I'm a Systems Administrator at Legal Aid Manitoba, and a developer of LTSP. I've been a Unix user since 1985, and purchased my first copy of Yggdrasil LGX in 1993. Yes, I still have the disk. Yes, I also still have the installation manual.
I wouldn't consider myself to be particularly good at graphics stuff, since I mainly do “systems” type programming (PAM modules, etc.), but I know my way around a C compiler, and can do some packaging stuff for Debian/Ubuntu. I'm interested in MATE because my users at work are used to the “unattractive and hard-to-use” Gnome2 desktop, and I want to try to provide them with what they're used to.