[TriZPUG] Can we change our name?

[Chris Calloway]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:27:48 -0500, Frank Wierzbicki
<fwierzbicki at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On another thread Chris Calloway soundly rejects the idea of a new
> name with a truckload of great points. Personally I think that amounts
> to a BDFL pronouncement around here :)

I want to soundly reject the idea of a TriZPUG BDFL. I was just stating my
preference and trying to provide a rationale for it because I think I would
be highly impacted by a name change. BTW, tripy.org is taken by some domain
squatter in Montreal. I looked into registering it some time ago. And it is
still owned.

You are all Comandante Zapata.

It's not the guy with the shotgun. It's *whoever* calls shotgun:

http://www.svbug.com/shotgun_rules.txt

(BTW, "BAD" means "Bay Area Debian." I've been posting that link to this
list regularly for years.)

We've operated under a somewhat looser interpretation of those rules. For
instance, our meeting places are sort of fixedso that there is less
confusion, less email traffic, fewer people getting lost, less figuring out
yet another parking situation, etc.. But we don'r require having formal
speakers for meetings and anyone who wants to speak simply says they are
instead of asking for permission. Just call shotgun.

I do try to spread things around as much as I can find people willing to
accept the responsibility.

The meeting happened last month because Brad Crittenden (bac) stepped up to
the bar, including making announcements on trizpug.org. He and Josh have
both done that in the past. It's because of bac that we've been meeting
every third month at Carrboro Creative Coworking lately.

Mark Biggers has been doing more with the managing the email list.

bac and jjmojojjmojo have been doing more to handle the IRC channel.

Sometimes people have assumed responsibility and then had other things,
sometimes family issues, come along to take their attention away. I used to
depend more on a couple of other people for meeting announcements but life
has taken them in other directions now.

We just watch each others' backs to make sure things don't fall through the
cracks. I will usually wait to see if somebody else does things in a timely
manner. If nobody does, I might call up the last person who did the thing
that needs getting done and ask them if they are still going to do it this
month. Most often, that works. If it doesn't, I either fill in the slack or
ask around until I find someone who will. If I find someone who used to do
a thing now repeatedly needs prompting to keep doing that thing and my
prompting does not seem to have much effect, then I sometimes look for
someone else to nag.

That is, I call shotgun when no one else does. If that's somebody's idea of
a BDFL, great. It's just not mine and I don't want anybody getting the idea
that is the case. I call the people who do things to make TriZPUG happen
"facilitators." There isn't and hasn't been a single point of failure. If I
get hit by a bus, there would just be one less person nagging other people
and fewer messages on the email list.

You will notice that meetings happen whether I am present or not. This is
because I am not a single point of failure. Brad is. :)

Basically, anybody who repeatedly shows up and demonstrates commitment is
handed the keys to TriZPUG. We have over ten administrators of trizpug.org.
Some of them use their power. Some have to be prodded. Some don't. It's all
about showing up over and over again and being a self-starting doer.

That strategy has worked pretty well. It seems to have the minimum amount
of overhead, administrivia, and bureaucracy of any user group effort I've
ever seen and I've been a part of one user group or another since 1978.

I think the worst thing we could do is acknowledge someone as BDFL. Because
then that person *does* by designation become the single point of failure
and the permission giver and the person who is expected to do it all.

If you look here:

http://trizpug.org/#acknowledgments

you will see TriZPUG is really a *large group* effort.

BTW, here is Tom Bryan announcing TriZPUG creation in July 2002:

http://www.zope.org/Members/tbryan/news/trizpug_announce

Here is the first message on the (old) email list:

http://starship.python.net/pipermail/triangle-zpug/2002-August/000000.html

The first meeting was Tuesday, October 8, 2002 at Veritas Software in RTP.
Geoff Davis gave a presentation on, ahem, Plone. There were 12 people
present. The after meeting was at Jamaica Jamaica.

This was our "website" for the first couple of years:

http://www.zope.org/DevHome/Members/tbryan/TriZPUG/FrontPage

The current TriZPUG.org was create on August 8, 2004.

Somebody say something about Python. All this navel gazing is tiring.

Cheers, Chris