I would like to take the opportunity to give a personal thank you to Jon for his commitment and the massive levels of hard work he has been putting in over the last 6 months to speedily establish the UK office, ensure our governance and processes are kicked into order and his own rapid progress in understanding our needs and culture. We do notice, and we all know how complex our community is to understand, how uncompromisingly demanding our brightest community leaders are, and how contradictory and passionate our views can be too. ;-)
I'd just like to second this, and to add my thanks to Jon for his very hard work and enormous professionalism over the last six months.
In a past life, I have had my own experience of being a staff member responsible to a group of volunteers, and it isn't always easy. Our situation, where we are not only building our first ever staff team but in many ways breaking completely new ground in everything we do, is a huge challenge, and Jon has dealt with it very well. I am very grateful for everything he's done, and am really looking forward to working with him (with whatever hats I still have after the Board election) in months and years to come.
Chris