Linux World Updates

[billt-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 02:07:08PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Bill wrote:
> 
> >Now, the question that is being asked in the GTALUG executive meetings is what exactly is your role in anything.
> >
> You could have always asked me; I'm not exactly inaccessible. That you 
> choose to ask this in a public forum rather than private email is 
> unfortunate.
> 
Yet you have no problem airing out all the issues you have on the same public mailing list. You wonder why the GTALUG board doesn't take you seriously, it is simply you choose to attack every policy decision they make publicly on this list.

If you want cooperation you have to give people a reason to coopoerate.

> >We have not been contacted officially or unofficially by any of the executives of CLUE
> >
> That is an absolute lie.
> 
> I sent an email to the GTALUG Board February 23rd, identifying myself as 
> Executive Director of CLUE and requesting a meeting. (That role can be 
> easily verified at http://www.linux.ca/drupal/clue-people).

As I said in my post, myself and in fact several of the board members are also members of CLUE. CLUE has been around seven years now. When do they plan to elect a board.

All the official CLUE mailings that come to me are from Bill Trayner.

> 
> At this meeting, I wanted to present some proposals (which are still on 
> the table, of anyone's interested) that would result in increased 
> revenue and membership for GTALUG and a strengthening of the regional 
> user community. I also proposed sharing resources at LinuxWorld; I'd 
> thought that a combined LI/CLUE/GTALUG booth would have sent a good 
> message to the public and made best use of scarce resources.

And I know that Chris specifically answered this by stating that the plans for Linux World had been finalized, and if CLUE wants to share resources next year it can be discussed but for this year any changes were out of the question.

> 
> 
> Can we please transcend the petty bureaucracy and games playing, folks? 
> There is SO much that needs to be done, and such a limited amount of 
> resources. There are good people in GTALUG and CLUE and throughout the 
> community, yet Queen's Park is the most anti-open-source province in the 
> country. Why is co-operation necessary to help fix this so much of a 
> minefield? Why is GTALUG the only user group not to respond, let alone 
> work together?
> 

There is no minefield. GTALUG has as its mandate to promote local groups, to develop local relations, and to run several meetings. You are asking GTALUG to expand its scope to include provincial and national issues.

Now this means that we have to consider carefully our role. For example, we have no control over our members or the community at large, so had you put a request to this list asking for volunteers no one would have objected. If you had put a notice of some open source advocacy event and asked the list to support that no one had minded. 

The point though is you are asking directly for help from GTALUG and this means that GTALUG's board must consider if it wants to expand its role. As an informal group we have done it in the past so its not out of the question to do it in the future.

GTALUG is treading carefully simply because we do represent the largest city in Canada, a city that many people dislike simply on principal. We do not wish to tread on other peoples toes even if by accident. For this reason alone many of the things GTALUG does is done in the background without much fan fair. You ranting on this list about not getting any cooperation is the fast way to be ignored.

Now seeing that you have managed to speak to three board members about this topic in the last month or so, and none of them seem to be impressed enough with what you were saying to pursue it, you should start wondering if you are communicating the ideas correctly. 

Bill


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