Merging Linux Australia and AUUG: [Linux-aus] Nomination

[Pia Smith]

On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 12:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> > Last I heard, AUUG and LA had discussed whether to merge, and
> > decided that they needed to know more about the two groups
> > memberships before persuing that question further. While the groups
> > are both individually viable, and not working against each other,
> > the reasons to merge are also lesser.

After having looked at both groups very closely, the constituencies
(which admittedly does overlap), the activities, the different views,
the way of doing things, the different responsibilities, I truly believe
there is currently a place for both orgs. Merging now doesn't make
sense, we have different goals, different methodologies and people like
choice, thats one reason we are all into open source right?

> Correct, but there are still a number of reasons to merge:
> 
> 1.  There's a lot of work involved in running an organization, as you
>     know (and apparently can handle :-).  By merging the
>     organizations, we could reduce that level of work.

AUUG have an employee, we are happy doing the work as volouteers (driven
by passion! ;) and both orgs do things very differently. AUUG are
largely paper based, LA is largely automated (getting there anyway :) so
merging would require an _enourmous_ amount of work.

> 2.  Having two mainly overlapping organizations confuses lots of
>     people, including many people on this list.  It makes it more
>     difficult for either of us to make our mark.

I don't think so. It does when we blur the lines, but working together
does help with this. It does confuse some people, but we are still in
the process of working it out. Hopefully now LA will be able to put more
time into better communications with AUUG as we've been caught up with
internal building and strategic planning this year. By working together
we reach more people, and internally (within the community) people
choose to go one way or the other personally anyway. Choice and
cooperation are good, merging and removal of options... maybe not so
much :)

> From my personal point of view, (1) is the bigger issue.  People on
> both boards drop action items because they don't have time.  The
> membership of each group is not large enough to do all the things we
> want.  When did either AUUG or LA last hold an installfest?  Why?

It isn't LA's job to hold installfests. We facilitate the enthusiasms of
the community to support this, but it isn't LAs place to organise the
LUGs. We _have_ helped several groups with insurance and resources for
such events.

> I haven't seen any particular concern on the part of the AUUG
> membership about a merger, though we haven't done any asking.  At the
> last AUUG AGM, I stated that we had had discussions, and that we
> needed to find out more about what our membership thinks.  I didn't
> get any feedback.

When I had a meeting with the AUUG board, there was expressed some
concern from more than half the board, although I'm not sure of the
membership. 

> I think we're cooperating a lot better.  Is that enough?

More cooperation and communication required :) as we all agreed upon. As
stated, hopefully the LA ctte will now be able to free up some time for
this communication. A united front it much more interesting to help our
shared causes. Especially from outside the communities point of view. I
think the Open Source in Government mini-conf is a step in the right
direction. AUUG and LA working together.

Pia
-- 
Pia Smith <pia at linux.org.au>
Linux Australia