Re: [OSCOM] volunteers?

Gregor J. Rothfuss wrote:

> Daniel Hinderink wrote:
>
>> I have been thinking about contributing to OSCOM for a long time.
>> At the same time, I don't think reviving it can be successful with only
>> improving online communication. I believe fundamentally a sense of 
>> direction
>> and mission is missing (At least from my pov they are to widely defined
>> right now) and I would imagine that starting with meetings makes much 
>> more
>> sense.
>
>
> oscom got started by drinking beers together,


OSCOM was not really started by drinking beer together.

Just to get the facts right:
OSCOM was started by Eric and myself, thinking it would be a good idea
to have a conference on FOSS content management systems. After the very 
first
conference in Zurich which Eric and I organized alone, Eric and I went 
snowboarding to Engelberg and on our way back on the train to Zurich, we 
wrote down a list on things to do to keep going (one item was the CMS 
matrix).

At the station we met by coincidence Gregor and Henri and we told them 
our ideas.
By this Gregor and Henri become involved. After a short period of time
Paul and Roger Fischer (Christian's ex-partner) also became involved.
After some time Roger Fischer got distracted resp. didn't believe
anymore in FOSS and Christian replaced him.

> so your suggestion has a lot of merit. at the same time, we are a 
> pretty international bunch, and the fact that oscom was started mostly 
> by swiss people is a mere historical coincidence.
>
>> So here is my proposal:
>> - how about a re-constitution meeting (in Zurich, or Basel?) as an open
>> workshop trying to define a common goal and some roadmap for (y)our
>> activities for the next 1-2 years. We could collect input on this and 
>> all
>> the questions of about the by-laws (which I think need improvement)
>> beforehand from everybody on this list.
>>
>> I have done this before and I am willing to prepare and moderate 
>> this, if
>> somebody in Zurich helps with finding a location.
>
>
> while i don't mind a zurich meeting, it will exclude a lot of the 
> audience. i am not in zurich, for instance. it might make more sense, 
> therefore, to make this an online meeting.


agreed

>
>> What I would really like to do is to (help) organise another conference,
>> this time making it more accessible and also cheaper for people to 
>> attend.
>>
>> I enjoyed being in Zurich at OSCOM very much and heard some good 
>> speeches.
>> What I have been missing is a bigger crowd and more interaction 
>> between the
>> projects, which IMHO is due to the steep rates for attendance and not 
>> enough
>> press work.
>
>
> oscom4 was a failure.


why was it a failure? Just because not that many people showed up as one
would have expected? IIRC money wise it was break-even.
Did you also read the positive part of the sentence above?

Michi

-- 
Michael Wechner
Wyona      -   Open Source Content Management   -    Apache Lenya
http://www.wyona.com                      http://lenya.apache.org
[email protected]                        [email protected]