[wlug_org] Wellylug comittee stuff :-)

[Wood Brent]

Jamie B wrote:

> I guess my question is this, if the Wellylug and InstallFests are
> basically a non profit exercise (which incidentally I agree with), then
> does this make Wellylug essentially a social club? If Wellylug is in
> essence a social club then do we use activities of the WellyLug (such as
> InstallFests) to perpetuate social activities within the LUG? Is that a
> bad thing? Or is that a good thing?

Non profit & social are NOT the same thing. WLUG offers social opportunities
for Linux users, but the reason d'etre is Linux, not social. I'm sure Linus
isn't into Linux just for the parties.

> 
> I guess we are starting to see the points that Colin made (LOL). As
> Jethro suggested we could put it aside for a rainy day - but then where
> do we put the money? In a bank account? - Whose? And if we spend the
> money on assets - then who owns them?

Grin! Jamie, you are sounding sooo like a club president discussing club
financial issues with the committee. Maybe we need a treasurer! I thought you
felt such questions largely irrelevant?

Seriously, I think a club bank account is pretty sensible. Rainy day funds are
never a bad idea. Given the donation approach, I'd be more than happy to buy a
dinner for the lanplace guy (Shane?) & his family as a thanks for the use of
the venue.

We may want some hardware, or software (eg: buy a copy of Partion Magic to help
those with Windows systems go dual boot?)

The account can be called "wellylug rainy day account". Any 2 or 3 wellylug
members can be signatories, but if you want a formal way to set this up then
you need a document specifying this. Oh, that's right, we don't want one.....
no big deal, we'll accept a couple of volunteers that we'll take on trust to do
it for us.... 

It can be done informally, it is not very tidy, but we can choose between
tidy/documented/formal or informally on trust at the six month review of the
non-committee which isn't that far off :-)

> I have other questions: What is "lug related things"? What is "Promotion
> etc"

Unless we specify thenm in some club document- oh sorry..

> As an aside, donation might be a nice way to solve the problem (at least
> from a moral perspective). But I guess some of the issues above also
> apply. But maybe it should just be free. This would avoid a lot of the
> hassles. 

Donations do make the open source world go round. Why run away from the idea?


> But personally speaking, making the LUG a fun thing to belong to, is a
> good thing. Social events are fun. Therefore we should at least use the
> exercise to have fun within the LUG. Could be a curry_night, could be a
> picnic in the gardens, it could be a game of
> laser_strike/paintball/go-karts whatever. The point with social events
> is that they generally speaking are fun, and there's no assets at the
> end of it (i.e non profit?) 

As I said earlier, WLUG ain't simply a social club. And without something
formal to say different, whatever I say is true :-) I do agree though, wlug
does offer social opportunities, which are there for members to avail
themselves of as they desire.

> 
> At the last InstallFest meeting I suggested that the meeting of the 19th
> might be a good time to discuss housekeeping issues. So far I figure
> these are the things we need to discuss:

Is this the committee to discuss or the wider membership?

> 1. Mailing List Etiquette.

A bit vague. Are we talking about for sale msgs, quoting rules, off topic
limits? Is this going to be a witten document detailing wlug email etiquette?
If we have etiquette guidelines without the ability to enforce them it seems
pretty pointless. Where do we document such guidelines? in the club rules? oh-
sorry again!

> 2. Interest from the Greens.

I haven't heard from anyone who thinks this is an important issue for WLUG? A
reasonably representative group of members (I thought) came up with a sensible
approach so we could lay it to rest. What more will come out of rehashing it?

> 3. InstallFest Update

Hopefully everyone who needs/wants to know where this is at will know via the
org list, update msg to wellylug list or website? We can give a brief msg, but
a full update seems excessive.

> 4. ??

This discussion seems to revolve about several items which all relate to the
running/management of wlug. If we are going to discuss them, then it is
important that we make sure we do so with the structure of wlug & any
operational framework in mind.

We all agreed that there was possibly no need for any constitution, written
guidelines, rules, etc, or any formal committee, etc. So we'd try it that way &
see...

I suggest it might be timely, given this is up for review at the end of a six
month trial period, for the various organisers to discuss how they feel about
this, and what recommendations we make to the members at the review?

Brent