[maemo-community] Candidate declaration for Q2 2017 Community Council Election - wicket

[From: David Derby]

Dear Maemo community,

Having turned down two previous nominations for the Maemo Community 
Council terms due to lack of free time, I am delighted to accept my 
nomination for the forthcoming term.

For those who don't follow talk.maemo.org or may not know me very well, 
I've written a little bit about myself...

I've followed this community since I got my N900 in February 2010.  I 
was blown away with how I was able to use my N900 to replace my then 
ageing PC for most of my everyday tasks.  I did use an N950 for about a 
year and a half, but then I went back to the N900 as my primary mobile 
device.  As technology moves on, the N900 is now indeed showing its age 
and I know it won't last forever.  I still to use my N900 whilst I 
continue to search for a suitable replacement that will meet both my 
hardware and software needs.

My most significant contribution to this community is the DebiaN900 
project which aims to simplify the process of installing Debian (and now 
also Devuan) on an N900, bootable with a mainline Linux kernel [1].  I 
started this project after I realised that I wouldn't be able to 
continue to rely on Maemo having been abandoned by Nokia, and what I 
really wanted was a fully fledged Linux distribution.  Although it's 
still not ready for everyday use as a Maemo replacement and I've had to 
neglect it in recent months due to IRL commitments, I do have bigger 
plans for it which I hope to progress soon™. ;)

I am a backer of the Neo900.  In the meantime, whilst I wait patiently 
for it to surface, I've started to look for alternatives and have asked 
the community for help [2].

Although I haven't taken to the world of Jolla, Mer and Sailfish, I 
realise that they play a big part in this community.  To me, the name 
"Maemo", no longer only represents an OS, but it represents a community 
of enthusiastic people looking for an alternative to iOS and Android, 
whilst embracing free software.  We are a small community with differing 
needs and I appreciate that Jolla offers hope to many where Maemo 
doesn't.

If elected, I would like to discuss what we could do to prevent this 
community from shrinking any further and what we might be able to do to 
attract new members.  I would propose a revamped homepage for 
https://maemo.org/.  I believe that it needs to clearly explain to new 
visitors what this community is all about whilst also providing regular 
visitors with relevant, up-to-date news.  I would push that the council 
does more to engage with the community, seek volunteers, ask for 
suggestions, etc.

I hope I will able to give something back to a community that given so 
much to me.

Kind regards,

David (wicket)

[1] https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93878
[2] https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=99357