June 24th will see the NZOSS elect a new President. The AGM will be held across the country with venues in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch connected by Internet Conference. Vik Olliver and Don Christie will be running for President. Both candidates are very well respected in the open source community. The new President will be challenged by several projects such as ongoing patent opposition against Microsoft's XML Word Processing patent, lobbying against DRM restrictions in law, supporting open source in education and promoting open source events. Don Christie: Don is a founder and director Catalyst IT Limited, a New Zealand based software development company. Catalyst specialise in providing open source software solutions to the education sector, corporates and government agencies in New Zealand and round the world. He has lived and worked in three continents. He has specific interest in technology that empowers and enables grass roots organisations and business to extend their potential. He is also a member of the NZ Institute of International Affairs. Don says that "I would not be putting myself forward for this role if I were not convinced that the NZOSS has already achieved a great deal and has an important role to play in the future. FOSS is much more than a philosophy, it runs the heart of communications and IT round the world. It is used by start-ups round the world who attract billions of dollars of investment every year. It is core to the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of developers and companies that employ them. The philosophy of FOSS has now extended to many walks of life, from publishing to architecture through the use of Creative Commons type licences. This is in many sense purely an issue of history repeating itself as we once again discover the value of community over the individual." He is keen to start attracting businesses to become members of the NZOSS and expand its reach beyond the current membership base. He believes that many businesses do not realise just how much they need to protect the systems they have built or run from predatory attacks. He is keen to carry that message through to this audience. He comments that "I see no reason why most of the IT businesses in New Zealand would not have an affiliation with the NZOSS at one level or another." Vik Olliver: Vik Olliver is a software developer from Waitakere. Born in the UK, he emigrated to NZ in 1994 with his wife Suz and daughters Kate & Tamara. He has worked on projects ranging from implantable heart monitors to launching satellites, and from urban self-sufficiency to hydroponics in moonrock. He has also done enough journalism to get the shakes if he doesn't write articles occasionally. Vik is a staunch supporter of Open Source, Open Standards and an Open society. He has persuaded companies and retailers to pick up the Open Source banner, represented New Zealand as a regional delegate at LinuxConf Australia, and took part in the reviewing of OSS guidelines for the NZ government. He looks forward to embracing the innovation that Open Source is bringing to us at an ever accelerating rate.