CANDIDATE FOR SECRETARY

peter honeyman

i am completing my third term on the usenix board of directors, and hope to be elected to my fourth (and final) term (according to our term limit rules, which, btw, i support).

in the past, my candidacy statements have covered my accomplishments in the last term, and my plans, hopes, and dreams for the next term.

but this election is special: an alternate slate to the one proposed by the usenix nominating committee which is supposedly "sage-friendly" has been put forward and you, as usenix members, are being asked to vote for that slate. the goal would be to address some of the long-standing issues that have frustrated people among and close to the sage leadership.

so instead of discussing my contributions as a volunteer director of usenix, i will focus on the sage and usenix governance issues.

i have always been a strong supporter of sage. i have voted in favor of every sage initiative brought before the board, and have endeavored to persuade my colleagues on the board to be equally supportive. and they are: to my knowledge, absolutely every request brought to the usenix board by the sage leadership has been approved.

the origins and breadth of the present conflict are not the issue. now, notwithstanding my support and admiration for sage, it will not be good for either usenix or sage if the "alternate slate" is elected. usenix' success is based on one thing and one thing only: the quality of the papers at our conferences. for better or for worse, that determination is made by the very folks who publish at our conferences. if they choose to submit their best work elsewhere, then our conferences will slide into irrelevance and obscurity.

and a usenix board made up of people whose agenda is fixing the sage problem will not contribute to usenix' continuing excellence.

building our scholarly reputation has always been my primary goal as a usenix director, and we have had a lot of success on my watch, but any academic knows that it is a lot easier to destroy academic reputation than to build it.

so, if you plan to vote for directors that will help usenix succeed--and usenix' success is sage's best hope for the future--then i would urge you to elect the following people to the usenix board:

kirk mckusick for president
mike jones for vice president
peter honeyman for secretary
darrell long for director
avi rubin for director

these are the people who have proven through their selfless dedication of time and energy the ability to build usenix' scholarly reputation. if we diminish that asset, we destroy something very difficult to replace. that does not help sage, and it does not help usenix.

thank you for reading this whole thing. i apologize for its length.

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