Jonathan Oxer
[Blog]
>> My Linux Australia plans for 2008
Mon, Jan 14th 5:09pm 2008 >> Linux
Hi Linux Australia,
A huge, heart-felt thankyou to everyone who has worked with me during the 3 years I've been President of LA: to those who have served on the LA Committee; to the organisation / mailing list members who have made it such an interesting and rewarding job; to the LCA organising teams; to all the volunteers including the LA admin team and everyone who has represented the organisation at an event; and to all the sub-Committee members.
Although I appreciate the nominations, I will not be accepting any positions on the LA Committee for 2008.
However, I *will* continue to be involved in the organisation. In fact I'll probably end up doing more in 2008 than I have in 2007. Part of the reason for stepping down from the Committee is that one of my stated intentions for 2007 was to make changes to the structure of the organisation necessary to shift the focus from Committee-as-executive to Committee-as-oversight, and make it easier for regular LA members to perform organisation activities in an official capacity. You may have noticed there are 4 motions on the 2008 AGM agenda (http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/AGM2008) specifically related to amending the constitution to facilitate this, with the wording of the motions online at:
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/Constitutional_Amendments
My intention had been to have these changes occur sometime during the year, but for various reasons they were delayed until the AGM. The objective of these changes is to:
1. Clarify that the role of the Committee is to provide oversight, and that execution of specific tasks does not require Committee membership.
2. Clarify the concept of "membership" of LA, with the potential for a multi-tiered membership structure with additional benefits to members.
3. To apply some minor bugfixes to the constitution in terms of legacy wording.
I believe that ultimately the Committee should not be required to actually execute any projects directly: there is still too much internalised by the Committee that could just as well be managed by a non-Committee member, with the Committee merely providing oversight. A perfect example is the Grant Scheme: it has been managed directly by the Committee since its inception, but there is absolutely no reason the Committee should need to be directly involved other than in an oversight role.
This doesn't mean I think the Committee members are incapable of doing these things. On the contrary, they are among the most capable and motivated members of the FOSS community and I fully expect that Committee members will always be heavily involved in specific projects and LA initiatives. They're just the kind of people to get in and do things, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up on the Committee.
My point is that we need to break the assumption that you *need* to be on the Committee to do these sorts of things, and if Committee members are involved in specific projects it's because they have a passion for that particular project, not because they're on the Committee and the task just happened to be allocated to them. And we need to provide a clear path for non-Committee members to get in and help. After all, the phrase we've bandied about for a long time is "facilitate the enthusiasms of the Linux community", so we need to smooth out the bumps and make straight the paths for members who have ideas and inspiration and enthusiasm.
Assuming the membership approves these constitutional changes, my plan for 2008 is to step down from the Committee and to use myself as a guinea-pig to test the process of conducting official LA business without being a Committee member. I'll also probably volunteer to help out a bit with LUV, maybe standing for the LUV Committee if the opportunity arises - which would have the added benefit that I can gain the perspective of dealing with LA from an outsider's point of view.
The area I specifically want to work on during 2008 as a non-Committee member is membership benefits. I've spoken about this in the past so I won't go into it in detail right now, but I believe there are quite a number of things that LA could be doing to provide additional benefits to members including making better use of the "opensource.org.au" domain. I've already done some of the technical groundwork to allow LA to offer "blah@opensource.org.au" mail accounts and "blah.opensource.org.au" subdomains to members, and I intend to resume that in early 2008.
So, looking back over the last 3 years it's been a great time for me personally and I've learned many things. During that time we've seen huge changes in the IT industry that have seen Linux go from curiosity to powerhouse, and LA has ridden that surge in popularity to grow from 800-ish members to the current tally of 1385 with more joining almost every day.
I took up the role with very little idea what was actually involved and although there have been a few extremely stressful situations that members may not even be aware of (James Purser said to me recently that the LA President needs to have "a flameproof skin and the patience of Buddha"!) it's been overall a fantastic experience that I'm very grateful for.
The #1 lesson that I'd like to pass on to the next President is that regular communication is absolutely vital - I'd say more important than any other thing you do. At Pia's suggestion I was fairly good about this during my first 2 terms with reasonably regular reports sent to the linux-aus list. In 2007 it totally fell over and members could be forgiven for thinking we'd fallen asleep at the wheel. In reality a huge amount happened in 2007 but I simply did not communicate it regularly enough to allow people to get a sense of where things were going and what was happening elsewhere in the organisation. That was totally my fault and I accept responsibility for it.
So, in summary: I won't be joining the Committee again in 2008, but I won't be going far. In fact you'll probably see more of me in 2008 than you did in 2007 - whether that's a good thing though I can't say!
Finally I'd like to specifically thank those who have served on the Committee with me over the last three years:
Pia Waugh
Anthony Towns
Mark Tearle
Stewart Smith
Andrew Cowie
Geoffrey Bennett
Terry Dawson
James Purser
Janet Hawtin
Leon Brooks
Steve Walsh
You guys n gals are champions.
Hi Linux Australia,
A huge, heart-felt thankyou to everyone who has worked with me during the 3 years I've been President of LA: to those who have served on the LA Committee; to the organisation / mailing list members who have made it such an interesting and rewarding job; to the LCA organising teams; to all the volunteers including the LA admin team and everyone who has represented the organisation at an event; and to all the sub-Committee members.
Although I appreciate the nominations, I will not be accepting any positions on the LA Committee for 2008.
However, I *will* continue to be involved in the organisation. In fact I'll probably end up doing more in 2008 than I have in 2007. Part of the reason for stepping down from the Committee is that one of my stated intentions for 2007 was to make changes to the structure of the organisation necessary to shift the focus from Committee-as-executive to Committee-as-oversight, and make it easier for regular LA members to perform organisation activities in an official capacity. You may have noticed there are 4 motions on the 2008 AGM agenda (http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/AGM2008) specifically related to amending the constitution to facilitate this, with the wording of the motions online at:
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/Constitutional_Amendments
My intention had been to have these changes occur sometime during the year, but for various reasons they were delayed until the AGM. The objective of these changes is to:
1. Clarify that the role of the Committee is to provide oversight, and that execution of specific tasks does not require Committee membership.
2. Clarify the concept of "membership" of LA, with the potential for a multi-tiered membership structure with additional benefits to members.
3. To apply some minor bugfixes to the constitution in terms of legacy wording.
I believe that ultimately the Committee should not be required to actually execute any projects directly: there is still too much internalised by the Committee that could just as well be managed by a non-Committee member, with the Committee merely providing oversight. A perfect example is the Grant Scheme: it has been managed directly by the Committee since its inception, but there is absolutely no reason the Committee should need to be directly involved other than in an oversight role.
This doesn't mean I think the Committee members are incapable of doing these things. On the contrary, they are among the most capable and motivated members of the FOSS community and I fully expect that Committee members will always be heavily involved in specific projects and LA initiatives. They're just the kind of people to get in and do things, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up on the Committee.
My point is that we need to break the assumption that you *need* to be on the Committee to do these sorts of things, and if Committee members are involved in specific projects it's because they have a passion for that particular project, not because they're on the Committee and the task just happened to be allocated to them. And we need to provide a clear path for non-Committee members to get in and help. After all, the phrase we've bandied about for a long time is "facilitate the enthusiasms of the Linux community", so we need to smooth out the bumps and make straight the paths for members who have ideas and inspiration and enthusiasm.
Assuming the membership approves these constitutional changes, my plan for 2008 is to step down from the Committee and to use myself as a guinea-pig to test the process of conducting official LA business without being a Committee member. I'll also probably volunteer to help out a bit with LUV, maybe standing for the LUV Committee if the opportunity arises - which would have the added benefit that I can gain the perspective of dealing with LA from an outsider's point of view.
The area I specifically want to work on during 2008 as a non-Committee member is membership benefits. I've spoken about this in the past so I won't go into it in detail right now, but I believe there are quite a number of things that LA could be doing to provide additional benefits to members including making better use of the "opensource.org.au" domain. I've already done some of the technical groundwork to allow LA to offer "blah@opensource.org.au" mail accounts and "blah.opensource.org.au" subdomains to members, and I intend to resume that in early 2008.
So, looking back over the last 3 years it's been a great time for me personally and I've learned many things. During that time we've seen huge changes in the IT industry that have seen Linux go from curiosity to powerhouse, and LA has ridden that surge in popularity to grow from 800-ish members to the current tally of 1385 with more joining almost every day.
I took up the role with very little idea what was actually involved and although there have been a few extremely stressful situations that members may not even be aware of (James Purser said to me recently that the LA President needs to have "a flameproof skin and the patience of Buddha"!) it's been overall a fantastic experience that I'm very grateful for.
The #1 lesson that I'd like to pass on to the next President is that regular communication is absolutely vital - I'd say more important than any other thing you do. At Pia's suggestion I was fairly good about this during my first 2 terms with reasonably regular reports sent to the linux-aus list. In 2007 it totally fell over and members could be forgiven for thinking we'd fallen asleep at the wheel. In reality a huge amount happened in 2007 but I simply did not communicate it regularly enough to allow people to get a sense of where things were going and what was happening elsewhere in the organisation. That was totally my fault and I accept responsibility for it.
So, in summary: I won't be joining the Committee again in 2008, but I won't be going far. In fact you'll probably see more of me in 2008 than you did in 2007 - whether that's a good thing though I can't say!
Finally I'd like to specifically thank those who have served on the Committee with me over the last three years:
Pia Waugh
Anthony Towns
Mark Tearle
Stewart Smith
Andrew Cowie
Geoffrey Bennett
Terry Dawson
James Purser
Janet Hawtin
Leon Brooks
Steve Walsh
You guys n gals are champions.
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