Re: Community Teams

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi Jon,

On 12/02/2013 08:50 PM, William Jon McCann wrote:
> In the process of doing some cleanup of our online presence, I noticed
> that our local community team experience isn't very cohesive or inviting.
>
> We have a bunch of stuff scattered around the wiki with the center of it
> apparently being https://wiki.gnome.org/UserGroups .

There is also the (rather dead) gugmasters list, intended to be a place
for co-ordination of actions between user groups and also a central
place for the foundation to reach out to grass roots. The subscriber
list there is a good one, it might be worth reviving.

> While the term LUG or UG may resonate with some older users it doesn't
> really seem too inviting to me or some of the people I've tried to reach
> out to (ugh).
>
> So, I started thinking about what groups of gnomes might be called...
>
> Something that is a word and not an acronym.
> Something that avoids the tired old patterns.
> Something that is a warm, inviting, and evokes kinship.
>
> How about being part of a clan?

While I like the idea of getting away from User Group (even though it's
a pretty standard nomenclature for this kind of thing in the industry, I
appreciate it might sound dated), "clan" brings its own set of baggage.
It has implications of closedness ("clannish") and is associated with
video games for me.

There are a bunch of other ways we could go -
 * Move away from a label altogether, and have GNOME meet-ups (meet-up
seems to have replaced user group as the thing to call yourself, replace
"who we are" with "what we do").
 * If we want to create a sense of belonging & a strong group identity,
is there another name that might be both a rallying cry and send a
message of welcoming? "guild", maybe?
 * Send a message of GNOME assimilation & integration: "Join your local
GNOME cube"?

> I propose that we:
>
>  * Rename https://wiki.gnome.org/UserGroups to https://wiki.gnome.org/Clans
>  * Move individual team content under that page (eg.
> https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeBrasil -> https://wiki.gnome.org/Clans/Brasil)
>  * Streamline the presentation of the clans page and add a map
>
> What do you think? Should we go ahead?

For team content, it makes more sense for me that team members would
move their content. Perhaps user group naming is also something which is
more appropriate as a bottom-up decision, rather than top-down? Doing a
survey of local user group members definitely makes sense to me.

Cheers,
Dave.


-- 
Dave Neary, Lyon, France
Email: dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com