Dan Thank you for your open letter. The questions are very pertinent.
I'll leave it to the candidates to answer for the future, but if I can speak for past performance as honestly as I can - The board is composed of 9 people who are actively involved in U2 and give of their time freely. That is of course, a constraint in itself, since by definition those of us who care sufficiently to do this are also the busiest - but there is an old Yorkshire saying, "if you want something done, ask the busiest person". So we have concentrated on those things we can deliver - educational materials, news, pushing for events like the U2 University, the UniVerse and UniData personal editions, the podcasts from Rocket - and feeding back information on the products either from our own experiences or, where our members communicate, on their behalf. In return, we get a great response from Rocket who give of their time to engage in dialog and to listen to that information. We can't guarantee that they will act on it (!) but we do get a say. That's important. Our failing is that none of us are marketing based: maybe it's the nature of this sector, but we are all techies or consultants of various types. That's just how it has played out - I'd love to see people with a wider selection of roles come forward for election. Plus of course, since we don't charge fees, we don't have any budget to advertise our presence! Because of that, we haven't really succeeded in pushing out the U2 message as we would like. But we have tried to make it easier for those who find U2 to get up and running and to work out just what this technology means and can deliver - hence the starter pack and the new incubator series we are launching. (If you have worked with this technology for many years it's easy to forget just how unfriendly it can seem to a newcomer with no background in our way of working, and that's something we are actively trying to engage with. There's no point saying to the world 'take a look here' if all they can find is a TCL prompt!) We are also here to represent the user community, but that is a two way thing. We have about 3,500 members signed up on the website: and if you are the only U2UG member at your site - tell the others! Get them to join, share, and don't be shy about contacting any of us. You'll find us at U2U events, writing for Spectrum, our own blogs and sites - as well as the U2UG site itself. And of course, we steward the user list on which we are talking now. And vote. Please. It only takes a moment. We can't make you talk to us or join in, but we can try to provide the mechanisms for you to do so. This list, the wiki, forums, news and events. But it's up to you - the community - to join in and make best use of us. As a user group we will only ever be as good as the community behind us. Brian Leach, Outgoing U2UG President. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dan McGrath Sent: 15 March 2011 10:13 To: [email protected] Subject: [U2] U2UG Elections 2010 - Request For Comment Hi all, I've posted an open letter regarding the U2UG elections to the nominees. I'd love to see more dialogue around these elections as I feel I don't really know what I'm voting for when I place my votes. http://u2tech.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/u2ug-elections-2011/ Along with this, I also wonder how many people on this list are members of the U2UG and how many actually vote? I've never seen any numbers. I know I'm one of two out of the roughly 20 U2 people at my work who know of the U2UG and am the only member. Not the greatest odds. On the positive side, it leaves a lot of room to expand. :) Regards, Dan _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list [email protected] http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list [email protected] http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
