[chandler-users] Announcing the new Chandler Users Advisory Group

[Mimi Yin]

Hi,

We are pleased to announce the formation of the Chandler Project User  
Advisory Group. Over the past 3-6 months, it’s become apparent to us  
(OSAF staff) that there is a lot of energy in the user community and  
that a more organized approach to harnessing that enthusiasm would do  
the project a lot of good.
Open source projects run the gamut when it comes to governance and  
decision-making. One of the challenges we face is ensuring that users  
continue to have a prominent voice as a volunteer developer community  
emerges around the re-architecture effort. The formation of the  
advisory group is a first step towards taking on that challenge.

So I am happy to say that 3 of our most active users on the users- 
list have agreed to form v.1 of the User Advisory Group. You probably  
know them from the list. Davor has been involved in the project for  
over 3 years. Andre, for over 2 years and Keith for a year and a  
half. Their contributions have ranged from providing user feedback to  
painstaking debugging and helping new users get started.

Please see the full blog post for introductions from Davor, Andre and  
Keith.

We will be working out the scope of roles and responsibilities  
individual members of the group will take on in the coming weeks.  
Here is an initial brainstorm of project areas.


A few projects we’d like to start right away include:
- Creating a users web forum. - Davor will be sending out a proposal  
for comments in the next week.
- Crafting an advisory group “charter”. - To be worked out publicly  
on the Users-List over the next month.
- Recruiting more members! - Ongoing.
Governance
One of the areas we expect to work on continuously is the issue of  
governance. What “rights and responsibilities” does the advisory  
group have with respect to volunteers who are writing code or  
contributing in other “tangible” ways, e.g. writing documentation,  
submitting art work, etc. What is the make-up of the group? # of  
people? How are members elected? Are there “term limits”? To get  
things started, OSAF staff has drafted 3 founding members. Going  
forward however, we want to establish processes for growing and  
sustaining the group.

Our first governance project is to look for models in other projects.

Davor brought up Apache Project’s notion of a “core developer group”.
What about non-software development models? e.g. Wikipedia “stewards”?
There are a few points of process we think we’d like to implement  
right away.

- The group will work primarily on the Users List. Mails will be  
tagged [UAG] in the subject line.
- There is a public, shared Chandler collection to keep track of  
projects.
I imagine that in the coming weeks, we will be bringing these issues  
to the users-list, looking for input from the broader community. So  
stay tuned for more discussions!

Note Some of you may be wondering what my role is specifically with  
regard to the advisory group. I am not technically a member of the  
advisory group. However, during this initial period as the group is  
finding its legs, I expect to be actively involved in getting this  
rolling.
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