[governance] IGC

[Eric Dierker]

Ginger,
 
I very much support and endorse mass participation.  I am adamant about open membership. But with that said; I agree wholeheartedly that this forum should mainly be one of attraction and not promotion. 
 
Eric

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [governance] IGC
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:19 AM


Excellent discussion... Thanks everyone.

The mailing list is now "Powered by electric Embers using the NPO Groups version of Sympa 5.3.4"

I personally find the mailing list format to be very effective. Ning in particular requires that you go to the website to read any post, which I find very irritating and difficult if I do not have a good connection. One thing we need to do is make better use of the IGCaucus website as a resource with documents, links and other information. This will help the cross-document organization that Katitza and Jacqueline have commented on. That quite simple to do and I will work with the new co-coordinator and any volunteers to do this over the December holidays.

I am not at all convinced that we want to increase the membership of the IGC, or move "into the mainstream". I think we need both our active, vocal members, and our quite readers, but definitely emphasizing quality over quantity. If we are having substantive discussions, and working well, we will attract the members we want. I know that goes against the current thinking about social networking, but I think we should keep that in mind. Invite individuals who might be interested: yes.  But some kind public campaign? I would be very cautious about that. Note: our mailing list numbers are much higher than our actual membership due to inactive accounts and duplicate email subscriptions for some members who prefer to receive mailings at multiple addresses.

On several levels I object to a membership "fee". On a practical level, Venezuela has a very strict foreign exchange control, so 50 cents or ten dollars is a problem for me, which makes me aware of the logistical and personal problem this can generate for others as well. On a theoretical level, I also object. I think it somehow changes the character of the membership and the "entry barrier" of the group.

I do like Tracy's (and Katitza's) basic idea of a more organized, possibly funded IGC. Ian has proposed this possibility several time, but we have not yet found a workable structure for this. I think this discussion is a good way to explore options.

Thanks, everyone!
Best, Ginger







Jeremy Malcolm wrote: 
On 07/12/2009, at 5:56 AM, Tracy F. Hackshaw @ Google wrote: 


1. Evolve the dialog away from the dated mailing/discussion list format towards a more transparent and open Social Networking & Collaboration platform - I recommend that Marc Andreessen's and Giani Bianchini's brilliant Ning technology be used as opposed to the somewhat restricted Facebook, Orkut, and the like. Establishment of appropriate IGC presences on Twitter, Scribd and YouTube will also be useful. Utilization of emerging solutions such as Google Wave should be explored. Enterprise solutions such as Social Text, Lotus Connections are also available if a more robust solution is desirable. 

It's a good suggestion, however apart from the other reservations that have been expressed about this, I would not like to see us move to a proprietary hosted platform, which could compromise our independence. Sympa is open source software which can be hosted anywhere by anyone, so if we want to migrate the list including all its archives to another server at no cost, we can easily do so.  It's for the same reason that I have been critical of the IGF for switching to a proprietary Web conferencing system, WebEx, over the open source one DimDim that was used last year. 


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