On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 1:12 AM, Atom Powers <atom.pow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I should have said "community organization" with education being a > large focus for the community. > > Yes, these are things that LOPSA does now. I imagine a re-focusing and > not a re-formatting. As a community organization it isn't that people > pay attention to us but that we pay attention to other people. Instead > of measuring our success in membership numbers perhaps we measure it > in how many people attend conferences and/or meetups to say "I'm a > member of LOPSA and I'm here to tell you about ...". The mentorship > program should be promoted and made free again. (Maybe I fell off the > list but I haven't seen any new people seeking a mentor since LISA.) > We can work with other meetups. We can create "best practices" for > starting locals and presenting at conferences. We could have resume > training and job BoFs. > > There are lots of things we can do to make LOPSA more important to > people and I think one of the best ways to do that is to help people. > Let people say "Those LOPSA guys are pretty cool. They helped me out. > I want to be part of that." > Membership numbers are a way of measuring the value we provide to members. If people in our industry look at the work we're doing and see that if offers them a tangible value our membership will go up. If they feel we're not doing enough to provide value those numbers will drop. I think where you're getting hung up is that you think the only reason membership numbers are important are from a financial perspective or that they are simply a number but that is simply not the case. There's a reason every meeting has a "Membership Report" which goes over the change in membership since the previous board meeting. I suggest you read over some of the past meeting minutes so you know what you're getting yourself into by running for the board. An example of these can be found here: http://governance.lopsa.org/Board_meeting_Minutes/18_May_2015#Membership_report_.28VanDevender.29 Reviewing the linked minutes above I actually see our membership has dropped by over 100 members and is down to 701 members. That tells me we have a problem. I'm guessing a large part of this is due to cancelling LOPSA-East this year which is one of LOPSA's largest membership drives each year. You seem like a nice enough guy and I applaud your interest in getting further involved with LOPSA. Being a board member is a thankless job and if you're going to be an effective board member it also consumes a significant amount of your time. Good luck. > > On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 9:50 PM, David Lang <da...@lang.hm> wrote: > > On Tue, 23 Jun 2015, Atom Powers wrote: > > > > so how would "an educational organization" look different than LOPSA does > > today? What would we stop doing, and what would we start doing? > > > > More importantly, why would anyone pay attention to us? > > > > Unless I'm mistaken, Education is one of the missions of LOPSA now, and > we > > have the internal mentorship program and chapter meetings providing this > (as > > well as the mailing lists). We also provide training at some conferences. > > > > David Lang > > > > -- > Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard. > --Atom Powers-- >
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