*Sigh*

[Daniel Robitaille]

On Sat, 2005-30-04 at 09:09 -0400, Michael McMahon wrote:

> - We need to stop and think right now, we are at the abyss, what we choose
> to do as a community now will shape the very group that is here.  We need to
> ALL compromise on our views.  Let's think about that, what is worth fighting
> for and what is not.  We are supposed to be promoting community and we look
> childish - ALL of us.
> 
> So what am I proposing?
> 
> 1. We (the community) need to agree on what our presence will entail.
> 2. We (the community) need to agree on who will maintain the parts of our
> presence.
> 
> 3. We (the community) need to decide on a method of communicating changes
> and process for getting them done.
> 
> 4. We (the community) do not need leaders we need entrepreneurs in the
> group, the true leader will rise to the top because of the involvement and
> the respect of others.
> 
> 5. We (the community) need a framework to assist new people in getting
> involved and feeling encourage to do so.
> 
> Well I think I have presented my thoughts, and I accept that we may not all
> agree.  I am open to discuss this privately or openly.  I want to thank you
> all for reading this and I hope no one is offended.
> 
> Michael McMahon


I totally agree here with these points after seeing another round this
morning of finger pointing and who said or did what.   #4 is really
true: personally I couldn't care less who is our "leader" "contact
person", or whatever name we come up with because it's not the point,
and it's not essential in participation in this group.

I think people have to keep their eyes on the whole point of this LoCo:
we are here to promote Ubuntu, the software AND it's philosophy and
spirit in Canada; us being  a group of people who happen to share the
same geographical location in the world.  And as such the LoCo e-mail
list, IRC channel, etc, should be a social gathering place of people and
ideas to achieve this goal.  Trying to put too much structure and
organization over all this is probably a useless mistake; an active
community will survive quite nicely with only an mailing list and a IRC
channel IF it has active members; and that's the important "if".

There was a wonderful e-mail this morning on the Sounder list
(http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/2005-April/001824.html) about
someone from the Quebec City's LUG and what he is doing doing to promote
Ubuntu via distributing Ubuntu's CD to people and local stores.  That's
the kind of e-mail we should see on the Ubuntu-ca mailing list to
generate discussion and ideas of things individuals can do in their
canadian community.

There was a discussion a couple of weeks ago about someone's problems
with his Bell Synmpatico high-speed network connection.  A few e-mails
later his problems were solved.  That's the kind of technical discussion
we should see here, something that is more regional in scope than what
is usually see in the main Ubuntu mailing lists/forums, and is likely to
be easy to solve by someone who lives in Canada.

Personally I don't really care about the website:  most of the support
for Ubuntu should be done via the main Ubuntu support channels in
english to avoid duplication of effort, and on Ubuntu-fr web site for
the french portion.  Personally I think a ubuntu-ca.org site should be
of a few static pages for things truly Canadian in content and directly
related to this LoCo, and the rest should be a wiki to put in "writing"
ideas and support materials that have been floating around the mailing
lists and IRC channel to help us with the job of promoting Ubuntu in
Canada.

I think it's time to move on as a community, and get to work on why we
are here in the first place.  If we don't do that soon, I suspect a lot
of people who are lurking in the background of the list will simply
drift away to do other things in the Ubuntu community.

And that's my 2 cents (canadian of course)

-- 
Daniel Robitaille
 GPG: http://robitaille.fastmail.fm/pubkey.asc (0x5C19F466)
 IM Jabber: robitaille at jabber.org
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