Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: AFFS workings

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 13:37 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> The 2004 results were called "confidential" so I am surprised you
> refer to them on a public list. Hardly fair when most people can't see
> it.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, but I think you're
talking about the stand takings. We've always published our accounts
openly; what was "confidential" was a list of transactions that included
other groups we invited to our stand.

I don't think it's our business to publish other people's figures. The
AFFS figures should be in the accounts; if they're not there's a
problem, but it's a different problem.

Either way, you & I agreed targets and that Expo exceeded them.

> > Similar problems with local groups and branches - actually, I would go
> > as far to say that we *shouldn't* be doing that, and it should be left
> > up to the LUGs. [...]
> 
> Sometimes LUGs don't exist in an area, or people want a group
> to be under the AFFS banner. We should welcome that as a
> valuable outreach and recruitment opportunity. One new group
> was approved, but didn't get any help yet, as far as I know.
> There's no support offering for existing groups, is there?

I think we'd welcome it, but I don't think this is something that AFFS
can take the lead in. We can't generate communities at a local level;
there has to be a group of people who want to do things locally - what
help these people will need, I don't know. 

So, I think it's chicken-and-egg in many ways. Yes, it does need people
to have enough time to support it, but it also needs enough people
interested in doing it for it to be worth the time of those supporting.
AFFS does have some facilities that would be useful to local groups, and
can financially support them to some extent.

I think the better first step would be to improve contacts with LUGs, as
you've noted before. There are all kinds of ways of doing this - should
we offer even cheaper/group discount/free membership to key LUG members
(e.g., lug masters?) Should we have a LUG newsletter? What can we do to
better support LUGs in general?

I think there are definitely some things we could do better in that
department, and it certainly would be valuable for all sorts of reasons.
I'm pretty sure it would be a more natural first step than trying to
setup local AFFS groups; but obviously, if someone really wanted to do
that, it's probably not a bad idea anyway.

Cheers,

Alex.