Commission to Reform WPLUG

The Commission to Reform WPLUG (CRW) is an informal group created to draft proposals that fix long-standing problems in WPLUG. It was created on December 9, 2012.

Purpose

WPLUG is struggling to compete against other technology groups. CRW's purpose is to expedite the reform process so that WPLUG can become competitive again as soon as possible:

• Update the bylaws
• Chart a new direction for WPLUG
• Explore ways to make WPLUG less formal/political
• Bring WPLUG's resources up to par with current technological standards

Operation

CRW has no membership requirements. If you decide to join, add your name to the membership list on this page.

Each month, CRW gathers its best ideas into a "reform package" that is formally proposed during the following month's WPLUG general user meeting. Ideas can be proposed or voted on at any time, but it is recommended to propose ideas outside of meetings and vote on them during the meetings so that people have time to think before they vote.

If an idea is approved by a majority of CRW members, it will be added to the current reform package.

Since CRW is not an official WPLUG organization, it doesn't receive official funding and is not governed by the WPLUG bylaws. Members are encouraged to apply the same "free and flexible" mindset to their deliberations: check your preconceptions at the door, be open-minded, and support the best ideas to reform WPLUG. Everyone who wants to present ideas will have an equal opportunity to do so.

Members

• Justin Smith
• Terry Golightly
• Pat Barron
• Vance Kochenderfer
• Joseph Prostko

Meeting Logs

Saturday, December 15

Thursday, December 20

Upcoming Meetings

None at this time.

Reform Package History

CRW Discussion Archives

CRW Reform Packages

Reform Package 1: Bylaw changes, presented at January 2013 GUM.

Reform Package 2: WPLUG's general direction, to be presented at February 2013 GUM.

Reform Package 2 Ideas

Justin Smith 1/20

I wasn't able to complete the CRW survey in time for January's GUM, but I will have it done by Monday. I'd like to present its results at the February GUM, either as a running tally (we still leave the survey open for a little while longer) or the final totals.

While most of our "general direction" planning will have to wait until we've seen the survey results, there are a few items we can still take action on in the mean time:

• Using a project management tool so that we don't forget about stuff. Pat recommends using | Trello, which is the virtual equivalent of a corkboard with post-it notes. Trello isn't free (as in freedom) software, but it is extremely simple and, I think, effective. It as a very nice Android app.

• Should the Internet Committee be responsible for going through the wiki every so often and archiving old content? If not, how else should we deal with outdated pages? We can't let them continue to accumulate. If someone clicked on the LiveCD link on the main page, for instance, he'd see that it hasn't been updated since 2007. Problems like that make us looks really bad.

Terry proposed seeing if we could use some sort of script to automatically archive content. I still think a "human touch" is necessary; therefore, I think that a script of that sort should simply produce a list of everything that needs reviewed. It's entirely possible that old pages can be refurbished and used again.

• Is there any possible way we could accept online payments for dues? I know it's been brought up before, but this is important enough to merit another look.

• What can we do to persuade more people to join WPLUG as dues-paying members?

Justin Smith 1/24

IMPORTANT: CRW has released a general user survey designed to help us chart a new path for WPLUG in 2013. Please take the survey if you've got a moment.

Justin Smith 1/28

Some suggestions from the CRW survey I'd like to see implemented:

Membership

• Give WPLUG members a "name@wplug.org" email address that forwards messages to an account of their choice; it advertises our group and provides an incentive for people to renew. Are there privacy advocates among us? If so, maybe they would appreciate being able to have an email account that's not tied to a major provider.

• Web services of some sort. Since $20 per member doesn't give us a lot of cash to work with, offer members exclusive access to services that would be a pain to set up on their own.

• Send people who join WPLUG as members a well-written "thank you" note. Since new members give us a physical address, why not go the extra mile to send an actual letter?

• Give people who join a membership card. When you join the FSF, they give you a cool "credit card" USB drive that's pre-loaded with Linux: http://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits

What if we did that? You can buy blank 2GB credit card drives from eBay for $5 or less, depending on how many you buy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-Blank-Credit-Card-Shape-USB-Flash-Drive-Memory-2-0-2GB-4GB-8GB-16GB-32GB-64G-/310568756176?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item484f5723d0

I bet people would appreciate being able to take Linux with them in such a convenient way, and every time they'd plug it in, it would be free PR for us. We would need to figure out how to print labels for them, though. Each member would only be given a membership card like that once, so while we make less during their initial year, we'd get the full $20 when they renew.

If we wanted to get really fancy, we could include WPLUG wallpaper or other promotional materials on the distro.

• Try to partner with local organizations for membership discounts. When I talked with Pat about this earlier, he mentioned O'Reilly as a possibility. That's a good start, but there just have to be others. I'll look into this.

Meetings

• I get the impression that some people aren't satisfied with our current selection of food at meetings. A couple of people mentioned donuts, someone brought up gourmet coffee, and another still talked about catering. I'm not sure we can afford to provide much more with $20 per member, but it's something worth considering.

Events/Other Activities

• We - and by we, I mean the Events Committee - should definitely plan a trip to Ohio Linux Fest.

• There's virtually no support for an "open culture" event, so we're back to the drawing board if we want to replace InstallFests with something else.

• There's a lot of support for group programming events. There's also a decent amount of interest in Android, if we'd care to lift the moratorium on mobile Linux. I'd be willing to work with the Events Committee regarding Android.

• Having a bowling night would be great, but, as one person said, let's do it with other tech groups! Let's face it: we're a social group, but we don't have too many regular attendees. Involving other groups is a good way to compensate.

• Only a few people don't like my idea to re-launch The Open Pitt as a netcast. We've even got a couple of people who are willing to help produce it! I didn't take the survey, but you can count me among them. I've been told that I have an announcer's voice; maybe I could put it to good use. If we broadcasted netcasts live over Google+ Hangouts (live on YouTube), that could tie in with our social media strategy. If CRW supports this idea, I'd like to hold some initial meetings with the people who are interested.

Other

• I put in the question about indie culture on a whim. This comment made me change my mind as soon as I read it: "Linux and groups that support it should refrain from becoming too political one way or another. Stick to the penguin."

• We need to finish our work at Wilkins and get out of there. I'm going to contact everyone I know to see about finding a more suitable location.

• As chair of the PR committee, I'd like us to decide on a social media strategy. My flagging support for Google+ was renewed over this weekend because an article I found stated that it's now the second-largest social media network out there. Most of our respondents use it.

Pat Barron 01/28/13

I have to apologize that I haven't gotten a chance to update this page for a while. Here are some of my thoughts regarding things that have previously been added here.

• The duties of the Internet Committee are laid out in the Bylaws, and I think that making sure the content on WPLUG's web site is current is out of scope for the Internet Committee. If you think about it in terms of a business, the Internet Committee is basically WPLUG's "IT Department", or sysadmins - basically, a technology function, primarily concerned with making sure the content is available and accessible when someone wants to access it, not so much concerned with the creation and maintenance of the content itself. That being said, I certainly do agree that, even though the maintenance of the wiki is supposed to be a distributed effort, there does need to be someone(s) assigned the responisbility to actually keep the content current and relevant. In a business, that would generally be considered a Marketing function. In the context of WPLUG, my opinion is that that responsbility should fall to the Public Relations Committee (though of course the Internet Committee may need to be engaged if something needs to be done that requires Sysop or Bureaucrat permissions on the wiki, such as making a page "disappear" entirely). The Board should solicit more participation in the Public Relations Committee; as with any Committee, this Committee serves at the pleasure of the Board - but I have difficulty believing that the Board would not appoint anyone to the Committee who would express an interest in participating.

• I'm all for enabling online payments - I'll take the blame for the fact that this hasn't moved forward much. I don't think we need to "take another look" at it, in that I think just about everyone is in agreement that it's desirable, and I think we even have a high-level plan. I was supposed to lead this project, and it's really my fault that we're not any closer to a solution now than we were four months ago. Let's do it!

• I like the e-mail forwarder idea. It would be a lot easier to implement this if we got some kind of online member information portal working (which also ties into the online payments issue), so that a person doesn't need to manually edit the aliases DB on the server to add/remove/change someone's forwarder. But I think it's a desirable thing that really doesn't cost anything.

• We've talked about the "give members USB flash drives with Linux on them" idea, though never in the context of making that a membership card too - that's actually a neat idea. Cost has always been the sticking point. With the current membership numbers, WPLUG takes in about $350/year in dues, and has about $625/year in fixed expenses. So we're already operating at a deficit; eventually, we'll have to try to make up the deficits via sponsorship or voluntary donations. Last year, we talked about how we might get sponsors to foot the bill for some of this stuff, though we never really found any plausible solutions.

• Even if it's not a USB flash drive, members should get some kind of membership credential. It's the least we can do, and it opens the door to other types of partnerships. We can't really pursue partnerships where other organizations offer special benefits to our members, when our members have no way to identify themselves. Plus, in any type of dues-based organization, I would say that a hardcopy membership credential of some sort is about the minimum people expect - at the very least, it would serve as a reminder of their expiration date.

• I love the idea of catering meetings, though see above regarding the finances of that... My best guess is that a minimalistic "bagels/donuts and coffee" level of catering would cost at least $30 per meeting. The refreshment fund typically does not collect any more than $4.00 per meeting.

• I don't think there's any kind of "moratorium" on mobile Linux, I think it's just more that no one has offered to present on it. Certainly last year, we talked several times about whether we could get the author of Cyanogenmod to come and present, though he's left the area and is probably beyond our reach at this point.

• Whatever the Public Relations Committee decides on as a social media strategy, I think it should still include the "big two" - Facebook, and (especially) Twitter. Twitter in particular because it's a lot easier for people to "accidentally" stumble across your content. We have an existing Facebook group, which has had minimal participation - but I think that is mostly because hardly anyone knows about it.

• I'm all for exploring other options for meeting space, but meeting space is not as easily obtainable as some appear to think. I'm aware that people have made assertions that there are "plenty" of venues that would be "happy" to host us without cost - but I have to say, if those places exist, I'm not aware of who or where they are, particularly if you're looking for a decent place to do a presentation, that has the possibility of using a projector and such... We did have one local technology company tell us that we would be able to meet in their space (which is very nice space, if I do say so) - but that one of their full-time employees would need to be present at all times during events, and that they require a complete list of attendees in advance - for the typical GUM, that doesn't work for us (though it could be OK for special events like presentations that we expect might draw heavy interest).

• Also regarding meeting space, I do notice that pretty much everyone who responded to the survey and expressed an opinion on the subject, suggested that the meeting location be moved to somewhere more centrally located within the actual City of Pittsburgh.

Justin Smith 1/30/13

It makes sense to assign content creation to the PR Committee. I don't want to make a unilateral decision on our social media strategy, but let's just say that I'm leaning strongly toward Google+ as our HQ and Twitter as our secondary.

• Google+ has a lot to offer. It's growing rapidly (it's now the #2 social media network behind Facebook), it would improve our rank in the Google search engine since it's tied to Google, and the possibilities for G+ Hangouts are very promising. Most people who have taken the survey already use it.

• Twitter is growing as well. We could use it to "live tweet" from conferences, etc. that we're at and generally just get our name out there. Since tweets have to be short, Twitter is perfect for simple WPLUG event advertisements.

• In the interest of full disclosure, I think Facebook is a cesspool of idiocy. In more objective terms, Facebook has peaked, and there aren't really any unique qualities that make it stand out like G+ (hangouts) or Twitter (live tweet/event ads) other than the sheer number of users. Is that really an advantage? Maybe not, since most survey respondents who use Facebook also use G+.

• Regarding LinkedIn, the survey results show in no uncertain terms that this is by and large a personal interest group, so it wouldn't make sense for us to spend resources on something that might have limited appeal.

A couple more ideas...

• Decommission the Newsletter Committee since it isn't currently producing anything. Make the secretary responsible for publishing a newsletter-style announcement at the start of each month like what I released today. OR fold the Newsletter Committee into the PR Committee and give them the responsibility of producing such an announcement, perhaps making the secretary an ex officio member.

• Decommission the WSCC Networking Committee since we apparently aren't even working on it in an official capacity any longer. We need to know what's going on with it, too, but that goes without saying. I've written to Ted, but he hasn't responded. Does anyone know him personally?

• Rename committees so that their purpose is crystal clear. Examples: rename the Program Committee to the Events Planning Committee; rename Internet Committee to Technology Maintenance Committee; rename PR Committee to Marketing & Communications Committee

• Assuming that we switch to a CMS, hold a group programming event where we all get together for a day and hack together the new Web site (idea courtesy of someone on the CRW survey)

• Pick an open source project that we want to work on. Hold a study group that teaches people about the required programming language, and work our way up to contributing to the project.

• Produce a short "meet the board" video where we talk about ourselves and describe what we do in our official capacities. We could do this easily over a Google+ Hangout.

Accepted Reform Package 2 Proposals

• Dissolve the Wilkins School Networking Committee. Document this process thoroughly so that WPLUG is not accused of improper conduct.
• Dissolve the Newsletter Committee. Make the PR Committee responsible for producing a simple, newsletter-style monthly announcement with all of WPLUG's upcoming events.
• Make the secretary an ex officio member of the PR Committee.
• As long as WPLUG uses MediaWiki for its Web site, require all board members to have basic bio information in their user page
• Rename the remaining committees so that their purpose is clear even to someone who hasn't read about them:

  * Internet Committee -> Technology Maintenance Committee 
  * Program Committee -> Events Planning Committee 
  * PR Committee -> Marketing & Communications Committee
  * Investigating Committee -> Disciplinary Committee

• Create a WPLUG FAQ that answers common questions people have about our group
• Create a page with pictures and biographies of board members so that people at our meetings can recognize them
• Recommend that the Program Committee organize a DIY electronics event involving Arduino or Raspberry Pi: a hackfest or possibly a study group
• Give WPLUG members a free WPLUG.org email account that forwards mail to an address of their choice.
• Investigate programs that would give WPLUG members discounts.
• Design a WPLUG membership card that includes how long a person has been a member.
• Have membership cards printed in bulk at Moo.com on their NFC-enabled cardstock. NFC is cutting-edge technology, and this fits in with WPLUG's new vision.
• Move WPLUG's meetings to a more "central" location in the heart of Pittsburgh. (The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is a current front-runner since it would likely allow us to meet free of charge under certain circumstances. We are still investigating options.)