Re: [Dfey-nw-discuss] Regular IRC meetings

[Tim Dobson]

Robert Leverington wrote:
> I would like to propose having regular IRC meetings (e.g. two to three
> times a month).  This would involve specifying a time (probably in the
> evening) on one weekday, and everyone interested congregating in the
> channel.  There would be a specified agenda and we would go through the
> points and discuss them.  Minutes would then be produced by one of the
> members and the decisions made actioned.
>
> The rationale for this is that currently discussions can take several
> weeks to actually come to a consensus, this is frustrating and wastes
> time.  IRC meetings would result in all points being completely
> discussed withing two to three hours.  IRC meetings have proven to work
> with many other organisations including freenode and Wikimedia.
> Real life meetings are nice, but obviously can't happen as often as IRC
> ones can and also exclude people not in proximity to the location
> (especially when talking about things that affect the whole of DFEY
> rather than just individual branches).

Hi Robert (& all),

Thanks for your email there are definitely valid points.

Things are becoming quite drawn out - I do accept responsibility on some 
level - I am juggling a lot of things (Young Rewired State, DFEY-NW for 
example) and I have been juggling a lot of things in the not too distant 
past (Open Source Schools Unconference, Liverpool LUG, 2morro, Tomorrows 
Web) which obviously all have fixed time constraints.

If anyone would like to step in and help out with the organisation 
between these events, please just get in touch. You may not be able to 
do everything but anything that takes this sort of pressure off me is 
good for my wellbeing and lets me concentrate on the less exciting 
issues where action is needed.

(For instance, I think we should be writing to schools & colleges, 
bussiness people/entrepreurs, prominent bloggers etc asking them to 
promote us within their organisations - when I did this for just a few 
people in Manchester back in about April we got featured on a Manchester 
Evening News blog - not exactly fame and fantastic publicity, but a few 
steps towards it. I'd like to do more of this kind of letter writing but 
I appreciate that there might be more important things that I have to 
prioritise first because only I, or only a few people, can actually deal 
with them - perhaps someone would like to pick up this torch...)

As it is, I don't currently feel that IRC meetings are necessary at the 
moment. Essentially, I don't think it is a terrible idea having a date 
each month when we present where we are up to with various issues but I 
personally am not convinced IRC/IM is an ideal medium for our sort of 
group. (and as Robert rightly said, real life discussions for the whole 
of DFEY is not feasible or likely to be in the future).

I do however, believe that we are sorely lacking in an administration 
orientated mailing list. Though it's not widely known, almost all 
internal decisions for the Debian project for instance, are (or should 
be) discussed on mailing lists. This goes right up to the highest 
echelons (if Debian has such a thing) and recently I understand there 
was a big debate as to whether to open up top tier, private Debian 
administration list archives. Anyway.. I'm going offtopic. Sorry.

I think the step is to get the mailing lists sorted.

I know I've been saying this for sometime and I know there is some 
frustration but I'm prioritising things the best I can. It's sometimes 
hard to realise that administration work to let us grow is just as 
important as actually going out and spreading the word.
This needs to be done and I take full responsibility for it not being done.

I don't think anyone can help directly with this - I need to talk with 
the savannah hackers(sic) on how they can help us reorganise DFEY in 
terms of savannah projects which will allow us more flexibility and the 
ability to create mailing lists for things without any hassle.

The reason it is problematic in the first place was a mistake of mine 
about 15 months ago now; I didn't anticipate this would be DFEY in a 
years time and simply failed to plan for the future! Sorry.

Anyway, we need an administration list, (I'm going to set up 
DFEY-NW-admin but I'd like to keep that for DFEY-*North West* stuff when 
I do) because this list should be about freedom, young people and doing 
cool stuff! ...not clogged full of delightful admin related emails. :)

I'm truly sorry everything is not run like a greased machine and so your 
patience and understanding is really appreciated. Remember, the best way 
to get something done is probably not to blindly criticise already 
stretched souls but to work with, assist and make things better.

I'm happy to talk to anyone, on or off list who'd like to talk this over 
a bit more.

Cheers,

Tim

p.s. Remember, if your truly stressed about something and not thinking 
completely rationally or clear mindly, it's probably best to wait a 
while before you reply.
Here are two examples of email's I regret, and these are just humorous 
looking back, from 2007:
http://ur1.ca/8trk
http://ur1.ca/8try
(you will need to be on the horrible listserv ManLUG mailing list 
unfortunately)