[Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member

[Anthony Towns]

On Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 12:21:44AM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote:
> > > Response #1: Transition from MemberDB to CiviCRM at a cost of approx
> > > $23k AUD, with ongoing opex of around $2.5k AUD annually and have a
> > > custom voting module developed to facilitate Elections (cost not yet
> > > estimated).
> > That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include
> > the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb
> > actually does... Why so much?
> > Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly?
> It is a lot of money and Linux sysadmin is something that many volunteers can 
> do.  But there aren't many people with CiviCRM skills and such projects can be 
> complex.

A quick web search shows two (apparently) cheaper ways to outsource
CiviCRM hosting:

  https://civihosting.com -- $20 installation, $240/year; unmanaged
  http://www.civi-go.net -- $0 upfront, ~$1500/year; managed updates

Honestly, I'd worry a bit that any cloud hosting provider can actually
maintain the data securely if our admins aren't confident of doing it
themselves. And the more complex things are the harder it is to deal
with a breach, eg by switching to a different, more securable service
(cf the wiki data leaks we've had)...

Having a quick look back through the published LA minutes, I'm guessing
the $23k+$2500/year figures are based on quotes obtained by the membeship
subctte in May and June:

  https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-05-24 (Agileware & DevApp quotes)
  https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-06-03 (Agileware 2 quotes)

This seems like a case where the grants process is much better -- air the
reasons for spending money and the amount as early as possible, and let
people come up with ideas for cheaper and better approaches if they exist.

(Also, it looks like the membership subctte doesn't have a page at
https://linux.org.au/sub-committees ; also wrt the other thread,
seems like it was constituted under the v1 subctte policy:
https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-02-18 ...)

> > > Response #2: Develop and execute a formal recruitment program aimed at
> > > younger potential members, [...]
> > I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new
> > members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people;
> > and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably
> > the best way of getting people involved anyway.
> People speak to other people in a similar situation to themselves.
> For example there's some interesting stuff going on with CoderDojos and 
> helping school IT teachers.  Probably few people here hang out with school IT 
> teachers so word of mouth isn't going to work too well.

There was a talk on CoderDojo at PyCon AU last year:

http://pyvideo.org/pycon-au-2015/trials-tribulations-teaching-python-at-coderdoj.html

so in this instance word of mouth seems to be working fine to me?

Maybe I'm missing something though? What value does LA provide that a
formal recruitment program would enable CoderDojo students (ie, younger
potential members) to access?

Cheers,
aj