I think that overall, having a presence on social networking sites would be beneficial and help promote/inform. It is not right to jump the gun and set these up before a confirmed consensus has been reached by the group as a whole, but what's done is done. One of the biggest issues, and one which I think is unrelated, is that of us not maintaining our wiki (I'm pretty guilty, I haven't done my one-a-week for a while...).
As far as maintainability, I think that at the very least, the Facebook group can be used as a semi-static page with links to our 'official' web locations. I know that I have done a few searches for groups over the years for linux and other topics I'm interested in, and using this as another way to drive traffic might be helpful. If I got a twitter reminder about the meeting once every two weeks, that'd be good to get me there too :/ I've set up a few facebook groups, and am pretty active on Twitter, so at the very least Grant has one backup, but it sounds like it won't be an issue. Anyways, I want to hear more from Nathan and Neal before I give a +1, but I do think it's a good plan, and thanks Grant for getting this going :) Joe Smith Student Network Technician Chapman University IS&T On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Grant Bowman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Nathan, > > Thanks for responding. I understand and share many of your concerns. > I think our goals are just about identica(l). :-) > > If you want to use the new channels you are welcome to do so. If you > don't you are not required to "stretch" yourself in any way. I think > even limited use of these new tools for meeting announcements would be > beneficial with almost no additional resources and better leverage our > existing efforts. Rereading the log at > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CaliforniaTeam/Meetings/08November16 it's > clear to me that you and I were in strong agreement about the > usefulness of microsharing. I don't see this as contrary to what we > agreed on. Discussion immediately moved to the mail list with Joe and > James and you responding. > > I am happy to accommodate the use of identi.ca, enabling further > notifications and LoCo member involvement. All it would take is to > link the accounts. As I already emailed you and Neal privately, I > look forward to getting you both the twitter account password. Out of > curiosity I looked at the darcs repository to get the php source that > runs identi.ca. http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/Source > > Right now I see that http://identi.ca/ubuntucalifornia has few > subscribers while http://twitter.com/ubuntu_us_ca has 14 including > both you and I and several others from Northern and Southern > California regions. One of the benefits of using the same > microsharing platform is @replies facilitating conversation. For the > benefit of others on the list, the full benefits of microsharing > extend beyond the use case of "short blog entries delivered to SMS." > See the URL in the next paragraph for more on this. > > I also noticed in a quick search for ubuntu on identi.ca that there > are some official sounding channels. Unfortunately they seem either > empty or (like ubuntunews) the same data is available as twitter > channels. Unfortunately whoever is behind ubuntunews isn't following > it's followers. The reasons for doing this are I think pretty well > explained in this audio call recorded as O'Reilly TV available on > YouTube. http://snurl.com/5ho3e - #twitter4biz > > As for the facebook group, the discussion was tabled. Being impatient > and seeing (to me) obvious value I created it and am again > volunteering to keep it maintained. It's an experiment that can > easily be deleted if that's the best course of action. Again this > helps us leverage our existing communications. The facebook group has > 14 members already. Some names are familiar to me, some are not but > may be familiar if I knew their IRC nicknames, lol. I am pretty sure > there are names on facebook that are unique which is great. We can > use messages to inform more possible LoCo contributors. It is a > little easier to maintain as at present any member technically is > capable of updating and adding content. Again, administrative > overhead is next to nothing. In my experience default permissive > collaboration forums work well as long as moderation is present > if/when spammers show up. I will provide moderation until others step > forward such as you and Neal if/when you join the group. > > More follows: > > On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Nathan Haines <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 14:23 -0800, Grant Bowman wrote: >>> >> I enjoyed the conversation last night on IRC [1] about using social >>> >> methods to help promote the Ubuntu and Linux cause in California. >>> >> I've setup two areas to experiment with spreading the Ubuntu message >>> >> in California. >> >> Actually, I'm a little concerned. The conversation during the meeting >> was focused on whether or not social networking *would* be appropriate >> ways to promote Ubuntu in California. We only discussed Twitter, and in >> fact, I promoted identi.ca as being far more appropriate because it is >> an Open platform, unlike Twitter. But even then we agreed that we >> should use it simply for out-of-band notifications of events and such, >> and that we should discuss the level of detail on this list. > > That's a little simplified from my read of the log file, but I am glad > you expressed this concern more fully. As I mentioned in the meeting > I share your concern of having communications methods maintained. > >>> Now we just need participation: events, discussion, wall posts, photos >>> and videos. All suggestions are welcomed! >> >> That's the whole heart of the issue now: participation. >> >> The LoCo is working with an utter lack of participation. We're >> constantly asked why we don't do more or provide more free stuff, but we >> have just a small handful of members who are active and resources are >> stretched very thin. >> >> I thought we agreed at the meeting that we would in any case have to >> proceed carefully with any new medium we ventured into. It's very >> important to know what the expectations and scope of any new form of >> communication will be. And most importantly, who will be responsible >> for maintaining each new presence? > > Rereading the log I think it's clear we agreed to move forward with > microsharing and work out the details. > > Right now as I set up twitter and facebook I am the defacto volunteer > keeping them updated. I'm happy to show other interested people how > to fill in as needed for redundancy sake as any formal or informal > organization is well advised to do. Since all this is public > information any interested party can see what I'm doing and do the > same. Therefore, in a real way the communications are > self-documenting. > >> The tenor of the meeting's discussion was that we need to be very >> careful not to put out a presence we cannot maintain, nor one that will >> draw attention away from the mailing list and the IRC channel, which >> remain our core online presence. Even our wiki pages are neglected. We >> really do need to address this before we can even think about anything >> else. Microblogging works because it's an occasionally "heads-up" >> suitable for subscribing to on a cell phone. >> >> I don't wish to quench any excitement or new ideas but I'm very >> disappointed that we're being stretched even thinner now, and contrary >> to what we had all just agreed upon. >> >> -- >> Nathan Haines <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Ubuntu California Local Community Team > > > I'm glad we are discussing this further now. I see these new > communication methods as clearly reinforcing the usefulness of > existing mail list and IRC methods with minimal effort from anyone. > The wiki pages will get more effort as the group groups and that's > what I hope these tools will help us do - expand the group and > encourage participation. I see nobody disputing the core online > presence of the group. If I am misrepresenting anything I certainly > need to know now but I don't think I am. Maintenance is covered right > now; relax and enjoy these new tools. If you have additional concerns > we'll address them as they come up. > > -- > Grant Bowman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Ubuntu California Local Community Team > > > P.S. I'm following the ubuntu-us-ca list digest instructions and > updating the subject line. > > -- > Ubuntu-us-ca mailing list > Ubuntu-us-ca@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-ca > -- Ubuntu-us-ca mailing list Ubuntu-us-ca@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-ca
