[Osia-members] OSIA Membership Value & AOSD

[GPCS - Grant Petch]

Hi All,
Now I think its time for me to have my 2c worth about OSIA..  Please 
note that this is not aimed at our current temporary board of directors 
who are doing a great job under very difficult circumstances, but is 
more of an overview and some generalisations. It would be good for this 
email to be handed to the new incoming board to look at in the not so 
distant future.

Firstly; I'm going to voice my utter disgust at the AOSD (Australian 
Open Source Directory), before I continue on personally I think such a 
concept is a great idea, but has been executed very poorly & doesn't 
seem to function like I think it should.  The whole site looks like 
something from the early 1990's which has been designed by some high 
school programmer wanna be, to be honest I've met better student 
programmers when I was in TAFE back in the early 2000's!  Come on really 
we need to get out act together here as the whole thing doesn't look 
that professional.  It has useless blank entries, little to no ability 
to search on specific criteria that some potential clients would need to 
be doing, difficult in general to navigate around, and even I couldn't 
sign my own business up to it as a current financial OSIA member?  I'm 
sure that some of you out there could find some more issues on it that 
need to be addressed sooner than later.

Secondly; on the issue of membership value I've noticed this dwindle 
quite sharply in more recent years.  I initially joined OSIA in its more 
active and prime back around 2006, or somewhere around this point in 
time.  Around this point in time I personally felt that there was a much 
better level of member engagement, with a more wider showcase of 
activities for members to be involved with and actively participate in.  
Late last year I read an email on this list that Aimee-Marie posted and 
she did raise a few good points around this area of membership value, 
and would like to thank her for taking the time out to do so in her busy 
schedule.
Yes, noted that there is the need to lobby governments & don't get me 
wrong its fantastic that we have some members who are very passionate 
about this, but don't feel that OSIA should just solely be focusing in 
this area.  I'm sure that there are other members who would like to be 
engaging and being passionate about other areas of the Open Source 
Industry.  Over the years there have been some great member events with 
some very thought provoking guest speakers, which have also provided 
members with an effective way to network with each other - and these 
events have been held in other states other than the eastern states.  It 
would be good to see some of these events return & be held in various 
states around the country.  I also recall a few years after I joined 
that OSIA had presence at some IT trade shows one of them being CeBit.  
I do realise that this take time, money & effort but is a good way for 
our organisation to be in the public eye along with also letter other 
industry people know of our existence, and a way of trying to recruit 
new members. Can we maybe try doing something like this again in the future?
Perhaps could we also consider running some sort of low key seminars / 
workshops that our membership could benefit from being involved with 
doing.  Obviously keeping them low key would also be a good way of 
keeping costs to a much more reasonable level.
In some other IT organisations that I've been a member of in past years 
they have produced some form of periodical publication which members 
felt that they had something in their hand of which their annual 
membership fees were being put to good use, and they were getting a 
little something back for their membership.  I can't recall OSIA having 
anything of this nature since I've been a member - but I do stand to be 
corrected if I'm wrong in this instance.  I do recall OSIA publishing 
some case studies back a few years ago which was a good step in the 
right direction, but nothing more seemed to come out from this.  I do 
know that such publications aren't that cheap to produce, so I wouldn't 
be championing a monthly publication here, but what about considering 
either quarterly (4 issues per year), half yearly (2 issues per year), 
or produce something a little larger in volume for something annual?

Anyway just some food for thought.  I would like to hear some of your 
thoughts, comments, ideas, suggestions around this from our membership, 
and past leadership of OSIA.


Warmest Regards,
Grant Petch