[Osia-members] OSIA Membership Value & AOSD

[simran]

Hi Grant,
Although i have no doubt you meant the email as a productive source of
information; it comes across as nothing but arrogant!
How are "we" who haven't contributed to the organisation, but just been
recipients of the benefits (invisible and visible; direct and indirect)
qualified in any way to proclaim from our high horses what the boards should and
shouldn't do… rather than mention that the next board should read your email
because of your enlightened views in areas you have obviously made no
contribution in (or if you have; your email certainly did not indicate so).
I realise the irony and arrogance of my email; but we diminish the value of the
work that is being done by volunteers (board and otherwise) by doing nothing but
complaining, so wanted to call it out; even though it very much puts me squarely
in the arrogant basket myself!
Periodical publications are great, events are great, more FOSS is great… but
until we contribute, we really are in a place only to politely suggest… voicing
our "utter disgust" at things is utterly disgusting when we have done nothing to
contribute.
Oh! The Irony (speaking about what i'm doing via this email of course)… it hurts
:)
s :)  





On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 12:42 PM, GPCS - Grant Petch gpcs at internode.on.net  wrote:
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

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