[Linux-aus] LA projects / sub-committees

[Jonathan Oxer <jon@ivt.com.au>]

Hi LA,

Something the LA Committee has tried to do more proactively in recent
times is use sub-committees as a way to officially "bless" various
groups working on projects in Linux Australia's name.

Yes, I know the term "sub-committee" conjures up images of a bunch of
people sitting around bikeshedding, but from an organisational point of
view they are very useful for things such as giving people working on
specific projects the right to publicly represent Linux Australia and
streamlining processes such as provision of public-liability insurance
and funding.

But something we've been rather slack about is documentation of those
sub-committees: exactly who they are, what their responsibilities and
reporting structures are, that sort of thing. So what I'm doing at the
moment is creating a page on the LA wiki for each sub-committee with
headings for:

* Purpose
* Responsibilities
* Current Activities
* Members
* Contact
* Mandate and Authority
* Budget and Funding
* Reports

Most of the pages are still pretty empty but they'll be fleshed out as I
work through them and collate the necessary information. Once this is
done it will make it much easier to see what activities LA is currently
up to and how you can get involved. An issue raised recently by LUV
President Andrew Chalmers recently is that LA activity tends to be
fairly invisible: we do a lot of stuff, but people just don't know about
it. Providing some central documentation for the various sub-committees
is a first step to fixing that problem.

It's also very important for organisational continuity. We're just about
to enter the election period for the next committee and it's critical
that we minimise the effort involved in transitioning new people into
"official" roles. Having actual documentation for the various things
we're up to helps with that.

As usual the jumping-off page for the Wiki is here:

http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte

And direct links to the Sub-ctte pages so far are:

http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/LinuxconfSubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/EducationSubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/AdvocacySubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/MediaSubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/MirrorSubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/AdminteamSubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/PressSubCtte
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/WebSubCtte

If you're involved in any of those sub-committees and there are big gaps
on your page feel free to help me fix it: either edit the page directly
or email/phone me with info for it.

Cheers   :-)
-- 
Jonathan Oxer
Ph +61 3 9723 9399