Re: Maybe this will help, maybe it won't

[Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <ads(at)pgug(dot)de>]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 01:21:36PM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:15:25 +0000
> "Dave Page" <dpage(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
> 
> > Things natually get organised in a hierarchical nature because it's
> > the only way we can deal with things when there are large numbers of
> > people involved. You yourself for example were talking only the other
> > day about having a US parent group for the local PUGs for example.
> 
> Yes but my arguments don't disagree with the above :)

I think, they do.

Look, we are talking about an -->European<-- -->User<-- Group. What
does that mean for me: "users from europe". Maybe even "users in
europe", but naturally not "users somewhere else which is not europe".

Not that i want to discriminate someone, not by origin and not by
willingness to help in europe. But in my opinion, if we build a user
group for europe, we really should focus on that topic. Sure we can
stretch and wrench the words "user group" and "europe" in any way we
want, but does that make sense?

If we just want to have an organization presenting and supporting
PostgreSQL in europe, we should rename the whole project to something
like "PostgreSQL Group Europe" or even "PostgreSQL Europe". But in this
case we don't have to discuss membership questions at all.


So the primary question is imho: are we discussion an user group or a 
PostgreSQL group? If we answer this question, we have the answer what 
this group will be and who can be a (voting) member of this group.



> > larger group to meet once a month in a restaurant. It's harder still
> > for the global group to deal with getting everyone together for a
> > large conference on an annual basis. Like it or not, things work best
> > when organised hierachicaly by locality.
> 
> This isn't 1984.. we have jabber (authenticated, encrypted), IRC (can
> be encrypted and authenticated), SLIC (sp?) (authenticated,
> encrypted)...

And? Some things stay local, even if you are connected world-wide.
In any case: having a network which allows communication all over the 
world does not answer the question: what kind of group do we want?


> Well no as usual it is a very small number of people "representing" the
> whole ;)... but I have said my piece. I can't argue any farther or
> further. If you don't agree so be it. I just wanted to try in get it
> out there in a single note that could be absorbed. There is always the
> slim chance that I am wrong. :P

This is not about "right" or "wrong". Your throw-in makes sense, but the 
answer is maybe: we also want a global group.


Kind regards

-- 
				Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature