Who am I?
Hi! My name is Nathan Haines, and I’m nominating myself for re-election to the Ubuntu Community Council.
I’ve worked in IT professionally since I was 15. Now, I do freelance support as well as technical writing, and professionally writing and translating fiction.
I have been a very happy Ubuntu user since a couple of weeks after Ubuntu 5.04 came out. I’d used Linux a decade before that, and was fascinated by it, but Ubuntu was the first time it seemed polished enough and reliable to not only be productive on my laptop as the main operating system for the span of a release, but also supported upgrades. It’s been my primary operating since Ubuntu 6.10, both personally and professionally as an IT professional and a technical and fiction writer.
I quickly realized the Ubuntu community was as warm and friendly as was promised, and I saw this as a perfect opportunity to increase my Free Software advocacy. So in 2007, I joined the nascent Ubuntu California LoCo and have been a staunch advocate for Ubuntu ever since.
I’ve been a part of the Ubuntu community since 2005, and an Ubuntu member since 2008.
I’ve been a core member of the Ubuntu California LoCo since its inception and spent time as its leader.
As a LoCo member, I not only participated in IRC but also forged close relationships with local Linux User Groups and conferences.
I became a member of the Ubuntu LoCo Community Council (LCC), and later, a member of the Ubuntu Community Council when it needed rebuilt. We took on LCC duties until things were stable enough to reestablish the LCC, which is now flourishing and revitalizing the LoCo teams project.
I have run the Ubuntu booth at SCaLE for 18 years and established the first large UbuCon as well as hosted the first UbuCon Summit at SCaLE, and helped with the first UbuCon Europe events.
I have been a public speaker and event organizer for Ubuntu at SCaLE and UbuCons and Ubuntu Summit, including an opening talk at UbuCon Summit 2023 in Riga.
I have written blog posts, magazine articles, and a book about Ubuntu. I was a tech reviewer for the Ubuntu Phone segments of The Official Ubuntu Book and wrote Beginning Ubuntu for Windows and Mac Users, now in its third edition.
I am the primary moderator of /r/Ubuntu on Reddit, and have kept it a consistently friendly and welcoming place (although the subreddit community deserves credit for embracing that goal). There is constant feedback from new users that this is their first contact with the Ubuntu community or sometimes any Linux community, and how much they appreciated the warm reception.
I succeeded Alan Pope as the English voice for uNav for the Ubuntu phone.
I created the beloved Ubuntu Through The Years video shipped with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It only took 2 days for viewers to start realizing that the time in the desktop screenshots match the Ubuntu versions they were showcasing. 
Why do I want to be re-elected?
The Ubuntu community is a dynamic community unlike any I’ve ever seem formed around a technical product, comprised of both amazingly smart technical wizards and incredibly cheerful advocates and a ton of happy users. I’ve never seen such a vibrant and friendly community last for 22 years without becoming cynical and jaded. And as the initiatives that we’ve seen or started begin to grow and take shape, I want to be part of the community governance. A reminder of where we started and what we hold as our core goals, while encouraging new contributors and directions to flourish.
At 22 years, communities must adapt and evolve, and I would like to continue being a voice of old wisdom while continuing to work with community efforts both old and new.
I want to help the Ubuntu community to continue to improve, for example:
I want to help foster Ubuntu’s unique goal of remembering the human in interactions as we adopt new technologies for communication, including very careful, but thoughtful navigation around AI and LLM technologies while we still focus on human ingenuity. Ubuntu is Linux for human beings, after all.
Reddit continues to be a first contact with the community for new many Ubuntu users and I want to continue to improve that experience. I like to think of it as a frontier outpost, but also a gateway into the greater Ubuntu community as well.
Collaboration between the Ubuntu community and Canonical continues to be healthy and more enthusiastic, and I hope to continue to encourage this.
I want to continue to encourage new Ubuntu contributors from the wider community as well.
I want to improve the ease of Ubuntu advocacy, specifically in the area of documentation (which has greatly improved in the last couple of years) as well as community-oriented ways such as merchandise and other ways to proudly show off the Ubuntu spirit.
We’re beginning the journey to Ubuntu 28.04 LTS, and there are so many new frontiers ahead. UBports is as strong as ever. Snaps continue to pick up steam. AI is changing how we interact with computers, and the Ubuntu community continues to grow in so many different ways. We have a multitude of teams filled with volunteers overseeing the community, and it has been a continual pleasure to drop in on meetings where leaders are actively looking out for their communities, and moderation and guidance is always done by presuming best intentions and with the hope of fostering positive participation by community members. Moderation is a thankless job, and it’s been edifying to see how hard everyone works, and to be able to give some of the encouragement that is so often missing from these roles.
I look forward to helping to support and encourage the Ubuntu community in what has been an unprecedented 22 years of unparalleled effort to make computing available and accessible to all right out of the box, and to welcome all contributors, both technical and non-technical, so that we can all help each other in a positive and uplifting manner. Whether we’re learning about computers, or are building something special, or we just need a reliable system to get day-to-day computing stuff done, Ubuntu is for all of us, and it would be an honor to continue contributing to that on the Community Council.