[Linux-aus] Announcing my running for LA President

[Anthony Towns]

Hello world,

At no one's urging (though perhaps some people's trolling), I've
accepted my nominations as President. I'm going to reply to Tim's mail
because that's easier than having to write up my own opinions from
scratch:

On 14 January 2013 15:11, Tim Ansell <mithro at mithis.com> wrote:
> At the urging of a number of previous committee members I have decided to
> accept my nomination too run for the Linux Australia President. If elected
> to this position I have an agenda of changes I wish to make. ...
> These are documented at the following locations;

Cut and paste from said locations, with trimming:

---
Solution: Addition of an alternative trading name, the most popular
other name "Open Source Australia". This is why trading names exist.
Extend the "Linux Australia runs awesome conferences" agenda

Solution: Create an video team which runs A/V recording/streaming/etc
for all conferences. One of the biggest headache for organisers, no
longer have to worry about. Separate budget from main conference.

Solution: Fund and make official "conference website" AKA "Zookeeper
team" team external to conference organisers. Give the team a budget.

Aim: Make LA council main goal to create and promote Open Source
community through awesome conferences.
Solution: Continue Josh's creation of guidelines on accepting and
running conferences. Continue John Ferlito's expansion to more the
conferences. Look at trying to amalgamate with OSDC.

Move Linux.conf.au bidding and selection to same process as PyCon AU
and Drupal Downunder.
Make a Linux.conf.au committee built out of current LCA Ghosts.
---

These all seem reasonable approaches to me. In particular, broadening
'Linux Australia' to cover general 'Open Source Community/Developer'
activities seems like the next step in LA's evolution -- both because
'limiting' things to just Linux doesn't seem to match what people are
actually doing, and because it seems like we should be broadening LA's
scope to reach more people who are interested in putting in the time
to do admin style things.

---
Change the bidding process to be in person at Linux.conf.au, no
flights, no bid documents.

Stop the process of "one upping" the previous conference. Not every
conference needs to add something new or do something different.
Look at moving to a rolling two year process similar to PyCon US.

Externalise the hard parts of running a conference such as running the
A/V or creating a conference website under a similar scheme to the
Linux Australia Paper's committee.

Reduce or eliminate all SWAG, it's more environmentally friendly and
no one needs yet another bag.
---

These aren't things I'm against, but I'm not particularly for them
either -- for instance, if we had two LCA bids, both of whom proposed
to only be as good as LCA was five or ten years ago (Melbourne and
Perth, eg), I'd be completely happy with that; otoh, if there was one
that was going to be as good as Canberra will be, and one that was
going to be better, I don't see any reason not to go with the better
one.

> I urge that if you disagree with these changes please run against me.

My feeling is that neither the LA President or the LA Council in
general is really in the best position to make big developments or
changes to the way LA or LCA works. I would say the best thing the
council as a whole can do is encourage and support members at trying
new things -- by providing moral support, organisational support, or
monetary support in about that order of priority. The biggest
challenge for the council, in my opinion, is actually about persuasion
-- convincing members that some new direction is a good idea, or
non-members that being involve in LA is actually valuable and
worthwhile; and that might not just meaning explaining why the
council's ideas are brilliant, but adapting to ideas from both members
and non-members as well. I think that form of engagement has been the
biggest weakness with the 2012 council's consideration of a name
change, both lack of a real thorough explanation of the pros and cons,
and either not taking serious consideration of other options (or not
explaining why they turned out to be unviable) like adding a trading
name. It's a pain when other people don't recognise your obviously
genius ideas (like renaming LA to "opensource.org.au"...), and you
have to try to persuade them otherwise -- especially when compared to
a corporate CEO who would be both getting paid for a similar job, and
be able to either fire people who get too much in the way (or at least
relocate them to not be quite so inconvenient).

Ultimately, what I mean by that is I think John, Mike, Peter, Josh and
co deserve a huge amount of congratulations for what they've achieved,
even for the bits that aren't to your preference, and even if they
haven't achieved as much as they'd like. It's both a hard job and a
worthwhile one; and anyone who does it deserves kudos for both
reasons. Even if they have/had higher standards and try to disagree.
That and, if elected, low expectations, pls. kthxby.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at erisian.com.au>