Re: [Fsfe-uk] A new workgroup suggestion

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2004-02-20 at 22:55, Tom Chance wrote:
> Anyway, enough of my sales pitch.

No need to sell; I'm sold and I suspect many on the list are too.

> At the moment I'm able to give ~1 day a week to this, and I'm happy to do so. 
> What I need to know is that I will be able to get a core group of people 
> giving a small amount of time to start lobbying organisations they're 
> involved or associated with to get the ball rolling. I'm confident that once 
> we can post a few success stories to Slashdot and the like, with a process 
> behind it that geeks can link into, it should begin to grow, at least enough 
> to make a difference.
> 
> At least, I'd rather spend that time achieving something than developing my 
> debating skills by my keyboard!

Well, indeed.

I guess the initial step would be to put together resources required -
like the leaflet you've already used, maybe form covering letters, other
useful bits and pieces - so that people can download, print, mail to
their favourite org, etc. A good idea to start with would also probably
be to compile a hitlist, so that people aren't hitting the same orgs all
the time and that there's some kind of history. Themeing this, at least
initially, wouldn't be a bad idea either: trades unions, community
groups, political parties, and other socially-aware groups are probably
the best first targets; technically they would be the low-hanging fruit
I imagine. 

Although it's unlikely you would be able to round up many people (at
least until the success stories start rolling in...) I don't see
anything in the above which is unpossible, and I don't really see why we
(AFFS) would not take part. I think I would probably want to see the
workgroup called 'Evangelism' or something equally open-ended (the basic
theme is fairly universal) making the OIP (or whatever) project #1,
although I guess that really doesn't matter at this stage. The
alternative - of turning someone away who wants to do something useful -
isn't really the kind of progressive thing we ought to be doing, so I my
instinct would be to say yes, why not. The only thing we can't really
promise is people, if we'd licked that problem there wouldn't be a
problem ;)

Cheers,

Alex.