[advocacy-discuss] [Fwd: Re: [ug-discuss] OpenSolaris User Group Growth]

[Jim Grisanzio]

Moving this thread from the old ug-discuss to advocacy-discuss:
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=31624&tstart=0

Last month we were having a conversation about growing the number of 
OpenSolaris User Groups and the fact that Sun would be contributing more 
resources to the effort this fiscal year. The link above is the thread.

There were many suggestions (and I'll be summarizing them in a proposal 
this week), but a couple involved video and audio and streaming ...

So, my question: if Sun could produce some technical videos as part of 
the overall package that we could offer to user groups for 
meetings/discussions/education, etc, what would be a good topic list to 
start from? In other words, we could record some engineers in Menlo Park 
and other Sun campuses doing talks on x topics. What are the most 
pressing issues to explore?

Also, regarding engineers and presentations: I think it would be a great 
contribution if Sun could send some engineers to participate at some 
user groups and do presentations. This will be a very expensive 
suggestion, but I will be proposing it. Now, there are 50 or so groups 
out there, and I'd like to add another 50 this fiscal year (July 07 to 
July 08) so that makes around 100 groups in total by next year. There's 
no way to have engineers flying all over the world to each user group. 
But, we will be making a serious effort this year to collaborate with 
the Sun Tech Days team to get community speakers for the OpenSolaris Day 
Tour, to have user group meetings at the tour venues, and to start new 
user groups along the tour where none exist today. That will be one way 
for individual user groups to get more exposure to more engineering 
speakers and for more engineers to meet the people running user groups. 
I think the Tech Days tour will be announced soon. Watch for that here.

On top of that, though, I'd really like for Sun to offer engineering 
speakers to groups that have demonstrated significant growth or activity 
or size or something that suggests that it would be well worth putting 
an engineer on a plane under certain circumstances. So, that's where my 
question comes in: what is a reasonable level of activity for a user 
group to argue that they would qualify for Sun to send some guys there 
way for some talks and community activities? I really want to propose 
this. It would be good for the user groups, and I think it would be just 
as good for the engineers to participate at more user groups. We could 
find convenient times (during conferences, visits to customers, 
whatever) that would make these trips worthwhile.

In other words, the proposal I'm writing will be tired. All groups will 
get something (the UG Starter Kit, project spaces, lists, other 
resources, etc) because it's important for us all to focus on new and 
small groups as it is to focus on the bigger groups. But after a group 
gets going and grows and starts putting x people in a room for x months 
in a row and posts x messages from x members, perhaps Sun should 
recognize that growth and do more to help sustain it. My reasoning is 
simple: I know how difficult it is to get user groups started and 
growing consistently, I think some resources could help, and I'd like to 
offer some incentive for all sides to grow and participate.

Thoughts on these issues?

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