I've decided to run as a freshman of the Squeak Oversight Board.  I am
privileged, for 2010-2011 at least, to be afforded an opportunity for
some growth and community service.

My first introduction to Squeak was, literally, on an airplane in
2002.  I had been using using VisualAge for the prior 8 years and had
just started some initial sketches of Magma in it.  Squeak, back then,
was still using change-sets as its primary source storage for goodness
sake.  That I would leave ENVY (which, at the time, I thought was
great) for change-sets, and a fast commercial Smalltalk for a
much-slower Squeak VM, and a Smalltalk backed by a big company for one
that was just a small group, I hope, illustrates my position about
Squeak.  Abstractly, my motivation has been to develop and,
subsequently enjoy unlimited rights to operate, a general-purpose
software engine.  For me that's what Squeak has always been; a tool
for wielding the computer.

I'm very grateful we have the Pharo team that has taken on the huge
responsibility of meeting the expectations of the flood of new
developers brought by Seaside.  They've given Squeak a great make-over
and a tough name (not to mention the good language and image
enhancements).  Agassi is right, "Image is everything."  The Pharo
group should be applauded for their work because it relieves
tremendous pressure from Squeak needing to be those things.  The
creative juices of some of Squeak's other deep-thinkers can flow,
unimpeded, toward the goal for Squeak, to be the greatest multimedia
software engine we can _imagine_ for ourselves, without needing to
worry whether it will be readily accepted by outside corporate
culture.

Borne of the same ancestor (Squeak 3.9), it is my hope the two
communities will recognize our brotherhood, and take advantage of the
great potential for advancement of both communities, through exchange
of ideas and code.  Many ideas will only be appropriate for one or the
other, and code-exchange might take some manual work, and possibly
even multiple platform versions to be maintained.  But if an idea is
compelling enough then, by definition, the work will probably get done
one way or another.

I will be the first to admit, serving on the board is uncharted
territory for me.  I am not yet familiar with the processes or
politics, if any.  But I know what I want for Squeak and, I hope my
vision mirrors the majority of the Squeak community.  It's our shared
vision of Squeak, what I believe I hear everyone wants; a compact
engine, on which a customized system can be easily assembled via the
loading of modules.

Elected or not, I intend to continue my work within the community
toward our vision.

 - Chris