[ubuntu-za] Ubuntu-ZA Moving Forward

[David Rubin]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Walter Leibbrandt
<walter at translate.org.za> wrote:
> Hi Ubunteros,
>
> I'm not really sure what you would want more than a wiki. The ability
> for someone to get involved 5 minutes after finding the page on Google
> is a very important factor, IMO. From what I've read on this thread it
> sounds like most of the respondents agree that the wiki is necessary.
> Why then complicate the setup with a CMS system too? Can't the wiki be
> set up to provide the needed news functionality as well as the other
> extras? Which wiki to use is another topic, but we probably still have
> the styling of the old (MediaWiki) that we can reuse.

I think the important part is the news and home page is something that
generally new users wouldn't feel comfortable in changing any way. ;)
In the past all wiki edits were done by people that were some of the
more active ubuntu-za members.

Wki's aren't designed to break bounds for styling their pages and we
didn't get any thing that could cool and function as well as a simple
CMS. (/me points to glugs [1] setup which I think works rather well).I
see CMS with a decent news section empowering people that don't have
their own personal blogs to write report backs for events we host.

Using both seems like the best of both worlds with the easiest
maintenance great front page with the ability to include very custom
looking pages as need with linking to a wiki of some shorts. Using
wiki.ubuntu.com has the added benefits of being able to integrate with
their reporting styles as well as single interface to learn.

While I understand that switching away from media wiki might be hard.
Moin is what the  {wiki,help}.ubuntu.com community uses. This way it
allows people to use their skills to help maintain any of the official
wiki pages. Very desirable benefit of using their wiki.

Something about all these solutions is all require login/access. It
has been on the cards to move to wards openid authentication. Which is
what Launchpad, Wiki, and help all use so having using sign up to LP
could help ;-p.

We still need to make the choice whether or not to block other openid
providers...

> As far as the financing is concerned, I would again recommend the
> simplest solution: when we need money for something (anything), we ask
> the list for donations. I'm pretty sure between the lot of us, there are
> few targets we won't easily reach. Donations can then be coordinated
> directly with the person who will be using those funds. Maybe I'm just
> too naive, but I would trust just about all of you to use my money for
> what you say you will, even though I haven't met a lot of you. So my
> question again is why complicate things?
>
> Just my 2c. Use it, don't use it. ^_^

I have spoke to the other ubuntu-loco's as well as quite a few members
having dealt with this before. It does seem to be more effort+admin
then it is worth for what we currently use it for.

That being said every one seems to be ok with people pushing for
sponsorship in favor of donations. This also requires work. events
need to be planned earlier and we all need to take a very proactive
role in getting sponsorship if needed.

It is often underestimated how great it would be to have gimmicks [2]
at our events. They are just awesomely cool!l! It would be amazing to
get a few hundred of those sponsored to give to our ubuntu-za members.
It is probably too late for this release party but it is something to
think about for the next events we do.

I think by now my tally is way over 5c's but here it is any way :)

David Rubin

[1] http://glug.org.za
[2] http://my-ubuntu-day.blogspot.com/2010/04/25mm-pin-mockups.html