The GNOME community gives the Thank You Pants as the annual award for outstanding service, to recognize a truly extraordinary contribution.

The tradition of the pants award is said to have originated with Jeff Waugh[, pictured here showing off his pants SHOULD WE USE THIS PICTURE? WE MISSED IT LAST YEAR: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/AnnualReport/AnnualReport2011/ThankYouPants]. Legend has it that when Jeff was the GNOME release manager he got a mysterious package in the mail. In it was a pair of pants and a letter that said "Hi Jeff and thank you for your amazing work on GNOME, here is a pair of pants." The Pants Award has since become an elite GNOME institution.

This year, the Pants were awarded to an extremely worth recipient: Marina Zhurakhinskaya.

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Marina is an essential member of the GNOME community. While a developer on the shell team at Red Hat, Marina has also made time to volunteer and develop GNOME's outreach programs. In particular, Marina picked up the work that was done from the 2006 Outreach Program for Women and made it into a groundbreaking program for free software. As you can read in another section of the report, the OPW gives women a chance to participate in our community who might not have otherwise been able to. In the course of the program thus far, the representation of talented women in the GNOME community has vastly improved. Marina has worked hard to understand the obstacles that might prevent women from participating and set up mechanisms to remove them. Always looking to improve how things are, Marina took many of those lessons from the OPW and helped improve our other outreach programs too, like GNOME's participation in Google's Summer of Code. For example, through Marina's work we learned that all new contributors can benefit from improved mentorship structures and support infrastructure.

Marina is the most exceptional type of contributor - the kind that inspires others to want to contribute. Because of Marina's talent, drive, advocacy and consideration for other points of view, the GNOME community is bigger, stronger and more diverse. Thank you, Marina!