[Ubuntu-US-CA] Use of Social Networking

[Joe Smith]

I think that overall, having a presence on social networking sites
would be beneficial and help promote/inform. It is not right to jump
the gun and set these up before a confirmed consensus has been reached
by the group as a whole, but what's done is done. One of the biggest
issues, and one which I think is unrelated, is that of us not
maintaining our wiki (I'm pretty guilty, I haven't done my one-a-week
for a while...).

As far as maintainability, I think that at the very least, the
Facebook group can be used as a semi-static page with links to our
'official' web locations. I know that I have done a few searches for
groups over the years for linux and other topics I'm interested in,
and using this as another way to drive traffic might be helpful. If I
got a twitter reminder about the meeting once every two weeks, that'd
be good to get me there too :/

I've set up a few facebook groups, and am pretty active on Twitter, so
at the very least Grant has one backup, but it sounds like it won't be
an issue. Anyways, I want to hear more from Nathan and Neal before I
give a +1, but I do think it's a good plan, and thanks Grant for
getting this going :)

Joe Smith
Student Network Technician
Chapman University IS&T



On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Grant Bowman <grantbow at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Nathan,
>
> Thanks for responding.  I understand and share many of your concerns.
> I think our goals are just about identica(l).  :-)
>
> If you want to use the new channels you are welcome to do so.  If you
> don't you are not required to "stretch" yourself in any way.  I think
> even limited use of these new tools for meeting announcements would be
> beneficial with almost no additional resources and better leverage our
> existing efforts.  Rereading the log at
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CaliforniaTeam/Meetings/08November16 it's
> clear to me that you and I were in strong agreement about the
> usefulness of microsharing.  I don't see this as contrary to what we
> agreed on.  Discussion immediately moved to the mail list with Joe and
> James and you responding.
>
> I am happy to accommodate the use of identi.ca, enabling further
> notifications and LoCo member involvement.  All it would take is to
> link the accounts.  As I already emailed you and Neal privately, I
> look forward to getting you both the twitter account password.  Out of
> curiosity I looked at the darcs repository to get the php source that
> runs identi.ca.  http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/Source
>
> Right now I see that http://identi.ca/ubuntucalifornia has few
> subscribers while http://twitter.com/ubuntu_us_ca has 14 including
> both you and I and several others from Northern and Southern
> California regions.  One of the benefits of using the same
> microsharing platform is @replies facilitating conversation.  For the
> benefit of others on the list, the full benefits of microsharing
> extend beyond the use case of "short blog entries delivered to SMS."
> See the URL in the next paragraph for more on this.
>
> I also noticed in a quick search for ubuntu on identi.ca that there
> are some official sounding channels.  Unfortunately they seem either
> empty or (like ubuntunews) the same data is available as twitter
> channels.  Unfortunately whoever is behind ubuntunews isn't following
> it's followers.  The reasons for doing this are I think pretty well
> explained in this audio call recorded as O'Reilly TV available on
> YouTube. http://snurl.com/5ho3e - #twitter4biz
>
> As for the facebook group, the discussion was tabled.  Being impatient
> and seeing (to me) obvious value I created it and am again
> volunteering to keep it maintained.  It's an experiment that can
> easily be deleted if that's the best course of action.  Again this
> helps us leverage our existing communications.  The facebook group has
> 14 members already.  Some names are familiar to me, some are not but
> may be familiar if I knew their IRC nicknames, lol.  I am pretty sure
> there are names on facebook that are unique which is great.  We can
> use messages to inform more possible LoCo contributors.  It is a
> little easier to maintain as at present any member technically is
> capable of updating and adding content.  Again, administrative
> overhead is next to nothing.  In my experience default permissive
> collaboration forums work well as long as moderation is present
> if/when spammers show up.  I will provide moderation until others step
> forward such as you and Neal if/when you join the group.
>
> More follows:
>
> On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Nathan Haines <nhaines at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 14:23 -0800, Grant Bowman wrote:
>>> >> I enjoyed the conversation last night on IRC [1] about using social
>>> >> methods to help promote the Ubuntu and Linux cause in California.
>>> >> I've setup two areas to experiment with spreading the Ubuntu message
>>> >> in California.
>>
>> Actually, I'm a little concerned.  The conversation during the meeting
>> was focused on whether or not social networking *would* be appropriate
>> ways to promote Ubuntu in California.  We only discussed Twitter, and in
>> fact, I promoted identi.ca as being far more appropriate because it is
>> an Open platform, unlike Twitter.  But even then we agreed that we
>> should use it simply for out-of-band notifications of events and such,
>> and that we should discuss the level of detail on this list.
>
> That's a little simplified from my read of the log file, but I am glad
> you expressed this concern more fully.  As I mentioned in the meeting
> I share your concern of having communications methods maintained.
>
>>> Now we just need participation: events, discussion, wall posts, photos
>>> and videos.  All suggestions are welcomed!
>>
>> That's the whole heart of the issue now: participation.
>>
>> The LoCo is working with an utter lack of participation.  We're
>> constantly asked why we don't do more or provide more free stuff, but we
>> have just a small handful of members who are active and resources are
>> stretched very thin.
>>
>> I thought we agreed at the meeting that we would in any case have to
>> proceed carefully with any new medium we ventured into.  It's very
>> important to know what the expectations and scope of any new form of
>> communication will be.  And most importantly, who will be responsible
>> for maintaining each new presence?
>
> Rereading the log I think it's clear we agreed to move forward with
> microsharing and work out the details.
>
> Right now as I set up twitter and facebook I am the defacto volunteer
> keeping them updated.  I'm happy to show other interested people how
> to fill in as needed for redundancy sake as any formal or informal
> organization is well advised to do.  Since all this is public
> information any interested party can see what I'm doing and do the
> same.  Therefore, in a real way the communications are
> self-documenting.
>
>> The tenor of the meeting's discussion was that we need to be very
>> careful not to put out a presence we cannot maintain, nor one that will
>> draw attention away from the mailing list and the IRC channel, which
>> remain our core online presence.  Even our wiki pages are neglected.  We
>> really do need to address this before we can even think about anything
>> else.  Microblogging works because it's an occasionally "heads-up"
>> suitable for subscribing to on a cell phone.
>>
>> I don't wish to quench any excitement or new ideas but I'm very
>> disappointed that we're being stretched even thinner now, and contrary
>> to what we had all just agreed upon.
>>
>> --
>> Nathan Haines <nhaines at ubuntu.com>
>> Ubuntu California Local Community Team
>
>
> I'm glad we are discussing this further now.  I see these new
> communication methods as clearly reinforcing the usefulness of
> existing mail list and IRC methods with minimal effort from anyone.
> The wiki pages will get more effort as the group groups and that's
> what I hope these tools will help us do - expand the group and
> encourage participation.  I see nobody disputing the core online
> presence of the group.  If I am misrepresenting anything I certainly
> need to know now but I don't think I am.  Maintenance is covered right
> now; relax and enjoy these new tools.  If you have additional concerns
> we'll address them as they come up.
>
> --
> Grant Bowman <grantbow at gmail.com>
> Ubuntu California Local Community Team
>
>
> P.S. I'm following the ubuntu-us-ca list digest instructions and
> updating the subject line.
>
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