[Baypiggies] (Apr) Agenda ... a proposal

[Stephen McInerney]

Hi Dennis,

Actually I think you, I and Tony meant largely the same thing,
I may have been a bit unclear. Let me clarify please:

- I suggested we solicit and assign volunteers to do X,Y&Z,
then delegate to them.
(We basically define what we want, then each volunteer goes
off and figures it out. If they need input from the list, they ask.)
I did *not* say: we thrash out every last detail of implementing X,Y & Z.
That would of course be a total waste of time.
But if (to take one example) we can simply get 10 committed people working 
on
speaker invites, I think the speaker deficit is solved.
I already got >10 great suggestions via the survey so I think
it's time to get that ball rolling, so it produces results by June or July.
Maybe I can recast my proposal as "What are the top-10 responsibilities
we need volunteers for?" Maybe we should make that the discussion focus?

- also it seems my intent was not clear, from feedback I got from Tony C.
My intent here is "very probably we can't solve the big issues this week,
such as the group identity, but let's start taking actions to iteratively
improve things by starting a culture of following through on ideas or 
criticisms."
Certainly you are all free to say this is not the way to go, or just 
lower-priority.
It was only a proposal.

e.g. Restarting book reviews is a smart tactic (in several people's opinion) 
because
they generate a pool of speakers who can be relied on as as last resort
if everything else on the agenda falls through (as has now happened two
months in a row). I understood from Wes this was a smart tactic.
But this is only a suggestion. You may think it's irrelevant or 
lower-priority.
Also, I (mistakenly?) understood from Wes that we had fallen into O'Reilly's
bad list by not keeping our review deadlines (certainly there are no reviews 
visible
on http://www.baypiggies.net/book_reviews/index.html, and it hasn't been 
updated
since Dec 2005).
And it was never clarified that Tony Capp took over from Wes two years ago
as the O'Reilly book review coordinator - I think very  few people were 
aware
of that? So that should have been communicated on email and website.
(Tony said they did mention it at several meetings last year).
So if there are book reviews going on in our group, I have no knowledge
or visibility of it, and there's no recent update on the list about it 
either.

Anyway you and I have committed to presenting at May mtg.
So at least May agenda is well-defined already.

Best,
Stephen

>From: Dennis Reinhardt <DennisR at dair.com>
>To: baypiggies at python.org
>Subject: Re: [Baypiggies] (Apr) Agenda ... a proposal
>Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 12:22:07 -0700
>
>At 10:40 AM 4/10/2006, Stephen McInerney wrote:
> >7:30  ...
> >IDEs: CANCELLED/POSTPONED Due to lack of volunteers
>
>We currently have a hole in Technical Presentation.  IMO, expanding the
>"future directions" to fill the time is not a good idea.  I would like to
>see this hole filled.  Let's figure out what we can put together to present
>
> >7:45 Logistics and Volunteers - Wes & Stephen
> >... basic and essential
> >things like (say): (seven items snipped)
>
>IMO, the list of items proposed is insufficiently focused.  I am afraid
>that a discussion along the lines of the seven items listed is a setup for
>failure: too much to do by too few people and unclear responsibility.  I
>think we need to identify WHO will volunteer and we want to take ownership
>long before we organize specific tasks.  The WHAT of targets can wait until
>the survey results are fleshed out.
>
>The agenda I proposed for future directions was snipped from Wes's own
>words.  As a task list to accomplish, I felt it was on-point and
>doable.  Stephen, Marilyn, anyone: can you offer an improved replacement
>agenda for future discussion and lead it:
>
>          new volunteers
>         get the snacks going again
>         invite speakers
>         help coordinate the whole group in general
>
>Regards, Dennis
>
>----------------------------------
>| Dennis    | DennisR at dair.com   |
>| Reinhardt | Powerful Anti-Spam |
>----------------------------------
>
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