[Scottish] Committees and mediums

[Chris Nicolson]

I'm part of a student society at Strathclyde University called geekSoc.
To qualify for affiliation to the Union we require a list of aims and
objectives and a committee comprising of at least a President and
Treasurer.  We have chosen to also add a Secretary and Vice President to
spread the load.  The main point I have here is that we have tried to
keep our roles as undefined as possible to avoid one person having to do
all the work (or be seen as taking over the society to others).  Last
year we had an evets coordinator (muggins here) but I recommended that
we scrap that position as Phil said it lead to a "it's your job"
attitude.  The only defined roles committee members seem to have is that
the secretary takes the minutes at meetings, the president does the
welcome and thanks at events and the treasurer banks some money.  A
committee will not magically materialise speakers any more successfully
than a peer run group, it just takes individual committments like the
schedule Ben has posted.  What a committee is useful for is building
our presence as a serious group.  If an email comes from the
president/chairman or secretary of ScotLUG then, even though it's from
the smae person as it would come from a peer group, it will seem to be
more official and (for want of a better term) business-like.  I know
some people don't want to portray an image of a group with leaders
definig what we do but that's the way the world perceives things.

Onto mediums.  There is no reason why things shouldn't be organised or
discussed on IRC.  There are a large group of ScotLUG members who find
this the most conveniant way to get things done.  What needs to change
is the procedure once something has been preliminarily arranged.  An IRC
topic isn't even a good way of announcing something to the people who
regularly visit the channel, the topic is often so long that half of it
is never shown in the client.  No matter what the medium, any decisions
or schedules or volunteering should be announced on the mailing list to
be confirmed and recorded because email seems to be something everyone
can read at least once a day.

On the subject of what LUG should do, well that depends on what our aims
and objectives are.  Even if we don't have a committee we need to exist
for a reason.  Tony, you seem to be keen to point out that you are a
founding member of ScotLUG so maybe you can answer the question.  I'm
sure it's been asked as part of this debate debate already but I can't
find the question or an answer:  What were the original aims of ScotLUG?
Or at least, in your opinion why do we exist?

IMO, we need more meetings in the Livingston Tower, or other suitable
venue.  As has been said, going to the pub has it's place but it doesn't
develope our understanding of linux, open source or other interesting
issues which is what I hope to get from ScotLUG.  Ben has posted a
schedule which sounds good, everyone else should add to that.  At some
point I may pluck up enough courage to speak about something even if
it's "Starting on Linux from a newbie perspective" as I still consider
myself new!

So what do we need to do instead of sitting here?  We need to decide
whether we want a committee and if so should it have defined roles with
people taking full respnosibility for arranging and guiding the actions
of ScotLUG.  We also need to be more disciplined about using the mailing
list for final arrangements and announcements.  Until this debate
started the only thing I seemed to receive from it was a monthly "this
is where we're going" announcement from Kyle, mirrored on the website by
Kenny Duffus.  We also need to realise that if you have knowledge in
something then that probably means that you find the area interesting
therefore other people will to so get up and do a talk about it.  Don't
be afraid of people not being interested, they probably don't know what
they think they know and your talk could change their mind.

Hmmm, I didn't half go on - my apologoes.

-- 

Chris Nicolson
IRCnick: pickle