[Osia-members] OSIA Membership Value & AOSD

[Jack Burton]

On Fri, 2018-01-05 at 12:12 +1030, GPCS - Grant Petch 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.

Thanks for your feedback Grant. Some of it ties in nicely with the
discussion in Cameron's thread.

> 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.

Yes, the AOSD beta as it currently stands is certainly far from usable,
far from launchable, far from maintainable:

* it has severe issues with accessibility -- try browsing to it with js
disabled: all you get is a completely blank page -- we really shouldn't
be discriminating against the vision-impaired like that ... and we
shouldn't be discriminating against lynx(1) users either -- both groups
have just as much right as anyone else to send their business to OSIA
members!

* it has an abundance of gratuitous code complexity (even the humble
HTML form has been reimplemented from scratch in javascript -- one
really must wonder why!?) which is likely to make maintenance rather
painful for whoever ends up with that task

* it is hosted in the "wrong" country (when you're trying to promote
the *Australian* FOSS industry, any country other than Australia is the
"wrong" one to host in -- a bit of a slap in the face to those OSIA
members who actually offer hosting on a commercial basis)

...in addition to the issues around functionality, look & feel and
small number of live entries that you referred to.

Nevertheless, it was only ever billed as a beta.

For the record, I support the 2017 board's decision to scrap the old
MRS beta and start over -- as esr himself said (and I think from memory
also Fred Brooks before him), "plan to throw one away, you probably
will anyway"...

...although, like you, I'm rather nonplussed about the chosen
replacement.

I also agree with you that MRS/AOSD was a good idea when it was
conceived (but then I'm clearly biased on that -- MRS was my idea ;).

To me the key questions on MRS/AOSD boil down to:

1. Is it still a good idea today? and if so

2. Where should it sit as a priority, in relation to the other things
OSIA needs to do?

3. Do we still want a referral service (the original idea), or would we
be just as happy today with a regular directory? [the original idea is
now almost a decade old, so it makes sense to re-evaluate it in the
context of today's market]

4A. If it is now to be a regular directory, why wouldn't we just use any
one of the existing FOSS solutions (with site-local patches if need be
to address any unique-to-OSIA requirements)?

4B. If we still want a referral service, should we: (a) fix the AOSD
beta; (b) resuscitate & fix the MRS beta; or (c) start over again?

[4A] & [4B] are in my opinion really questions for the new board to
consider and for nobody else -- my attitude on such things has usually
been along the lines of "he who gets off his arse and does the work gets
to decide *how* it gets done".

But [1], [2] & [3] are all questions for the general membership.

I'd be interested to hear what others think on those.

> 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.

Just to clarify, whilst I firmly believe that public policy should
always be OSIA's *core* focus, I've never suggested that it must always
be the *only* thing we do.

At a time of rebuilding like this, the key question is what should our
priorities be?

This question is being discussed in the other thread and again I'd be
very interested to hear what other members think.

> 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.

Some very brief comments from me on each of the different types of
initiative you mention:

* MRS/AOSD -- see above

* trade shows -- ceased to provide any return on investment some years
ago (even when you count likely return for members), at least for
industry bodies & professional services firms [they may still be
worthwhile for hardware manufacturers and perhaps even large distro
vendors, but members who fit into those categories would likely prefer
to exhibit in their own right anyway]

* "low key" member events -- if what you're after is a bunch of local
members getting together in a pub somewhere to discuss the state of the
market, you don't need to board to organise that for you. Any member is
free to post an invitation to such a meet-up to osia-members@ at any
time, then see who turns up & go have a great evening. It costs you
nothing (other than your own drinks on the night) and it costs OSIA
nothing. I seem to remember that happening in both Sydney & Brisbane a
year or two back.

* more formal member events and/or PD events/seminars/workshops -- I'm
not convinced that that's core business for OSIA -- but it *is* core
business for community bodies like Linux Australia (and all the myriad
groups that sit under its umbrella) and for professional societies like
ACS, ITPA & IEEE-CS. My personal view is that OSIA should avoid
straying into their territory -- but on the other hand, it might make
sense for OSIA to cross-promote or occasionally even sponsor some of
those groups' events when they're directly relevant to the .au FOSS
industry (like OSIA used to do for OSDC and before that for AUUG).

* domestic market events (where the target audience for the speaker is
potential *clients* of members, and members show up mostly just to meet
potential clients) -- we used to do those quite well but stopped when
the market changed and attendance fell too far. If the market has
changed again, I don't see any reason why we couldn't try them again.
Once more, a question of priorities (see other thread).

* publish a periodical -- this is a *lot* more work that you think and
costs a pretty packet too. That last Australian organisation directly
relevant to FOSS to do that well was AUUG (and I'm pretty sure the last
proper issue of the venerable AUUGN rolled off the presses in about
2005 or 2006). If even ACS (who have over 20,000 members) can't publish
periodicals in print any more, I think it would be overly ambitious for
OSIA to attempt it on our limited budget. It's a very nice idea in
principle though -- if a generous sponsor would like to tip in a
substantial (6 figure) sum annually to fund publishing a "Journal of
the Australian FOSS industry" or "Communications of OSIA" [presumably
pronounced "cosier"] or some such thing, I might even consider
volunteering to edit it ;)

-- note however that I *do* support using the osia-members@ and
osia-fin@ lists for a *lot* more communication than we've seen in
recent times -- for announcements from the board [recently reinstated],
for suggestions from members [like your list post I'm responding to
now] and just as importantly for communication *between* members.
Long-standing members will no doubt recall that the original members@ &
discuss@ lists provided substantial value in their own right, back in
the early days of OSIA (back then it was common for members to do
business with other members on members@ and interesting issues relevant
to the sector were often raised on discuss@). And that costs OSIA
nothing.

* OSIA case studies brochure -- I was rather fond of that too and, like
you, I'd also like to see a new edition come out each year. Editing it
was a bit of a task, but can still easily be done by a single person.
The real trouble was getting members interested in being featured in
the case studies. If there's sufficient interest now (you really want
at least 4 new case studies a year to make it worthwhile), it may well
be worth reviving. Again, also a question of priorities (see other
thread).