Volunteer meeting Thursday 3 April 08

Attending: Michael Holloway, Becky Hogge, Mark Levitt, Chris Mear, Chris Adams, Frederik Fix, Anon., Adam McG, Glyn Wintle, Rowan, Harry Metcalfe, Robin Fisher, Howard Burdett, Raph Goldacre, Dynamo_Ace, Elliotjhug

Update

  • Sheila's stewardship of ORG's upcoming group (with Harry and Glyn also contributing) is still fantastic.
  • Glyn's been doing some heroic chugging, including stints at QCon and PHPCon (any suggestions for the next conferences we should hit?)
    • MH to ensure Chris pushes the ORG at Social Innovation Camp
    • MH to follow-up with Dynamo-ACE re forums
  • Major thanks to Chris M, Felix and Matthew for helping out with the Creative Biz seminars. Great work :)
  • Well done to Anon for wikificationalising our submission to the Data Sharing Review consultation. Any comments / improvements before we ask Anon to do more of the same?
  • Nice one Felix for getting the data-loss widget ready to roll

Discussions

Corporate Engagement

Becky outlined our plans for engaging corporates before leading a discussion on the risks and opportunities. We currently have 717 supporters but need 1,500 to be financially sustainable, which seems an unlikely number (1,000 is more achievable). Also, grant-funding tends to dry up once an organisation is out of its infancy and no longer exciting. So we are planning to instead use corporate engagement to bolster funding. A lot of NGOs and thinktanks pursue this approach. We don't want to do corporate sponsorship because current structure works well, in that we're a voice for the grassroots technologist community. We don't want to risk diluting or polluting this core function of ORG. We must avoid perception that we are simply a mouthpiece for Google, Microsoft or whoever.

So, in conjunction with William Heath, the current suggested programme is for ORG to invite tech vendors (who sell into Guv) into a forum where they can hear the perspective of civil society. We can link them with other NGOs and activists and ensure a constructive dialogue. But we will not let them influence or buy our policy. The firms are invited to quarterly seminars and also receive monthly updates on ORG issues.

Of course this is only worth doing if its OK with our Supporters...

  • List of concerns raised by attendees (although broad feeling was very positive)
    • Can we provide enough information? Must ensure the service is quality and companies feel they are getting a good deal.
    • Offer a low rate for SMEs and start-ups, although be sure to charge the right rate for big firms.
    • Establish clearly the rules of engagement; they must not try and sell or push anything to ORG
    • Be wary of the risk of conference fatigue and also ensure our events are distinctive
    • Maybe produce conference proceedings / minutes to publicise discussions
    • Publish a list of attendees (which should be opt-out and not indicate any form of sponsorship / patronage of ORG)
    • Should not prevent companies who simply want to support ORG from making larger donations
    • There will be for some an inevitable perception of bias
    • Can we use the FSF's experience here?
    • Check it out further with org-discuss and org-supporters

Thanks to everyone for the useful discussion. We'll take this on-board and proceed with wider consultation of the community before firming up plans.

Supporter Drive

We want to attract 50 new supporters by the end of May. Any suggestions for a campaign?

  • Competition around who is bringing in the most new people. Perhaps t-shirts, mugs printed with "I got five people to support ORG and all i got was this lousy X". Maybe some kind of thermometer / ticker on the site?

Sound Copyright: MEP Questions

We're developing a strategy for the Sound Copyright campaign and want to hear your top questions that activists should put to their MEPs. For example, do you really think that granting a longer term of protection will encourage more musicians to record or is this reform just about propping about an outmoded and ailing business model? Please send your suggestions for questions by email to info at openrightsgroup dot org.

Tasks

Design a new ORG laptop sticker

  • MH to pursue with rowan

News blog

As suggested by Harry, we should post the weird and wonderful news stories that appear on org-discuss. Glyn's the main provider but there are others. Trial approach is for stories to appear in current CDBE feed on sidebar. Adam will set up a new blog that Glyn and others will post to. There are other options (ticker, twitter, groklaw (?)) but we'll see how this works for now.

Cheap hosting for media files

  • Perhaps Amazon would give us something free?
  • Quick fix is to use blip.tv

AOB

Next meeting will be in six weeks time (Thursday 15 May)


If you want to get more involved with digital rights and ORG, then your 1st stop should be a volunteer meeting, where we run through current volunteer works and dole out new tasks. Please put your name down below if you intend to attend. The next meet will be at 1830 on Thursday 3 April, located at ORG HQ (7th floor, 100 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8AL). And as usual, we'll have the IRC running so that non-locals can participate. Any questions? Then email info at openrightsgroup dot org

  • Michael Holloway
  • Becky Hogge
  • Mark Levitt
  • Chris Mear
  • Anon.
  • Adam McG (if he remembers)
  • Harry Metcalfe
  • Robin Fisher (not working tomorrow so can make it!)

Rough Todo

Review actions / tasks

  • Sheila's stewardship of ORG's upcoming group (with Harry and Glyn also contributing) is still fantastic.
  • Glyn's been doing some heroic chugging, including stints at QCon and PHPCon (any suggestions for the next conferences we should hit?)
  • Major thanks to Chris M, Felix and Matthew for helping out with the Creative Biz seminars. Great work :)
  • Well done to Anon for wikificationalising our submission to the Data Sharing Review consultation. Any comments / improvements before we ask Anon to do more of the same?
    • Is it a concern that these pages are firm policy and can be edited? (How can we keep an eye on changes? Can we lock them?)
  • Nice one Felix for getting the data-loss widget ready to roll

Discussion

  • Corporate Engagement (Becky)
  • List of questions that activists should ask in a Sound Copyright meeting with their MEP
  • Supporter campaign (Website? Double-your-money? Sign-up-a-friend? Sell your granny?)

New tasks

  • Designer for new stickers
  • News blog
  • Cheap hosting for audio files (Amazon's s3?)

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