name: Fernando Paredes Garcia

What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:

1. DrupalCon Sudamerica.

2. Visible integration and empowering of Sudamerican community and other weak regions.

What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?: 

Sudamerican community is vast and very complex, we still have to achieve integration between several countries. There are already successful events like FLISOL.

I need and want to be a Drupal Association Permanent Member because:

1. Position of authority is what you need in SouthAmerica in order to contact communities and having both serious answers and compromises.

2. Closer and confident coordination with people who makes decisions within Drupal Association is, in my understanding, what our president needs for working in a DrupalCon SouthAmerica/Asia.

According to this, my strategies are:
1. To improve communication between local communities. There are only 3 active regional groups from the 12 countries in Southamerica. But according to the actual market, there should be at least 5 countries: Brasil, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Chile in 2009. I'm going to contact and address them to found local communities. I'm then going to follow their progress about having at least 1 meeting a month and how they achieve the ideas translated into objectives, and finally in facts.

2. "Pave the way" for future DrupalCons. Every time bigger DrupalCamps should be the next step after 6 local meetings. I'm going to guide potential leaders in the mentioned 5 countries to brake barriers, they should be able to get sponsorship and perform the other task needed to organize DrupalCamps with success.

3. DrupalCon SouthAmerica Group. I'm going to create such group with both local and international volunteers. It is very important because we need to monitor the process of previous points and coordinate with the president of Drupal Association as main mentor of this multi year project.

4. Global vision. I'll be also open to support countries abroad Southamerica, with the same passion, energy and motivation. Because experience and feedback from other regions is equally valuable.

What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:

I'm co-founder of Drupal Perú (April-2008) from where I have organized 2 main events in Cusco - Perú:
"Software Libre, Mercado y Herramientas" (spanish only) http://groups.drupal.org/node/13395, 25 attendees, 4 hours
"Software Libre para Oportunidades en la Red" http://groups.drupal.org/node/15394#english, 300 attendees, 4 hours/day, 3 days
I have been on charge of getting sponsorship(food, water, place, marketing), inviting speakers, presenting applications, cleaning the floor...
I have also being invited to give talks about Drupal: 5 presentations, 3 universities, 2 cities.

I eventually organize the Drupal Perú montly meeting, and I'm on charge of contacting the speakers from companies and non-profits using Drupal (Development Seed was one of them).

I have 2 years of experience being telecommute freelancer/consultant, which given me expertise to effectively communicate with people around the world, most of them busy customers.

Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?:

I have contributed several modules: Organic Groups Subscriptions(co-maintainer), Taxonomy Based Permissions,  Node Media, Speed Reading Toolkit, Node menu, Region Assign, Google Picasa,  Author Subscriptions, Menu Token, Dokeos e-Learning (co-maintainer), CCK Pseudo-random Field,  Yahoo!'s Upcoming Event(initial developer).
I have also contributed several patches for contrib modules.
I'm founder of Drupal-contrib.org, which provides resources for contributed modules: live demos, translation server, api documentation.
I have also done some minor spanish translations for contrib and eventually give support in IRC.

How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:

11 - 15 hours / month