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

[Robert Leverington]

Thank you for your response.

On 2009-08-10, Tim Dobson wrote:
> 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...)

This is what individual branches should be doing in my opinion.  DFEY-SE
won't be meeting until October so we'll start doing stuff in the south
east properly then.

> 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).

Do you have any suggestions for alternative real time mediums?  You've
already ruled out IRC/IM and meeting in real life is not feasible.  The
only other thing I can think of is VoIP, but that doesn't seem ideal to
me at all.

> 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. :)

We are only using this list for admin stuff because there are no other
lists.  Personally I don't see the advantage of a dfey-nw-admin list
since as soon as there is a dfey-general-discuss list this one will
probably quiten down signficanlty.  It is not my place to offer my
opinion on NW matters, however I do believe we agreed at some point to
have new mailing lists dfey-se-discuss and dfey-general-discuss -
please correct me if I'm wrong.

> 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 understand this, but it's difficult when very few of us have the
ability to do a lot of this admin stuff.  Please also see my other
e-mail about moving some things to Dogfish, doing so will mean you have
more time to spend doing other stuff and technical changes can be made
more promptly.

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

-- 
Robert Leverington
http://rhl.me.uk/

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