[Nominations Open] Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate 2025 🏆

[alyssat]

This issue is to receive nominations for the Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate 2025. This award is presented to an individual who has helped advocate for Jenkins through organization of (a) local Jenkins Area Meet­up(s) or virtual equivalent.

To nominate someone, reply to this issue with the following:

Full name of the person you’re nominating
A short description of their contributions to Jenkins and why they should win.
Nomination Deadline: April 14, 2025

Please note: Last year's winner, Darin Pope, cannot win the award for Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate again this year.

Voting will be open from April 22 to June 5.
Winners will be announced at cdCon 2025, June 23–25.

More details are available HERE.

Award type:
The awards will be virtual credly badges again this year (not physical).

[meiswjn]

Hello there!

I am nominating @StefanSpieker. As a close colleague of him, I can witness of his continuous efforts in advocating Jenkins in our company, but also beyond. Many users have prejudices towards Jenkins which Stefan meets with excellent explanations and showcases. There are few that don't start using Jenkins after having a chat with him about it.

Furthermore, Stefan has organized an internal Hacktoberfest event in 2024, encouraging other colleagues to contribute to Open Source and specifically Jenkins. There were some first time contributions from people that are no software developers originally, for example jenkinsci/job-config-history-plugin#336. While there were not too many contributors unfortunately, it anyhow shows Stefan's efforts in advocating for Jenkins.

For this year, Stefan has been invited as a speaker on two different conferences, where he will also advocate for Jenkins (sorry, in German):

• https://www.rethink-enterprise-architecture-management.de/sessions/case-study-open-source-pioneer-jenkins-als-unverzichtbarer-baustein-moderner-enterprise-it
• https://www.enterprise-devops-summit.com/sessions/case-study-jenkins-in-der-enterprise-it-warum-das-open-source-urgestein-noch-immer-relevant-ist

He also wrote a fairly successful book where he writes in one chapter about Open Source and uses Jenkins in there as an example ("52 Stunden Informatik: Was jeder über Informatik wissen sollte").

So, while Stefan has not organized official Jenkins meetups, I hope this still qualifies as a valid nomination as Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate.

Thanks!
Jan

[MarkEWaite]

I nominate Bruno Verachten (@gounthar) as Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate 2025 for leading and coordinating of the 2025 Jenkins Contributor Summit where over 20 top Jenkins contributors gathered to review the state of the Jenkins project and plan for its future.

Bruno is active as an organization administrator for Google Summer of Code in the Jenkins project.

Bruno was a key voice in preparing Jenkins for Hacktoberfest 2024. He reviewed and prioritized issues and assured that new contributors to Jenkins would have a good experience.,

Bruno leads the Jenkins Platform Special Interest Group. His platform interests have been shown in multiple years of custom hardware displays at the Jenkins table during the FOSDEM conference.

He has served as a Jenkins release lead and regularly submits pull requests to improve Jenkins plugins.

He has presented continuous integration and other software topics at universities near him.

[MarkEWaite]

I nominate Kris Stern (@krisstern) as Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate 2025 for acting as the lead organization administrator for Jenkins in Google Summer of Code 2025. Kris has recruited and coached a talented and dedicated group of mentors. Kris is leading the review of the largest set of contributor proposals ever received by the Jenkins project. The work is demanding and requires facilitation and coordination skills across multiple geographies, cultures, and backgrounds.

Kris actively promotes the Jenkins project and encourages participation.

Kris frequently serves as a Jenkins LTS release lead. They have provided a great service to Jenkins users and the Jenkins community by assuring that Jenkins LTS releases are complete and correct. Kris has been the release lead for security releases. They have also helped others as they learn how to be a release lead.

[alyssat]

Nomination has concluded. Thank you all for submitting your nominations.

Voting is open on April 22, closes on June 5.

The Jenkins Award voting is done by the community. Cast your vote HERE

Award winners will be announced at cdCon: June 23–25, 2025