Hi, Quim Gil wrote: > Definitely, this is a very good start. I searched "local" by title (no > relevant results) and by text (too much results) and din't find this > page.
Yeah - it's linked off "TeamWorkspaces" - I've added a link to the top of "GnomeWorldwide" too, which seems like a logical place to look for user groups. > A first step into "certification" would be to agree a name for these > groups. :) GNOME user groups. > Another step could be to agree on a checklist of required + desirable > points. Some of them are already there as recommendations. > > - Active mailing list for coordination Required > - Website up to date Desirable > - Responsive IRC channel Desirable > - GNOME Foundation members in the group Desirable (I'd like to make this required - it would be nice for all user groups to maintain a full membership list) > - Agreed contact with the GNOME Foundation English speaker - for the gugmasters mailing list we discussed during the marketing BOF. The idea is to have one mailing list where user groups co-ordinate (announce event participation, ask for help from others, communicate results of stuff they're doing and so on) - the resource should be enormously valuable, if we get buy-in from the various groups. See the Infrastructure section of http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/GuadecBof2006 for more details (and I will be looking for volunteers in September to get the infrastructure mentioned in there off the ground and living and breathing). > - Local press contact Required, probably. And this should be a person. No more mailing lists as press contacts! > - Democratic and non-profit structure (legal existence desirable) Definitely not required. > Perhaps a first question would be whether we need to have something like > an official list of GNOME groups and a checklist to know if your group > is official or not. I don't think so. We should simply have a list of all the groups we know about, but you don't need a stamp of approval to support GNOME in your town/region. The whole point of bottom-up marketing is to avoid any approval process (even tacit or unwritten) and empower people to do things on their own. We want to know what you're doing, to benefit everyone, but there will be no official and unofficial GNOME groups. > I think some kind of certification is needed to > avoid conflicts like i.e. which is the "real" Russian GNOME website (or > are both as "real"?) or risks like some guys linked to a profit company > weaving the GNOME flag for selfish interests in a part of the planet > where it is difficult to us to check what's going on. I disagree quite strongly. We can take out the bad guys one at a time, using the community mark idea. But we need to allow people to self-organise without passing through the GNOME Foundation. > Since organization of meetings, participation in events and fundraising > for such activities are a common and primary mission of the local > groups, I wonder if it would be useful to have a gnome-local or > gnome-events mailing list to exchange ideas and experiences. Now this is > supposed to go to marketing-list but, really, I think many people very > active in local activities can be not interested in many discussions > going on in marketing-list. A GNOME user group masters mailing list is on the TODO list. Language is one barrier, but if we can find one committed volunteer per user group who speaks English, then we can avoid the problem (at least partially). I insist, though, that the foundation is not the place where groups get created or made official. We will be a service provider for user groups - a place for information exchange and co-ordination - not a centralised command & control structure. Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
