[osol-mktg] Re: [ug-discuss] Community Consolidation -- Marketing & UGs

[Jim Grisanzio]

Hi ...

Miles Nordin wrote On 04/26/07 05:03,:
>>>>>>"ad" == Alan DuBoff <alan.duboff at sun.com> writes:
> 
> 
>     ad> I'm not sure if my user group community is defunct or not, I
>     ad> didn't responsd to any repeated inquiries there either, so it
>     ad> must be...:-/
> 
> The list I was on, ug-nycosug at opensolaris.org, just got removed.  It
> might have been nice to send a ``we're removing this list because
> ______'' mail to the list before deleting it, but no worries, I
> figured it out. :)


Still checking on this, but I see from the forums Bill Rushmore pinged 
the list on 3/24 asking for new leaders or the group should be deleted:
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=27020&tstart=0


> I'm involved in several users' groups in the NYC area that work really
> well, but I think maybe the group needs to be somewhat independent of
> the vendors it discusses, like NYLUG, NYCBUG, and Unigroup are.
> Sometimes vendors like IBM or Apple give these groups meeting space,
> and sometimes Unigroup makes ``field trips'' to Sun, but all those
> groups run their own mailing lists, web sites, and board elections.


Some OpenSolaris UGs run their own lists as well. And we are perfectly 
happy to just list those groups with a link within the UG community.
The only thing Sun is providing here is a list and page. Now, I hope to 
offer the individual UGs project spaces of their own so they would have 
more flexibility with the site. But if they want to host their own site, 
that's cool, too.


> Further, I'm completely uncomfortable being labelled an ``OpenSolaris
> Advocate,'' 


You wouldn't be labeled anything.

The UG /Community/ and the Marketing Community would merge to become the 
Advocates Community (or whatever the name) which would be bigger, 
different, and more diverse than the previous two communities were. 
However, each /individual/ user group would keep its own name and become 
a project that the Advocates Community would then endorse. Other 
communities could also endorse them as well. The individual user groups 
not only keep their independence but they get more options and 
flexibility and a higher profile in the process. I would suggest that 
many UG leaders would become active leaders in the new merged Advocates 
Community, but as a practical matter probably not all.


>because, although yes I do tell people why I use Solaris
> and why I think it's better than Linux and BSD, I also spend a lot of
> time complaining about the performance of Solaris or the frequent
> misunderstandings about how much of Solaris is actually Open.  I do
> both. 


This is perfectly normal. I see this expressed on opensolaris.org lists 
all day of every day.


>For example, I held an installfest for SXCE and tried to
> convince all my friends to come, but while we were opening cases to
> move jumpers for an OpenPROM upgrade, or waiting for DVDs to spin, I
> talked about what it means to ``pull a Darwin'' and about all the blob
> drivers creeping into Linux.
> 
> I expect users' groups to be like cancer support groups or group
> therapy, for people suffering/enjoying some large complicated device,
> not for evangelism, not for ``cancer is great!'' or ``you should get
> married and fight with your wife, too, like me!''
> 
> Calling me an ``Advocate'' or an ``Evangelist'' makes me think I'm
> either a Happy Dog, or I'm collecting a paycheck.  so I think maybe
> these Sun ug's are not what I expected, are something different from
> NYLUG/NYCBUG/Unigroup.


There are no "Sun" OpenSolaris User Groups. There are only OpenSolaris 
User groups. Some are hosted here with a few pages and a list, and a 
couple have their own sites and use Google and/or Yahoo. I'm I'm sure 
there are a few we don't even know about. Now, as a practical matter, 
since the OpenSolaris community is still very young, most of the active 
and larger groups have a lot of Sun employees who participate and/or 
lead the groups. But we are starting to see that diversify, and the 
trend will only increase in the future.



> Nor do I want the organizational structure of any users' group whose
> meetings I attend to be infiltrated by salesmen.  


The only organizational structure we currently have in the UG community 
is a community space on opensolaris.org that hosts a bunch of web pages 
and presos and lists and one meta-list (ug-discuss) for groups to talk 
to each other for the leaders to talk to each other. That's it. 
Everyone's pretty much on their own.

Part of what I'm trying to do is carve out some space in the OpenSolaris 
Community for potentially large numbers of people around the world, many 
of who are not hard core kernel developers, to participate in the 
community under the OpenSolaris Constitution. It's that simple.

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/governance/

The only way to have a voice in how the community is run is to 
participate under the system we all just approved. If that's not 
appealing, that's fine. You have the option of hosting your own website 
and list for your user group, and I'll just link to you so others in the 
community can see you. Or, you can host your own infrastructure but also 
participate on ug-discuss in meta-community issues. This already occurs, 
actually, and it's a perfectly reasonable model that offers a great deal 
of flexibility.

You only get a voice if you actively participate, though. No one has 
influence from the outside. Look at what just happened during the 
OpenSolaris elections. Many months ago, the OpenSolaris Tech Lead, 
Stephen Hahn, pinged all the community leaders to generate a list of 
their contributors and core contributors. The UG Community responded and 
offered a very large list of people from dozens and dozens of UGs around 
the world. But did they actually vote in the election? Very few. 
Influence gone. So, we have the numbers here to make a difference, and I 
argue we can grow /substantially/ larger. But we need to participate. 
It's our responsibility, actually.


>This trips a big
> switch in my head that helps avoid wastes of my time.  The users'
> groups I do attend _do_ often have talks from companies selling
> something, but they have organizers that help filter sales and
> marketing folk before they use my attention.


I'm not aware of Sun sales guys doing sales pitches at UG meetings. But 
if they are, cool for them because I can only assume that the local 
group invited them to do so. That's their decision. I sure as heck 
didn't send them. Remember, the management and implementation decisions 
of all user groups is 100% local. Besides, if you look at the content 
that is being presented at most groups, I think you'll see that it's 
pretty technical:

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/os-presentations/

In general, though, I've been a strong advocate of all groups at Sun 
getting involved in OpenSolaris /as long as/ they do their work from 
within the community and not market to the community from the outside. 
Everyone has to earn their way in the OpenSolaris Community and 
participate openly.


> Now, the talks I've attended through Unigroup's trips to Sun have
> certainly not been wastes of time.  They've been among the best.  But
> to me this separation seems like it might be important to the
> legitimacy of the group, and its consequent ability to retain members.
> 
> Keeping our NYC users' groups outside Sun will also solve the problem
> we had on ug-nycosug, where we had a mailing list but no actual group
> to use it.  At best, we had Brian Gupta and I discussing the
> possibility of meeting right before the mailing list was quietly
> deleted.

I'm perfectly happy for the NYC UG to remain outside Sun, just as the 
other 50 or so groups are and have been all all along. There's no way 
for them to be inside Sun, actually, since our budget for this is 
exactly zero. Some groups choose to take advantage of some web/list 
hosting that the OpenSolaris community provides as a part of the 
opensolaris.org infrastructure, and some do their own thing on Google or 
Yahoo. Either way is fine with us.

Regarding the NYC UG list, it was not quietly deleted. Why would you say 
such a thing? The former leader pinged the list asking for new leaders 
since he was moving.

http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=27020&tstart=0

Perhaps the list was deleted as a simple, honest mistake. I'm not sure. 
I know Bill, he's a great guy, and I'll find out what happened. If the 
NYC guys want a list, you are more than free to have one. Please send me 
the names and OpenSolaris IDs of the people you'd like to manage the list.

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