[advocacy-discuss] Need help of UG Process

[Jim Grisanzio]

hey ... sorry if this is confusing. We are doing several things at once 
here, but it will get sorted out. :)

Raju Alluri wrote:
> I am reading the new and updated process regarding new UGs and need help annotating some key items.
> 
> Most quotes are from 
>    [a] http://opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/policies/project-instantiation.txt
>    [b] http://opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/
>    [c] http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/governance/
> 
> - [b] says New User Groups go thru project instantiation process.
>   I feel that (I could be wrong) [a] and [c] mandate that a project requires
>   i. a Community Group support (at least one)
>   ii. a Project Team that works on an end goal.
>   Does the above mean that a UG should get a support from one or 
>   more existing community groups or start a community group of their own?
>   Or eventually the Community Group and User Group will be the same
>   and may work on one or more projects?


All the user groups will become projects. The /new/ user groups being 
proposed will start out as projects and need to go through the new 
project creation process, whereas the /existing/ user groups will be 
migrated to project status as part of the merger approved by the OGB.

The Advocacy Community Group will be the sponsoring Community Group and 
the facilitator (currently, me) will send the OGB our approved project 
proposal after we, as a community, discuss it and approve it. The only 
reason I'll be sending these to the OGB is to make sure that the 
Advocacy Community Group has one consistent face to the OGB. The OGB 
requires that each Community Group have a facilitator, so I just figured 
that if one person sends each proposal to the OGB it would make an 
already complex process a little easier. If we want to add 50 or so user 
groups to our community this next fiscal year, we really shouldn't have 
50 new people sending the OGB proposals. One would be better.

So, the leaders of a new user group get together and send a proposal to 
advocacy-discuss, we all discuss it and update it as needed, we approve 
it (or not), and then I'll take it and send it to the OGB, and then we 
get a project if we've done everything correctly. Each step is manual. 
In the future, this will be automated.



> - Can a project be non-code contributing? For example, meetings
>   of Open Solaris members in an area (current user group model)
>   are more towards best practices sharing and awareness building
>   than code/intellectual property sharing. Can that activity be called
>   a project?


Yes, we can have non-code projects. You are meeting. Getting speakers. 
Giving talks. Bogging. Producing presentations and other content. Video. 
Audio. Etc. You need a list for conversations and a project space to 
post/share materials.


>   If we are NOT calling that as a project, will a new UG be fit to be
>   in the proposed model?


The OGB approved the proposed model for user groups as part of the 
community merger deal.


>   If we are calling such activity as a project, then a new UG is nothing but a formal project sponsored by one or more community groups. Is my assumption correct?


Yes.


>   In such case, the old UGs should go ahead and find one or more community groups to sponsor a geo-centric-project and get the proposal to advocacy-discuss. Correct?


Almost. The old user groups are part of the merger package of our 
proposal. They will be moved to project status one at a time via alpha 
order. Actually, they have to move themselves since this is all manual, 
but Eric and I will work with each group to make it happen. It's not 
hard. Since they are already user groups, they are already sponsored by 
the User Group Community, and since the User Group Community has been 
merged into the Advocacy Community Group, than the Advocacy Community 
Group is the sponsoring CG. So, the old user groups don't have to find a 
sponsoring community since they already have one.

In fact, *all* user groups -- old ones or new ones -- need not find a 
sponsoring CG outside the Advocacy Community Group. You can't get a user 
group project space without coming to the Advocacy Community Group. So, 
that's your sponsoring CG. Sell your group there and you are all set. 
Now, in some cases, I'm sure other communities may want to endorse a 
given user group, which is cool, but it's not necessary to start the 
process of creating a new user group. The Advocacy Community Group is 
the sponsoring CG.


> - To look at things from a different perspective, the current UGs are some sort of community groups and we are encouraging them towards more project centric. Is that right?


Close. They are currently user groups within the Advocacy Community 
Group. They used to be user groups within the User Group Community, but 
that community is going away. We are not encouraging them to be 
projects, actually. Over time they'll have to move to project status or 
we can't close the old User Group Community, and we have to do that to 
complete the merger we all discussed and approved, which also is part of 
the OGB mandated community re-organization. I pinged each individual 
user group list about the overall conversation, and I think most are 
looking forward to having their own project space. Most UGs are not that 
active, quite frankly, so this shouldn't be a big issue. We are trying 
to clean up the structure now, so we can grow this community 
significantly. In other words, I'm thinking that there will be hundreds 
of user groups as part of the Advocacy Community Group. All of them will 
be projects.


> I may have more fine grained questions, but any help around these high level questions would be very helpful.

Shoot 'em out ...


> Regards,
> - Raju
> --



Jim
-- 
Jim Grisanzio http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris