ALUG

[Ammo Goettsch]

excerpts from Zundel:

> I think we should consider whether or not we need a president when we
> all get together to charter the group.  I think that Vernard and Greg 
> are both great guys and  obvious choices if we are going to have a 
> president or two or three, but maybe we want to consider some other 
> form of (dis)organization.  

I think this is appropriate. Seeing as Linux was created without centralized
control, I think the group should be created in IT's own image :)

> I think it is important to delegate certain responsibilities to 
> certain people and there will definately be a need for leadership in 
> certain areas (finding meeting places & times, maintaining user lists, 
> mailing lists, file archives), but maybe we don't want presidents and 
> commitees...  (Maybe some people do? )  FYI, I am not a communist or 
> anything like that.

I think committee's are a good idea though, because otherwise it's hard to
keep track of whether every task at hand has someone working on it. I propose
the following power structure:

The members of the users group elect folks who have a specific responsibility.
Call them "Poobah" for now :). So I would nominate Eric for "Users Group
Formation Poobah" and then we elect him. Then he becomes responsible for 
keeping a mailing list of the people who are helping him with that (this
is the way that "committees" come in). It would be excellent if we had
a machine which could be alug.atlanta.com or alug.gatech.edu or something
and then the current Poobah's would be reached by just mailing to there.
For example, if you want to mail to the group formation folks, you'd mail
founders at alug.gatech.edu which would go to Eric. He then disseminates any
relevant information to his folks. This has the advantages that 
1) you dont have to know who is current founder Poobah
2) the Poobah automatically has some control, i.e. moderates the internal list
3) it makes for small independent power structures so that noone goes power
   crazy and stuff gets done
4) when we have a meeting we can ask each Poobah to give a short summary of
   how things are going on the front they are working on, so we know when it's
   time for a new poobah or if maybe some front is no longer of interest to
   the group and should be de-Poobah'ed.

> In appreciation to them both, maybe we can name Greg and Vernard Honorary 
> Grand Poo-Bahs for life.  

Sure thing. Seconded. But face it, people listen to them anyway, there is no
need to actually have some type of "poobah who rules the whole group"
office, it just makes for less democracy and is totally un-linuxy.

So, what do people think?

Btw, I think we would immediately need:

Founder Poobah
Public Relations Poobah (i.e. the chronicles article and net-presence)

Ammo