You've probably seen the press release, but I also wanted to add my own personal comments on handing off the presidency.
What prompted the change?
I've always encouraged volunteers to change positions every 2-3 years. Doing one job longer than that tends to cause volunteer burn-out. So, I started looking for the next president as soon as I took the job, figuring that by the time I found someone, it would be about time for me to hand off the hat
At OSCON in 2004, Bill took on more and more responsibility until he went from volunteering to spend an hour at the TPF booth, to organizing the booth and auction, cat-herding all the volunteers and sponsors. I was impressed, and when Lisa decided not to stand for re-election as steering committee chairman, I asked Bill if he'd be willing to consider being nominated for the role. ("Would you consider it? Are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you really, really sure?") He's done a wonderful job as SC chairman this past year and has demonstrated leadership and vision that convinced me he was the perfect candidate. (And I asked again: "Would you consider it? Are you really, really sure?")
Another motivation for the change is that over the past year it's become clear to me that Parrot/Perl 6 desperately needs a few more developers with energy and motivation to push it to completion. This means that my skills and experience on the development side of the project are actually more needed right now than my skills and experience as a leader.
What will you do now?
Write code. Yay! Particularly, I'll be working on the design and implementation of the Parrot compiler tools. And for even more fun, working to show off some of the cool features of Parrot (which will hopefully also exercise those features and shake out bugs). Parrot is farther along than most people realize, and I have a stack of projects I'd like to implement on top of it.
I'll be attending fewer conferences next year to make more time for coding. I'm also in the process of rearranging my life in various ways to optimize for code.
I'll spend less time answering email. :)
I'll still stick around on the board of directors of TPF and help out where I'm needed. Watching how Bill and the committees are running ahead now, I don't expect to be needed much aside from finishing off the license work I started in 2004. (The words "We'll be fine without you" may be the sweetest sound I've heard in a long time. :)
