From novice to Community Manager

As of March 28th, 2018, my contract as Community Manager for LOPSA started. Indeed, of all the adventures I've had in openSUSE, this is the biggest yet. Many readers are probably wondering how my position in LOPSA can be considered an openSUSE adventure. In short, without openSUSE it almost certainly wouldn't have been possible.

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, as thanks to the openSUSE Community. And to invite the openSUSE Community to join me!

To join, sign up at https://lopsa.org/Join-or-Renew and apply the coupon-code 'OPENSUSE' at checkout. You can also email me directly at community@lopsa.org with any questions, comments, or suggestions. 

Thank you openSUSE Community!

I could go on at great length about the numerous valuable things I learned over the years of my participation in the openSUSE project. To do so, however, is beyond the scope of this article and would lead it to be entirely too verbose. That story is for a later time.

The openSUSE Community is full of so many wonderful people, full of energy, passion, skill, and good-will. Volunteering with openSUSE has afforded me some of my best and most memorable experiences in my adult life. It's been a privilege to work with such exceptional people, and my life has certainly been enriched by it.

To give full credits would be a long crawl, but a couple pivotal figures I feel must be mentioned. 

• Drew Adams is a long-time friend whom I first met in meat-space at a friend's Birthday. He got me involved with the openSUSE Project, showing me I didn't need to be a programmer to contribute. As a current LOPSA board member, he alerted me to the Community Manager position, which thankfully due to the involvement he engaged me in so many years ago I qualified for. 
• Bryen Yunashko was a member of the openSUSE board when I began participating in the Project. He encouraged me to represent openSUSE at the 2011 Novell Brainshare Expo in Salt Lake City. He also helped me to arrange the means to get there. At the time I remember arguing for my own lack of experience and knowledge against this. His vehement encouragement pushed me to go and showed me I had not been giving myself enough credit. 

Join me and the LOPSA Community!

LOPSA is a great community and organization already. My appointment as their first Community Manager signals an upshift to more dynamic expansion. Besides expanding our Membership and Chapters, we are working on deals and alliances to afford more benefits to our Members. Currently, I'm negotiating a number of initiatives with the Linux Professionals Institute (LPI). In conjunction with our newly revamped and relaunched Mentorship Program, we are angling to provide learning opportunities to advance our Member's careers. 

I want to invite you, my friends and peers to join me at LOPSA. Now is a very exciting time to get involved with huge developments on the horizon as we move forward to becoming a much more dynamic organization. I hope that we can inject a healthy dose of the openSUSE spirit into LOPSA and have a lot of fun. 

To join, sign up at https://lopsa.org/Join-or-Renew and apply the coupon-code 'OPENSUSE' at checkout. You can also email me directly at community@lopsa.org with any questions, comments, or suggestions.