[oclug] installfest:when

[Andrew Hutton]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 04:15:41PM -0500, Chris Herrnberger wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 April 2001 14:03, you wrote:
> > Again, I would like to stress my belief that if we're going to do things
> > as a group there should be a RFV (request for volunteers) and a committee
> > formed.  The event should be registered with the board and approved as an
> > 'oclug event'.  Otherwise it's just someone running their own little
> > show, and this is one of the major reasons groups fall apart.
> >
> Sure I understand that and that is the dualism that I posted my concerns 
> about on the oclug-board-list Andrew. It will be a real challenge from now on 
> to get things done though if this is the only perspective as it cripples 
> individual enthusiasm and volunteerism. Please do think carefully about it.
> 
> While I fully understand your desire to control OCLUG activities it will be 

Whoa... not control.  If things are organised then we have services we can
take advantage of, things like mailing lists, others who have had similar
experiences etc.  All things you can't do if you just randomly start
planning something without some kind of call for interest or such.

> control is to allow individual efforts to reach maturity as in the CAP 
> project and then OCLUG can choose to endorse it or not once a project has 
> shape and function. Finally the third alternative is to have officially 
> sanctioned OCLUG projects right from the get go that are subject to the 
> overhead you mentioned. What ever route is selected and there can be many of 
> the above, in no case should the burden of beraucracy stifle creativity for 
> the sake of control. The process is the issue. 

Having an RFC process is hardly stifling, it encourages contribution and
clarifies intent.  If something is going to be an OCLUG effort, it should
be open to all and a public RFC and some review time is an excellent manner
to do this.  It's not even that formal but allows consistency.

-- 
Andrew J. Hutton, 
Ottawa Linux Symposium, International Linux Developers Conference
http://www.linuxsymposium.org/    July 25th-28th, 2001