Hello,<br><br>I am sure you should be sick and tired of my emails by now (my apologies, I had to go through the mailing list, this is my last email today, I will summarize everything I have to say here - based on your previous emails and my thought, think of it as digest)<br>
<br>I am a member of HLUG and ZOSS (founding member in both cases) to be honest with you I have not derived much value frommy membership (I also feel that I have not added much value to the other members). The two organizations are "dead" when it comes to activities, mailing list posts, forums, meetings, installfests....<br>
<br>When people join Zimbabwe Ubuntu they expect to derive so value from their membership, please make sure that these people get something back and at the same time let us allow them to add some value to us (networ-effect). That been said we should come up with a compelling value proposition (Whats In It For Me) for prospective members.<br>
<br>I strongly feel we nedd to formalise the group, right now we are just but a bunch of individuals posting on the net. Yes open source projects, groups are self organising, self controlling, self ... I strongly feel we need to come up and agree on the following;<br>
<br>0. Mission<br>1. Vision<br>2. Organisation - Team structure - postions, titles, duties and responsibilities, expectation<br>3. Ground rules/Constitution<br>4. Register the group as a Non Profit Organisation, register with the computer society (I dont see any value for members, but it gives us credibility with whoever we would like to work with)<br>
5. setup a board of trustee - funding ahs to be sourced, membership subs have to paid to run the group - we need people to hold us accountable.<br><br>(some might feel this is too eraly for this and our numbers are still small, we need to get these in place so as to grow, I suggest we have an interim committee in place, whose main responsibility is to put the above listed items in place - the list is not exhaustive)<br>
<br><b>Freedom Toaster</b><br>Some two years ago efforts were made to bring in one from SA for use during the LInux Expo, we were told the machine was huge. I feel we can make a simple CD/DVD duplicator and turn it into a Freedom Toaster. Any ideas are welcome. When we had a Suse installfest we asked people to bring in blank CD/DVDs which we burnt for free, we also did the same at the Linux Expo. If we are going to host an installfest we can also use PXE boot.<br>
<br>I have been using APTonCD with a friend to keep our boxes up to date, we can also distribute APTonCDs for updates.<br><br><b>Website</b><br>Which type of hosting package did Yo! donate? If it supports php, mysql, we will make use of Open Source content management solutions, Joomla, drupal, Xoops... the choice is unlimited. I am prepared to work on this, I will need help with the graphics design and content.<br>
<br>I feel we can make good use of the Wiki pages for now, they need some updating, which I am prepared to do as well, please suggest the content that you will like to see on the wiki site.<br><br><br><br clear="all"><br>
-- <br>Ronald Munjoma<br>IT & Business Consultant<br>Act Business Solutions<br><br><a href="mailto:ronaldm@actbusinesssolutions.com">ronaldm@actbusinesssolutions.com</a><br>Cell: +263 11 632 444 <br><br>Adaptive Planning<br>
Adaptive Planning Enterprise Edition V 4.0<br>Budgeting, Forecasting & Reporting Made Easy<br><a href="http://www.adaptiveplanning.com">www.adaptiveplanning.com</a><br><br>Ubuntu<br>linux for human beings<br><a href="http://www.ubuntu-zw.org">www.ubuntu-zw.org</a>