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

[Bruno F. Souza]

On 04/04/2007, at 17:08, Peter Tribble wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> 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 focussed management and accomplishment of objectives.
>

A User Group community is a place for User Group _leaders_ (not  
members) to discuss how to run their UG.
This has worked very well in other settings, but it needs to be clear  
that this is not a community that interests many other developers.
The Java User Groups (JUG) Community, in java.net, hosts today almost  
200 JUGs, with more then 300.000 developers as members, but only  
around 130 JUG leaders are discussing in the community itself.

Next two weeks I will be running nearly 30 JUG events in Brazil, all  
organized by JUGs that are collaborating because they are members of  
the JUGs Community. UG collaboration is very powerful.

> 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.
>

This is what I was afraid of, that by merging the two, the UG  
community would be simply an appendage of the Mkt community. If the  
UG community is not independent, then UG will simply consider that it  
is (another) Sun program that does not work. Been there, done that.

Bruno.

> -- 
> -Peter Tribble
> http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
> _______________________________________________
> opensolaris-mktg mailing list
> opensolaris-mktg at opensolaris.org

Bruno.
______________________________________________________________________
Bruno Peres Ferreira de Souza                         Brazil's JavaMan
http://www.javaman.com.br                      bruno at javaman.com.br
         if I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe