Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFSAC details

[Alex Hudson]

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 11:06:50AM +0100, Andrew Savory wrote:
> Ok, I'm having a hard time understanding what you're saying here.
> 
> You want to get people involved, but it's not an outreach thing? How does
> that work?

By outreach, I mean people who aren't members/haven't shown interest. The
people we want to get move involved at least initially are those who have
already shown interest.

> Given that the AFFS remit is to publicise free software, wouldn't it make
> sense to get as many non-members as possible to come along? 

Not in this case, no. The AC is our annual meeting for members. This isn't
a conference aimed at educating people about Free Software / profiling
business case studies, etc. That's not to say non-members aren't welcome,
of course, but that's not the focus of it. It's supposed to be a conference
of interest to members, and they are the people who we are doing this for.

> Again, if you need more people with enough time, and the current
> membership aren't exactly rushing to the fore, then you need a bigger pool
> of members to draw from. Letting non-members in and then convincing them
> of the benefits of membership is surely a good way to do this?

We're allowing people who are currently non-members in, I believe - they 
pay ?10 on the door (ish). 

As I said, the problem I think we need to address here is the communcication
between AFFS and those people who might be able to work with us. If we want
action, we need people to perform those actions. So far, I don't think we've
been as inclusive as we need to be.

> If b is significantly greater than (a+c) then I'd suggest we consider a
> non-member entry fee (at reduced rate, since it's a one-off event and not
> a year-long subscription).

The capacity of the venue is tailored to the number of members we expect to
turn up, so while your formula may be valid, the decisions behind it have
been pre-biased (by us :) so it doesn't tell you anything.

> I suspect I'm wasting my breath and that there will be few (if any)
> wanting to attend that aren't already members, but since the publicity has
> gone out and this is being portrayed in that publicity as an open
> conference (not explicitly members-only), we should at least make an
> effort to run it as an open conference.

Well, to be honest, if they're not willing to join it's unlikely they're the
type of person we want to target at this particular meeting. But feel free
to disagree - as far as I'm aware, we run AFFS by consensus :) Mostly :)

There are going to be a lot of other events this year that will cater
for the type of person you're talking about. We want AFFSAC to be at least
a slightly different flavour, because we're not competing with LinuxExpo/
UKUUG and all the other people doing similar things. That, combined with the
short timeframe and such issues means that I think this is the best route
we can take. Of all the meetings the AFFS has held, this would be the only
that takes this 'member-only' form, and whether or not the next AFFSAC takes
a similar form is completely up for discussion. 

Make sense? :o)

Cheers,

Alex.