Hi everyone. I hope I'm not about to step on any toes with this post, it is not my intent but I shall apologise profusely now before I start.
In my waking hours last night I had a think about yesterdays various discussions, especially the governance discussions. Now I'm not going to suggest that the loco's governance should or should not be changed as I have already made my point with regards to that and not being a veteran of Ubuntu-AU I'm not sure if I should really get to far into that without knowing more than I currently do. I will say, and said in another thread, that to me it seems Ubuntu-Au isn't really visible on the Ubuntu forums. To me if Ubuntu-AU isn't visible on the "mother" site then it isn't going to be very visible anywhere else. So yesterday I changed my Ubuntu forums signature to include a link to Ubuntu-AU so that any Australians, or anyone who is interested for that matter, can go to the link and see what is happening with Ubuntu-AU. Who knows it may even encourage a few others to become active participants. Some other things I thought about, some have already been posted by others, are. 1. The Ubuntu-AU pages really need updating. 2. The membership list for Ubuntu-AU google group REALLY (not shouting just making sure its understood how serious this issue is) needs cleaning up. Has anyone had a look at the membership list lately and seen how many references to porn there are in it? 3. The Ubuntu-AU planet page, what is its purpose? I understand this, "Planet Ubuntu Australia is a window into the world, work and lives of Australian Ubuntu developers and contributors." but I would have thought it would be something that each post would by necessity would have to have some relevance to Ubuntu or FOSS in general. I frequent SILs Linux development page and each post is relevant to the work of SIL Linux Developers. 4. After the, apparently necessary, governance positions are "finalised" I think Ubuntu-AU needs to work out what it wants to achieve. I'm not talking about what is already written on the website as it probably needs rethinking anyway, I am talking about developing a realistic action plan for the next 12 months. So we need to know what are peoples strengths, what "contacts" do they have, what industries etc are they linked to? Then we need to be realistic as to how we can use this to the advantage of Ubuntu-AU. I'll give an example for 4. Being a teacher I am interested in promoting Ubuntu to schools and students. To me Ubuntu has huge potential in schools, the public system at the very least, because it is after all free thus helping the education sector to save money over time not only for the basic OS but also for the ongoing costs of AV software and even helping to keep older hardware going for longer with the Thin Client option. How could Ubuntu-Au promote Ubuntu to the various public sector education departments, well going to individual schools is a waste of time because not every school has an IT manager that is capable of working on the schools IT infrastructure so you would need to canvas the entire department starting from the Director General (being from NSW I'm using NSW terminologies) and then work your way through the levels down to the various schools. They need to be convinced that Ubuntu is a viable option not only that they will need to be convinced that Ubuntu-AU is going to be there to help. What will they look for? I think they will want to know what Ubuntu has to offer. I wouldn't even bother telling them to check the Edubuntu site, why? well its not even up to date. So, and this will be the same for every industry we want to encourage to change over, we would need to update (for Ubuntu-AU) the list of programs available and how they can be used instead of the Windows options. We would need to show things like costs savings, we would need to show training options for staff and possibly also students. We would need to have a possible role out plan formulated so that, incase of difficulties, there are still usable PCs available to use. Believe it or not that last point is extremely important, I remember a few years ago the NSW department made a huge change and it didn't work so for about a week most of the state schools had no usable PCs. So, having said all that I hope I haven't dampened your enthusiasm but have helped to bring to light a few points that show what a huge task some of these things are. Michael (k3lt01) -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
