-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all, I remember e had this discussion over a year ago. At the time we had three people (including me) volunteering to help out and clean the list.
However, it went nowhere, because we did discuss the conditions and future plans, instead of getting to work with the obvious. Here is what I'd like o propose: * Start to allow the volunteers to clean up the list right away. I’d love to go through the lists and simply clean them from dead links. That would improve it by a good deal. * Lets define, what are simple criteria that need to be met, in order to be on the list. I'd say, working web-site with at least one page that describes the OOo related services and that can be linked to. The other criteria that are listed in the columns of the specific list. * Lets work though any backlog of "applications" for the list that needs to be addressed. * Then we can discuss what the technology or process should be in the future. A few comments: * I'm not sure what need there is for an 'automated' system or database. If we keep it simple, the entries do not require much work. I like the idea of soliciting corrections from the users, that go to the maintainers. I don't know the infrastructure how the websites are built, but we could add the contact info, (contact name, phone, address, and e-mail- all public info anyway) in a comment or some other fashion that is not visible to the end users, but easily accessible and editable to the maintainer. * I believe charging for listing is not the best of ideas, because it does discriminate against small/new/low on capital businesses. Also, the value of any fee is different in different countries. $100 in the US might be a small fee, where in Bangladesh it might be a months income. Not to mention, the hassles incurred by maintaining a payment system with no substantial revenue. All it achieves is a punishment for those that want to help the users. * I think a central list is better than a segmented one by region. What do you want to do with those organizations that support multiple regions? Do they have to convince every single region maintainer to be listed? That does not mean that each regional OOo organization might maintain it's own list and ideally they should be in sync (and the maintainers be in contact). * I also believe the list should be free of references of contributions, etc. It will always be inadequate and any claim of contribution must be vetted for validity, which costs extra resources that can be used much better. Let the companies by themselves provide PR about their contributions. I think a company that helps many users is as valuable as one that does pay a developer or contributes code or documentation. At the end we need to make this the best tool for the end-users and not the best tool for the developer community. If we want to recognize contributions, I'd say we would be better off to have an annual contest for outstanding contributions with nominations of candidates and a small board that does rank the list (or a digg kind of site that lets the community rank it). Invite the winner organization to the OOo conference (paid trip, paid by a sponsor) for getting a medal and write some press release about it. * I'm not sure if service provider certification is a good idea. It needs a lot of resources, and is of little value to the end users. I'd rather encourage service providers to write stories together with their clients and do post those on a blog or as part of the OOo Newsletter. Lets develop a standardized questionnaire that includes the basic info, plus amble of space for the individual story. As a condition, I'd say the name and address/link of the service provider and the OOo user must be present and the OOo user must provide a contact (name address, phone and e-mail) to check the validity and to clarify questions. Focus on what was done and how the end user benefited from it, not so much on how "great" the service provider was. A little editorial work and great content for the newsletter arrives which helps OOo, the service provider community and OOo as a product. It also gives the press/blogger community a host of user implementation stories to write about in local papers and to expand the stories. Enough for Sunday night Kaj - -- Kaj Kandler Conficio - http://www.conficio.com/ Phone: +1 (781) 632 5773 *** Technical support for non technical users of OpenOffice.org *** *** http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/ *** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFHSg5CRDUvrJRNjTARAmoJAJ9PaQvL1BvGCVOBpEkxLda3wBvMQgCfUSAP IBXnEa1vpRH3VluLqoHkQBA= =OHr6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
