[Web Comm] Re: [OSGeo-Board] RE: [SAC] Committee/list merge proposal - was Re: [SAC] RE: [Web Comm] Re: Migration planning meeting

[Jo Walsh]

dear Jody, all,

Sat, Oct 28, 2006 at 10:18:06PM -0700, Jody Garnett wrote:
> Comment: in reviewing the mandate of the two committee's VisCom seemed 
> rather focused on conferences and the like, and webcom on service (user, 
> community and developer).  I should hope that it is the board setting 
> the communication agenda here and delegating out to us volunteers as needed.

You think that the board should create and impose a decision at this
point, about how volunteers should be organising themselves? In a way
this can be hard because the board is nine different people with
varying levels of awareness of and interest in the activities of the
different committees. To make any kind of collective decision there
needs to be a reasonably precise and commonly understood description
of what is at issue. It is tempting to be reactive and to wait until
people talk about what is wrong with the world as they experience it. 
It is harder to be proactive as one hydra head on a body of 9 people. 

If this who-is-doing-quite-what issue is holding people back from
contributing energy then we-collectively-everyone-involved have the
responsibility to resolve it, yes. I am not sure that "as a board
member" i want to be responsible unless there is something crisis-like
or seemingly irresolvable going on. 

My opinion on the committees is they are little more than vehicles for
mailing lists and next to no use anyway - just jobs to do and people
to do them - and that one big mailing list and a lot of ad-hoc,
archived cc lists would do better. You know my usual line and lack of
followthrough in these structural fantasies, though.

If you really think this is something that the board should be making
a decision about then i would like to ask for a wiki page summarising
what would change and how it would work for the better, that would be
much appreciated.   

cheers,


jo