Hi fellow Squeakers,

I wanted to be on the Squeak Oversight Board a year ago to associate 
with better programmers and therefore become better with Squeak. And 
that's how being on the SOB has benefited me. That's why I'd like to be 
on the SOB again.

Of course, I wasn't elected last year for what the Squeak community 
could do for me, but what I could do for the Squeak community.

In the past year I've been to ESUG 2011, STIC 2012, kept the minutes for 
the board meetings, innovated by posting them as they happen on 
Squeak-Dev, assisted with the release of Squeak 4.3, encouraged the 
creation of a Squeak G+ (which no longer exists), been part of the 
transition of SOB meetings from Teleplace to G+, updated the squeak.org 
site, and annoyed every single one of my fellow SOB members except 
Jecel. There's just no reaching some people.

I plan to do it all again. And more.

Squeak 4.4 will be based on Cog. I'd like to see Colin's Filesystem 
included in 4.4 and the declaration that FileDirectory is deprecated for 
removal a year later.

I'm in the process of setting up a Jenkins server so we can run tests 
more regularly on the trunk, as it's evolving. That should heave into 
view this month. I'm interested in working on an improved Squeak Map 
based on scripts, and I have plans for that, but I can't start working 
on that for a few months, after the Jenkins, and a few more things get 
off my desk.

We have long term plans about shrinking the core image and making masses 
of packages easy to add and remove. There are two things about that 
which are clear to me. It's not the highest priority. We need to create 
suitable infrastructure and get a clear view into the crystal of the 
image to see where the fault lines are for the calving of that glacier. 
The second thing is that when the circumstances are right the progress 
will not be incremental, but a quantum leap. When we have laid things 
out in our minds about how it all should work, I imagine the event will 
be instantaneous - from supernova to neutron star. Bang. All this to 
say, because you don't see appreciable change toward a smaller core 
image, that doesn't mean it isn't happening. I think the ultimate change 
will be a sudden collapse. Like a roof.

I'll say something about the year we had: it's hard to follow Andreas. 
In comparison to him any SOB year is going to look a little dull. I 
think we wallowed a bit and re-found the things we felt were important. 
I think we did that and  this year will build on last year and things 
will move a little more conspicuously. One of these days, Andreas will 
come back, and when he does, I think the circumstances will have been 
created by this board to more broadly assist him in propelling Squeak 
into its future.

Thanks,
Chris