User:Cjl on the OLPC wiki or IRC channels, my "day job" is as a biomedical researcher who happens to include running an IT shop at a small pharmaceutical company with some very specialized requirements for blending IT and science.

Oversight Board candidacy

I was asked if I would consider being a candidate for the Sugar Labs Oversight Board election and after thinking about what I might be able to contribute, I agreed to stand for election. I won't reproduce my entire user page from the OLPC wiki which contains some additional material about what I do for a living and what I've been doing to contribute to the olpc effort, but I invite you to look it over or to see my LinkedIn profile for something in the form of a professional curriculum vitae.

I got involved with OLPC initially as a G1G1 donor, interested in the technical features of the XO laptop and also interested in making a personal contribution to the educational effort through content development in the field of health. I have found a wealth of opportunities to do something useful and rewarding and I have worked to leverage what I have learned to assist others in becoming involved with the project. Much of this has taken the form of behind-the-scenes work as a wiki sysop on both wikis, working to lower language barriers (e.g. creating and deploying the GoogleTrans-xx templates for "reverse localization"), and reaching out to folks from deployments via IRC, wiki or e-mail to help them get their stories on the wiki, and most recently by working as a member of the "support gang".

With Walter's departure from OLPC and the initiation of Sugar Labs as an independent project, I have broadened the scope of my activities to include Sugar Labs because my interest is in the educational goals of (lower case) olpc and how best to achieve those goals. I believe that the separation of software development (Sugar Labs) and hardware marketing/deployment (OLPC) is a "good thing" and with careful nuturing, the whole will become greater than the sum of the parts alone. I would like to contribute my expertise in working with and advising non-profit organizations (various patient advocacy groups), government agencies (external reviewer/advisor National Institutes of Health Roadmap Initiative) and software development operations (member of the Scientific Advisory Board of scientific software firm, Artuslabs). I have a great deal of experience in acting as an "honest broker", analyzing the roles and needs of various stakeholders and designing and implementing strategic plans to achieve optimal results. I believe I have the necessary expertise to advise on a wide scope of issues that are facing Sugar Labs in these initial stages of it's growth and it is my intent to continue to do so in whatever capacity I can.