Board Elections 2024: New Board Members, New Chair

On June 24th the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at 1300 hours UTC. Since June 6th LPI members had been voting on a number of issues that the Canadian government requires them to vote on every year. These issues include the confirmation of an auditing firm, confirmation of the previous year’s elections and minutes and confirmation of any changes to the Bylaws (if any). This year the voting ended at 1330 hours UTC and the two items needing member approval (Minutes and Auditing Firm) both passed.

As to the election of Board Members, there was a slate of seven candidates nominated by the Nominating Committee and five of which were elected:

• Dorothy Gordon
• Klaus Knopper
• Uira Ribeiro
• Brian Clemens
• Jill Ratkevic

Dorothy, Klaus and Uirá were re-elected from the current board and Brian and Jill were newly elected.

On July 11th a virtual meeting was held to inaugurate Jill and Brian to take the places of outgoing Board Members Vicky Brasseur and Jon A. Hall. Vicky had served the Board for three years and Jon had served the Board as Board Chair since 2015 (nine years).

Volunteers were requested for the various Board Officer Positions and people were selected. This left us with the following Board and Officers (in alphabetical order by last name):

• Brian Clemens – Japan (Board Vice-Chair, new)
• Dorothy Gordon – Ghana (current)
• Emmanuel Nguimbus – Cameroon (current)
• Jill Ratkevic – USA (new)
• Klaus Knopper – Germany (current)
• Michinori Nakahara – Japan (current)
• Ricardo Prudenciato – Brazil (Treasurer, current)
• Ted Matsumura – USA (current)
• Thiago Sobral – Brazil (Secretary, current)
• Uirá Ribeiro – Brazil (Board Chair, current)

I encourage all of you to look at the LPI Board web page to learn more about the new Board.

While the dates and times of future board meetings are at the will of the new Board, the suggested date and time for the first Board meeting is Thursday, August 8th, one day after my 74th birthday.

It has been an honor to work for and with LPI these last nine years, both with the Board, the Staff and the Members. While I am leaving the Board to very competent hands I will not be leaving LPI. As Returning Officer I will be helping the Board find new candidates for the NomCom to vet, hopefully increasing the Board’s DEI goals, and I will be acting as adviser to the new Chair and Vice Chair until they know the duties and responsibilities of the offices.

I also hope to work with the Sales and Marketing groups inside LPI as well as the community groups.

With this I pass the baton of Board Chair to Uirá, and say “Thanks for all the fish”.

Warmest regards,

Jon “maddog” Hall, Board Chair Emeritus and Returning Officer
Linux Professional Institute