Re: User group liaison

Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 02:46:22PM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> Hello,

>> Assisting established user groups to get the resources they need for
>> events and meetings that they are being organized by the group.
>
> Doesn't the SPI liaison guy do this already?
>

No. Well yes. The SPI guy is responsible for allocating financial
resources or acquiring financial resources for the entire community.

My "responsibility" ends there. If they need facilities to meet,
contacts for a uni, anything like that... technically that is not my
problem. If asked of course I would help in any way that I could (and
usually do).

The requested position gives an absolute, known and documented point of
contact that the community can say, "Talk to Selena". Selena then gets
to say, "Hey this is something for the SPI guy or Hmmm let's pass this
to -www and see what they think".

>
>> This may need to be a regional position, with individual people for
>> Europe, North America, Japan and other regions.
>
> Not sure about this part. If it's european, what would be the difference
> between said person and the pg-eu group? (other than the headcount)
>

Groups are notoriously useless as a contact point. That is why there is
only "one" primary contact for SPI for example. I assume the PGEU group
would say hey... user group people, here is your primary contact point.

I leave it to PGEU to determine exactly how that would work.

>> put up with me but has also shown a great attention to detail and an
>> ability to get people to open up to ideas so we can execute our goals
>> fully.
>
> I can't comment on Selena at all, since I've almost never seen her post anything
> until very recently on any of the global lists. Could be just me missing
> things of course (I can't claim to fully read all the mails coming through
> on the lists, though I try as much as I can to at least browse the
> threads), but I did also poll a couple of others on IM. Again, nothing
> against Selena at all, but shouldn't a community liaison be someone who's
> been active in the community for a while?

I don't see you on irc much... are you not a member of the community ?
Point being, Selena (JoshB and Davidfetter can confirm this) is a vital
part of this community. She gets stuff done.

No, she isn't *that* active on the lists but I am not sure how that is
even relevant to be honest.

>
>> Some of the things I know she is a part of or have done.
>
> Which are all very good, and I'm certainly happy to have her
> part of our group of people. But is liaison raelly the right thing?

Yes otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up. I would like to see at
least another half dozen user groups in the US alone this year. Are you
going to do that work? I certainly am low on cycles. Selena can help
insure this work gets done.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake