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From: Doug Bash on 19 Jul 2010 10:47










I apologize for sending this to both
the users and discuss lists even though I am aware that cross-posting
is a violation of list etiquette. If there is further discussion,
please direct it to the discuss list. My reason for raising the topic
in both forums is to reach readers quickly in North America who might
only read one and not the other, and who might be in Portland this
week for OSCON.



For those unaware of it, a wiki page
was started at OOo a few months ago to provide information on events
and activities involving OOo in the USA. The public communications
surrounding this set-up and two major proposals, i.e. a booth at the
American Library Association convention(quite a large affair with
approx 20,000 attendees) in DC and a subsequent organizational
meeting in New York City occurred mainly on the Marketing Project-dev
mailing list.




As far as anyone outside of the people
directly involved could tell, both projects were moving ahead
smoothly. In fact, however, one of the principals organizing our ALA
presence canceled, apparently on his own initiative, the entire
operation. As to the second, though supposedly taking place July 1,
there has been so far no report on either the wiki or mailing lists
as to not only any topics discussed but even whether the event took
place.




We seem to have, as the warden famously
said, “a failure to communicate.” If we would like to have an
active community here in the US, I doubt trying to run it through a
marketing mailing list will be effective. While at the OooCon in
Orvieto last fall, it became clear to me that central to the
structure of “community” involvement were the NLC's. The groups
that formed to translate/localize the program developed into the
providers of most of the QA volunteers checking issues, writing FAQ's
etc.



Unfortunately(?) for us, we don't have
this potentially unifying task to rally around; but some sort of
UserGroup should be feasible-though OOoUG does have some strange
phonetic implications-and as far as we're concerned, a user-centric
rather than developer-driven base might be more appealing. Is there
enough interest to consider a 501(c)(3)? Should we see if Oracle
wants to do something? Anyone at OSCON who wants to get together?




Douglas Bash









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