I'm a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA where I study online community development. In particular I look at the GNOME desktop and have been looking at the way that new volunteer users get involved with the community.
As far as the GNOME desktop goes, I'm the maintainer of MCatalog and help out with GNOME marketing where possible.
You can find more information on me at http://patrick.wagstrom.net/ or reach me via email at pwagstro at andrew dot cmu dot edu.