[osol-mktg] Community Consolidation -- Marketing & UGs

[Jim Grisanzio]

Peter Tribble wrote On 04/05/07 05:08,:
> On 4/3/07, Jim Grisanzio <Jim.Grisanzio at sun.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hello ...
>>
>> I'd like to propose that we merge the Marketing Community and the User
>> Group Community:
>>
>>    http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/marketing/
>>    http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/
> 
> ...
> 
>> So, any thoughts pro or con?
> 
> 
> I'm sort of split, and if that's all that happens I'm against it.
> 
> What I think is flawed with the current structure is the idea that there's
> a "user group community" and that user groups live under that community.
> I think that's wrong. User groups are, well, user groups and ought to be
> first-class citizens in their own right, alongside communities and not
> placed underneath.


Hi, Peter ...

So, are you saying that each user group would be a full community like
the other 40 or so communities we have now? If so, then they'd all have
to get OGB approval.


> Certainly under my understanding of the constitution user groups themselves
> should be completely divorced from communities. I don't see LOSUG, for
> example, as a natural outcome of the the UG community being directed by
> the OGB to go do focused management and accomplishment of objectives.


The only reason UGs are all under a single meta-UG community is that 
there was no other place to put them on the site. There's nothing to say 
that we need any user groups on the site at all, actually. And UGs can 
use Google/Yahoo lists as well so they are completely independent of the 
OpenSolaris site. I'm perfectly happy for that to be the case and have 
never viewed all the activity in the OpenSolaris community to 
necessarily have to take place on opensolairs.org. If we don't put them 
in a meta-community, though, then we don't really have a place for them 
under the current site structure. I know that people want a wiki feature 
on the site and that's being specified right now, so maybe individual 
UGs can take a wiki page someplace and we can remove the UG community 
altogether. That's certainly an option as well. But I agree: the current 
set up can't scale at all.

Jim


> With that in mind, what is the role of the user group community? It's not
> managing user groups, but it can offer support - materials, suupport,
> infrastructure. And there is overlap with what might be called 
> marketing. So,
> in that context, merging it with the marketing community to form an
> outreach community would make sense.
>