[H-GEN] The first LCA Bid discussion: where do we have it?

[Mark Ellem]

Hi,

On 1/6/09 6:33 PM, Russell Stuart wrote:
>
> You can look at it another way, Matt.
>
> It came as a total surprise to most of Humbug that our Exec had come up
> with a plan to re-work our infrastructure.  Very few knew there was a
> plan, let alone who was responsible for executing it.  No minutes were
> published documenting these decisions.  Others in the club may have been
> able to help out, but were never given the opportunity.

I'm assuming you are talking about caliburn going offline? Otherwise, 
please let me know what you mean and I can fill you in publicly on this 
list.

> There was no reason for this.  It could of been all done on general.
> And had it been, the issue would have of arisen.

You mean post to a mailing list hosted by an offline server?

Unfortunately, as with most groups, action seems only to happen in the 
face of disaster. We were planning on changes to our infrastructure 
before the incident, and we would have got to the point of calling for 
help here. By no means were we 'keeping things secret'. We simply did 
what we did when caliburn went offline in order to restore services as 
soon as possible.

That said, you and anybody else who's interested is more than welcome to 
help us out in system admin tasks, please contact me off-list. Your 
contribution already to helping us configure the wiki is appreciated 
Russell.

The point of having an executive is to plan long term goals like 
improvements to our infrastructure. If we had to post every minute 
change we were going to do to our membership, nothing would ever get done.

This is the very reason for an executive cabinet in government. Like it 
or hate it, it's a necessary evil.

> Your argument that "people could post to the general list as well" is
> great - except in that case it didn't happen, did it?  What makes you
> think it would happen this time?

I'm assuming you mean parties concerned in things such as changes to 
infrastructure? See above.

> And you are thinking of keeping the dinner quotes secret.  Why in
> heavens name would you do that?  It wasn't necessary in the previous
> years.  There is only one thing that necessarily must be kept secret -
> that is the individual sponsorships.  Mind you, even in that case a
> series of sponsorship levels was published openly by LCA, "Penguin" and
> so on, together with dollar amounts and later on who sponsored at that
> level.

I agree not everything needs to be kept secret. See my previous post in 
why I agree with Matthew on a separate mailing list.

> We are an Open Source society.  Note the word "Open".  Lets keep it
> "Open" by default, and only do things in secret when absolutely
> necessary.

I couldn't agree more. As far as I know, there is no plan to keep much 
secret about our bid, except what you mentioned. Please don't confuse 
delegating responsibility to a committee with being secret, as this is 
simply not the case.

Mark.
Vice President, HUMBUG.