<html> <head> <style></style> </head> <body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'> Hello All, I write this email so all of our Sugar Labs community members may reflect a little on what their SLOBs vote this year will mean. I first want to say that all seven candidates are very qualified and all in their own ways have contributed in substantial way to try and make Sugar better. As I engage in Educational Outreach work for Sugar Labs, I often find myself as a facilitator between the technical/developer portion of the community and the not so technical Teacher and Educators who are using Sugar or who would like to. In this role I often see the gap between how these two different groups see things. The best way for me to describe this would be to say our developers/technical leaning portion of the community believe "It's an Education Project" as the mailing list states. In working with teachers and educators they tend to see things as "It's a Technical Project". On the mailing lists, on IRC, and at community meet ups this theme of Sugar Labs needing to be more inclusive of teachers is a consistent theme. To remedy this situation I believe it is very important for Sugar Labs to have representation from a Teacher as part of SLOBS for two key reasons. -The first is the direction of Sugar Labs and the Sugar Learning Platform can never be as close to our end users Teachers and Students without it. -Second is the loud and clear message it sends out to all the teachers and educators who use or hope to use Sugar that their concerns and issues are truly cared about. Once again without a Teacher on SlLOBs this may be true in word, but for the best outcome for Sugar and it's use in the classroom,this must be true in action. In this years election there is only one candidate that fits that bill and that is Dr. Gerald Ardito, if there was additional teachers I would be lobbying for them as well. Understand this is not about the individual candidates, they are all great! This is about a decision about the direction of Sugar. Those who already may have a favorite candidate because of personally working with them or they may have like minded technical views. I ask you to just take a moment to consider that decision and ask yourself if the SLOBs election results ends again with no Teacher in place can we truly have Sugar become the "Learn How to Learn" Learning Platform we all desire. All I hope is that when community members are making their selection they will contemplate these thoughts and then make what they believe is the best decision for the future of Sugar. Thank You for Your Time! John Tierney P.S. If anyone believes this should be posted to other lists because not everyone will see it here, I would appreciate if you would pass it along. </div></body> </html>