Hello everyone!  I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Michele and I was 
nominated to run for the OSGeo Board by Adam Steer.  I started working with 
QGIS in 2008 and since then have grown in my skills set and use quite a few 
open source geospatial tools in my research.  I've been attending FOSS4G 
conferences for many years and really appreciate the work and cooperation that 
this community has.  It is an amazing group of people!  I'm happy to answer any 
questions you might have.

Here's what I posted on the elections page with the manifestos:

Michele Tobias, United States (OSGeo profile: 
https://www.osgeo.org/member/tobias/)

About me
Creativity weaves its way through everything I do. Originally from near Los 
Angeles, I currently live in Davis, California, USA, where I work at University 
of California Davis' DataLab. I love my job working in spatial data science 
because of the variety of things I get to do - research projects, advising on 
research workflows, and teaching workshops. All of these require creativity and 
problem solving.

Trained as a biogeographer and ecologist, I am constantly learning new skills 
and applying them across disciplines. Recently I’ve worked on history, 
medicine, agriculture, and water policy projects. And I get to work with a 
variety of open source tools - QGIS, PostGIS, R, Python, Inkscape… I started 
using QGIS in 2008 while working on my PhD and branched out from there as I 
needed other tools.

My vision
When I’m helping a researcher decide on a workflow I frequently tell them: use 
what works. I’m an advocate for using the right tool for the job and not 
committing to using just one tool. But people need to know what tools are 
available and what each tool is meant to do. I want to help people make these 
connections between what’s possible and what works for their needs.

What you have done within the community in the past
OSGeo California Chapter Member, organizer of meetups, tabling at events (since 
2009)
QGIS US Users Group (since 2019)
QGIS North America 2020 online conference Organizing Committee
FOSS4G (International & North America) Workshops & Presentations (Denver, 
Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Dar Es Salaam, San Diego...)
Maintain a library of open licensed open source geospatial workshops on my 
GitHub account (since 2017)
Lead developer of the Literature Mapper QGIS plugin, a tool for georeferencing 
Zotero citations (since 2015)
Related: Organizer of #maptimeDavis, University of California GIS Week online 
conference Organizing Committee, #GISChat weekly Twitter chat

What your interests are in terms of the board
I can be a bridge not only to academia but also to local and state government 
on the US west coast and have experience with leadership in US-based 
non-profits.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce
I would like to explore options to help people learn about what's going on 
inside OSGeo. There are so many important initiatives and programs going on, 
but it can be hard to know about them and know how to get involved.

I would also like to help connect learners and non-coders to the broader OSGeo 
community.

What role you would wish to fulfill on the board (if any)
I am ready to take on any role I am needed to fill.





Michele Tobias, PhD
GIS Data Curator
Data Management 
Program<https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/service/data-management/>
UC Davis Library

161 Shields Library
(530)752-7532
mmtob...@ucdavis.edu<mailto:mmtob...@ucdavis.edu>
ORCID: 0000-0002-2954-8710<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2954-8710>

Pronouns: she, her, hers

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