Tony Tibbenham, an IT manager based in the UK, is joining the OpenMPE board of directors. The freshest face on the seven-year-old organization's team, Tibbenham has already migrated from the HP 3000, making him one of the most unique members of the group. Nearly all other members either were active 3000 users or represented companies serving the 3000 customer community.

Tibbenham believes the 3000 world deserves a representative from Europe. "I remain keen to see MPE remain available and provide a European voice on the Open MPE board," he says in his OpenMPE candidate biography. Plus he's got a new perspective in being a former user. He's an advocate for the server that his company was forced to shuffle to the low-profile duty of historical lookups. "We have no plans to drop the power to the server for several years," he says.

He also shared testimony on the 3000's durability. When he first arrive, the hardware at his company was spinning along in a room where the temperature was beyond 90 degrees. "A couple of weeks later I joined the company, got the air conditioning in the computer room repaired, and dropped the temperature to a more reasonable 19C (66F). The little box just kept spinning."