Thank you for the opportunity to serve

[Gigi Karmous-Edwards <gkedward@xxxxxxxx>]

Dear All,

I wanted to write a short note to thank all of you for giving me the 
opportunity to serve as a GLIF chair for over six years. I especially 
want to thank Kees Neggers for his leadership and vision for GLIF; you 
have been a source of inspiration to me. I would like to also thank 
Karel, Peter, and Kevin and others at Terena for the enormous amount of 
support and leadership they have provided the the chairs!  And, of 
course special thanks to Erik-Jan and Lars Fischer for allowing me to 
co-chair the technical working group since 2005.  It has been a true 
honor and as I mentioned on the last day of the GLIF meeting in Rio, a 
real career highlight to work with an amazing global community!

It has been an amazing journey to watch the GLIF community grow and 
accomplish so many great achievements. I spoke to most of you personally 
to explain why I felt it was important for me to step down from my role 
as co-chair of the GLIF, while others I did not have a chance to.  As 
most of you are aware, along with my continued research on optical 
control planes, I have started a small business in the fashion industry, 
designing and manufacturing handbags. Although I am passionate about 
both global optical communications (GLIF) and being an entrepreneur, I 
felt that it was unfair for me to hold the important position of 
co-chair without being 100% involved in the GLIF community. I felt that 
it was important for me to give someone who is 100 % involved with the 
GLIF community a chance to help lead the technical effort alongside Lars 
Fischer.  I will definitely remain involved with this community in 
someway and will hopefully see many of you at future GLIF meetings.

I am very optimistic about the future of the GLIF. I am especially 
excited about some of the new task forces in the technical working group 
and their role in helping the GLIF expand beyond NRENs and GOLEs and 
into campus networking and end users. The GLIF community has already 
achieved a great deal in the past 10 years and I look forward to the 
next 10! Thank you again.

Kind regards,
Gigi