Re: [Announce] Declaration of Council Election and call for Nominations

Craige McWhirter <[email protected]> Mon, 4 Jan 2016 12:51:35 +1000
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.australia
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On 02/01/16 15:16, Joshua Hesketh wrote:

> TL;DR: Elections are open. Please nominate and/or stand.

I've been a Council Member this last 12 months and I intend to stand
again as a Council Member for the next 12.

What's become crystal clear to me over not only the last 12 months on
the LA council but over the last 20+ years of my involvement with Linux
User Groups in Australia is:

* How much work is borne by too few
* The high barrier of entry contributing work to LA and LUGs to help
"the few" and spread the load.
* The nature of the way contributions are currently gated makes change
slow and contributes additional workload for "the few".
* How new enthusiasm sweeps in, brings much needed fresh change but the
absence of long term planning makes today's "cool thing" tomorrow's
maintenance burden.

We have a large community of highly skilled people who would like to
contribute more but are inadvertently locked out or discouraged by the
current processes and the required restrictions around server access etc.

For example, a member who is skilled in their field, should not have to
send an email to an already busy council / sub-committee to have their
patch / fix / content change approved and then applied by the council.

It should be sufficient for the LA community to have a review service
(such as Gerrit) where a patch is applied for a configuration / content
change.

This change could then be tested by a testing tool, such as Jenkins and
reviewed by acknowledged peers in our community who "know their stuff".
When $ENOUGH peers have approved the change, it is applied
automatically, hands free.

What I've described is neither new nor revolutionary as many of us
already work this way in our professional lives, using the Gerrit and
Jenkins combination which I've listed as an example or other tools, such
as Phabricator, which fill the same role(s).

I see this as the way forward for Linux Australia to not only manage our
infrastructure securely, enable broader contribution to both
configuration, patching and content management (website) but also as a
service that could be offered to the broader FOSS community once we have
it working for us.

I think that such a review / testing service offers the Linux Australia
community:

* Lower barrier of entry to contribution.
* More eyes on changes and a broader number of approvers.
* Facilitate a migration to managing our web services better.
* Enable a maintenance and change culture that will endure beyond
current  bursts of enthusiasm.
* Provide a service infrastructure that could be utilised by LUGs and
other groups.
* Learning opportunities for inexperienced contributors to learn from peers.
* An experience in professional practices for those that may not
otherwise get to use such systems.

While I am 2iC for LCA2017, the Director of LCA2017, Chris Neugebauer
supports my bid for re-election as OCM to engage in this particular body
of work, should the community and incoming committee believe this is a
worthwhile endeavour.

If you think this is a worthwhile effort, please free to nominate and
second me for the position of Council Member:

https://www.linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=election-nominate&id=22

See you in Geelong :-)

-- 
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/

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