We are looking towards the NA and European groups to see how they will be doing many of these things, but as far as I can tell each group is allowed a fair bit of autonomy to decide how things will be done. I think its worth discussing how people might envision the structure and governance of this group.
For example:
Will this group be the same group that actually executes on the event or will there be another group for the organizing of specifics (perhaps with some overlap of membership)? Related, what is the distinction between what is handled by the various groups, the event management company, etc.?
I get the impression this is meant to be a formal group not just a loose place to collect opinions, so how should we decide who is part of the formal group? Do we want to define specific roles within the group and have elections?
Organizing a large conference usually requires a legal entity, but a legal entity usually only exists in one country, so how should we handle the legal aspect of this organization?
Comments
Executive representation
The problem with any group such as this is many people who should be involved can actually feel disenfranchised because they can't see how the executive part of the group (committee, board, whatever you want to call it) actually represents them.
Obviously - we don't want to have an absolute free-for-all, because then nothing would get decided on - but there is a need for a clear and open process by which decisions are reached.
Maybe an elected executive that can then co-opt actioning (but non-voting) members as needed? This model seemed okay for a couple of volunteer organisations that have I worked with.
Authority issue
in the Drupal user group I am involved in, this has been a huge issue for the past several months.
The group is relatively young and has not had any formal, outside activity other than monthly meetings to study Drupal. Therefore, it didn't need representatives who make decisions and execute ideas agreed upon. Recently, an idea raised, and that was to have a booth which represents that user group, in a IT convention. To make it happen, there were lots to decide, such as who would be in the booth, the design of the hand-out, posters, who was going to bear the cost, etc. But there were only a few people involved in the discussion and they were not elected as representatives of the group. There was no person who has the authority to make decisions. As a result, we spent a lot of time to discuss this, and finally we decided that the booth didn't represent the group and it was rather a voluntary action to have the booth, design paper materials, and stay for Q&A at the booth, etc. We still have not agreed that we need to give some people the authority to make final decisions and carry them forward.
From this experience, I strongly believe that even a user group of an open source software needs the authority, otherwise nothing will happen.
Aki Iwata
FOREST & trees
Aki Iwata
FOREST & trees
I think the group structure
I think the group structure should mirror the Drupal Association and other DrupalCon organizing groups as much as possible, deviating only if necessary or when it is not appropriate to. Thus the DA should probably nominate some initial members who will accept nominations/applications/proposals from others who want to be members and vote on them.
The day-to-day activities involved in organizing a DrupalCon can be handed off to other individuals or groups but the DrupalCon group should also be involved at the very least in frequently monitoring and assessing progress and financial status and risk, and probably a lot more than that, most of the time.
Organisers of a specific DrupalCon should aim to hand off as much as possible to the event management company as long as it is economical to do so (i.e. probably not the drupalcon website). Thus the burden volunteers have to take on can be minimized. Any event organisers who are not members of the DrupalCon organising group or employees of the event mgmt company are considered volunteers. They may take lead roles in organizing a DrupalCon (though should consider applying to be members). Though financial responsibility always falls back on to the DrupalCon Organizing group, and not a volunteer.
Individuals or companies other than the event mgmt company may also contract to the DrupalCon organizing group to take on specific discreet tasks, such as wifi networks, websites, video recording and post-production. This may be necessary to allow would-be-volunteers to be compensated for work done that is out of the realms of what is possible in one's "spare time", and therefore get the job done to a professional standard.
This sounds similar to what horuskol suggested above.
Australia is likely the best place to register a non-profit group for this entitiy. Though I may well be biased, since I don't know much about how this might work in Asian countries.
Of course that is all only my opinion. But then this is a discussion. :)
Bevan/
I agree with the idea of
I agree with the idea of first electing the initial board members. However, I am not so sure if it is a good idea that only these board members review the applications for the board member and pick some people up. Cannot we choose a more democratic way, i.e., open voting where anyone in the group can vote for his/her favorable person, since we nowadays acquire the tool (IT system) to reflect each one's opinion on the politics?
Aki Iwata
FOREST & trees
Aki Iwata
FOREST & trees
Alternatives et al
Organization techniques need not to be limited to some sort of politics. Part of the challenge is being able to agree on organization ideals, much like completing a jigsaw puzzle where each piece (our different countries & regions) represent the whole picture.
On another light, I can only speak for myself but not for my entire country. I believe that there are more "abled" people in my region but is not a fan of lurking at the Drupal Groups. -- This prompts me to look for better ways for them (or anyone interested) to be involved less the grueling process of searching for most "abled" candidate. By "best" I relate effective, not-very-expensive, worth the while, good stuff less the commercial headaches (I'm sure you get the picture).
With all that said, I humbly offer the idea of "crowd-sourcing" as an alternative (definition here for those not familiar).
This way we can:
The right person/entity for the job will surface eventually. Feel free to poke me with the idea but I'm positive that we can eventually find better ways to organize.
I hope there is a list (or wiki) of "Drupal Asia Pacific: Reasons to Organize". Right now it's obvious that the reason is to make "DrupalCon Asia Pacific" possible but we're sure to have more good reasons to meet-and-great in the future.
All the way from the Philippines,
Marckee for Short