On 12-Jul-08, at 8:33 PM, Glynn Foster wrote:
>
> On 11/07/2008, at 3:41 PM, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
>
>> Bonnie Corwin wrote:
>>> I thought there was talk of exactly this - a list for
>>> facilitators. And
>>> for some reason I had been assuming that was the plan - but I might
>>> be
>>> mis-remembering the various discussions.
>>
>> Yes there was talk about this (from me and others) but there was no
>> consensus. I think the OGB should just maintain a list of
>> Facilitators
>> and subscribe them to ogb-discuss and opensolaris-announce.
>> Communicating with the OGB is a key role for Facilitators, so they
>> really need to be on ogb-discuss at the very least. If we open a new
>> list for Facilitators that will be one more list for people to join.
>> We
>> could use the Members list for the time being since that list is not
>> used and it probably has all the Facilitators on it.
>
> Okay, I have to confess that I *really* hate the idea of Facilitators.
> Creating a formal role around this is, I believe, forcing people to do
> something that isn't a natural fit for how most things work. The
> people interested in doing things will pick it up and communicate
> appropriately with whatever body has a natural fit - it's an assumed
> role, rather than a formal role. Over time, this natural group of
> people changes ("You do what you can, when you can"), and a more
> formal role seems like an administrative burden, along with single
> point of failure.
I think that we are perhaps approaching this role in the wrong way.
Rather than the CG's conscripting facilitators to deal with the OGB,
perhaps the communities ought to be divided among OGB members ( or
community members that want to help with governance but haven't been
elected to OGB... details unimportant for this point at the moment )
such that the facilitator role isn't a community / SIG role, but
rather an OGB role
For example rather than having Desktops force someone to be the OGB
liaison, Glynn ( or whomever ) could be in charge of keeping track of
the mailing lists / IRC / putback logs and polling the members of that
community to see how they feel on the issues, and relaying that to the
OGB as a whole.
To use a different metaphor, (and I hope those reading this from
countries with other structure than a traditional Commonwealth style
Westminster parliamentary system can relate on some other level ),
much the same way parliamentary cabinet members are in charge of their
various bureaucracies
-John
