[Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - Kathy - President or OCM

[Kathy Reid]

Hi everyone,


Firstly, I’d like to echo Hugh’s words, and strongly underline our
joint, united, and well considered approach into this election. We both
care deeply about the ideas and fundamentals of free and opensource
hardware, software, data and communities - as evidenced by our
commitment to LA over the past many years.

The choice we present you with is deliberately designed to elicit a
mandate on how you would like us to steer Linux Australia in the coming
years.

I see three paths for Linux Australia’s future, the foundations and
drivers of which were covered in ‘Inflection Point - a white paper on
LA’s future to 2020’ in late 2015 - an attempt to gather broad thoughts
on a long term strategy for the organisation. https://goo.gl/08fGqr.
This document did not have the outcome I was hoping for - some sort of
consensus agreement on a future for Linux Australia, however it did
start to spur discussion and reflection on where we want our
organisation to go.

To be clear, I am advocating for Scenario 2 below - Linux Australia
makes key investments in a number of areas, offloading activities from
an overloaded Council and volunteer base, allowing Council to focus
efforts on stronger governance, advocacy and strengthening our
membership base. We cannot undertake these efforts while we carry the
load of ‘business as usual’ activities for Linux Australia. If we think
of LA’s activities in terms of MoSCoW - must do, should do, could do,
won’t do - we are currently struggling in terms of capacity to do the
things that must be legally done as an incorporated association. This
leaves no capacity for the things we should be doing, or would even like
to be doing.

Should I not be elected to the President role - and I strongly encourage
others to nominate for this role if they have a strong vision and desire
to do so - then I would seek to serve as OCM to provide organisational
continuity to Council 2017, and allow others with a strong vision to lead.

In terms of professional background, I bring to the table a strong
technical background in web development, applications development, root
cause analysis, videoconferencing and digital. I’ve held management and
team leadership roles for nearly 15 years, have served 3 terms on
Council in office-bearer roles (Secretary and VP), and was 2IC of
linux.conf.au 2016 Geelong - LCA By the Bay - under David Bell’s
excellent leadership. I also serve as Treasurer of Creative Geelong,
Inc. I’m known for strong organisational skills and solid,
well-structured governance documents.

I ask not that you vote for me specifically - but give consideration and
reflection to the direction you would like Linux Australia to take, and
vote accordingly.


With kind regards,
Kathy


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Scenario 1 - continue on current course


Under this scenario, LA continues pretty much on its current course.


The 7-member Council continues to be a volunteer force, and while
passionate and dedicated, is overloaded by the demands of running an
incorporated association that has a significant annual turnover and
large stable of open source events.


Without investment in a membership platform to communicate with members,
member engagement continues to be suboptimal, centred on social media
and mailing lists. Efforts to activate a membership pipeline focussed on
younger and newer community members are not undertaken, and so the
membership continues to 'age out', both due to other commitments
(children, career, care of elderly relatives), lack of interest and so on.


In order to reduce Council and volunteer burnout, activities of the
organisation are pared back to ‘minimum viable LA’, and decisions on
whether to auspice events are made in this light - that is, are there
sufficient volunteer hours to provide effective event oversight, or will
auspicing this event mean that we don’t have bandwidth to do something else?


Eventually this could lead to the key events of Linux Australia
incorporating under their own brands / associations, removing the need
for the oversight / administration role played by LA. Some of the events
may not have the strength to form their own independent group and so may
cease to run, or may be auspiced by local organisations. LUGs could
continue to dwindle as the need for them - aside from being a technical
community - is diminished by the internet, and the wide availability of
information. The role of advocating for free and open technologies will
likely fall to other groups, such as Electronic Frontiers Australia,
Open Knowledge Foundation and the Open Australia Foundation.


    Scenario 2 - middle road course with investment in key areas


This is the scenario I’m advocating for.


Under this scenario, LA makes some key strategic investments in areas
such as;


  *

    Membership platform- investment is made in CiviCRM or similar,
    making membership onboarding, communication and renewal much easier.

  *

    Hired help, such as through contractors - investment is made in
    offloading administrative and financial tasks to contractors to ease
    the 'doing' workload of Council and Subcommittees, reducing overload

  *

    Digital presence- investment is made in refreshing the website and
    social media of Linux Australia, better serving as a promotion and
    pipeline mechanism


These actions help to reduce the load on Council and Subcommittees, and
help to build a pipeline of newer members for the organisation. The
events auspiced by Linux Australia remain so, now that additional
capacity and competencies are available to ensure their effective
running. The passion and will of Members is better able to be harnessed
through the Membership platform, so the risk of burnout and overload is
reduced (but not eliminated).


Because assistance is available for the day to day running of the
organisation, Council and Members are better positioned to take on
additional activities such as whitepapers and submissions to government,
furthering the objectives and values of the organisation.


      As you can see, these three options exist on a continuum from
      purely grass-roots to heavily commercialised. However, if we go
      too far down the commercialisation spectrum, then we might become
      something I don’t think we want to be - Scenario 3:


    Scenario 3 - more commercially focussed organisation


Under this scenario, Linux Australia evolves into a fully commercial
operation, with paid staff to undertake key functions of the
organisation, and paid leaders. Staff would work on Linux Australia
events and projects on a part time or full time basis, and undertake
work which furthers the objectives and values of the organisation - like
many of the items on our ‘it would be nice to do X’ list.


Linux Australia events under this scenario would no longer be purely
grassroots-organised. This is a double edged sword. The events would
generally have a more commercial flavour, and ticket prices would
increase to cover the labour costs of staff. This would necessitate
legal changes to transition from an incorporated association to a
company structure.


To reiterate the point I make above, this isn’t something I think we
want to be.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


-- 
--
Kathy Reid
Independent digital consultant

       email: kathy at kathyreid.id.au
      mobile: 0418 130 636
     twitter: @kathyreid
        blog: http://blog.kathyreid.id.au
    linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/kathyreid


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