[CLUE-Admin] Re: CLUE North CVS access

[El Presidente de CLUE]

Jed,

I think a bit of history with the CLUE-North idea would be helpful to explain 
why we split off a document tree:

1)  When we kicked around the idea of a CLUE-North meeting (mostly in response 
to a question by a web site poll) over 30 respondants said they would attend.   
We also had repeated calls for a meeting 'up north' over the years.  With 
T-Rex coming, we (DTC admins, since there were no north admins at this point) 
thought it would be a good idea.  But, we wanted new volunteers (who live 'up 
north') to head up the details of the meeting, with the goal of being 
autonomous.

2)  Autonomous was not really defined except in the context of a meeting.  So, 
the new north volunteers would be responsible for finding meeting space, a 
monthly meeting schedule, speakers, etc.  We also hoped they would find 
sponsors as well, since we reasoned that there may be similar reasons for 
sponsors to go to a north meeting, but not drive through T-Rex.  

I think we envisioned that the CLUE-north group would be an autonomous brother 
to CLUE-DTC.  We share the same name and members on email lists, but the 
meetings are separate and not simply the same meeting at two different 
locations each month.

IMO, The definition of autonomy is the crux of this matter of the web site. 
But, I think the north admins have this understanding - at least I hope I 
communicated it last summer during our kick off meetings.  This is why they 
have 4 volunteers (now 3 after Randy stepped down).

3)  Given the necessity of autonomy, including speaker scheduling, I created 
the clue-north home page.  Others, such as Randy made additional changes such 
as cloning the document tree and creating a new navigation bar.  I believe 
they made these changes from the point of autonomy.

Here's my opinion:
*  CLUE-North meetings are a good idea.  We need to help them as much as 
possible to maintain their viability.  IMHO, this is in the interest of 
Linux.  Lynn can describe the 'dark times' of clue when we met in Ed's DU 
dorm foyer, so the fact that meeting attendance is low (even though interest 
based on the poll last year was high) indicates that we need more 
advertising.

*  Using the CLUE home page to help advertise the CLUE-North meeting may help.   
I don't know that we gave this enough consideration as the north idea was 
formalized last fall.  I recall some discussions about it and I think the 
concensus of the dtc admins was to create a separate home page.  We also 
thought it would be easier for future unnamed north admin(s) to update a 
separate page.

I hope everyone now would welcome the idea because our goal as admins (DTC and 
North) is to get as many people as possible to our meetings to learn about 
Linux.  So, whatever we need to do to that end should be the important 
consideration.  If you look at our usage statistics, the top entry and exit 
point is the / page.  This correlates to the findings from our web site 
survey that most people use the CLUE web site for the meeting information.

*  Given the goals of autonomy, does it make sense to combine all of the north 
pages back into one?  I think it may be confusing from a member point of view 
because every page would have to indicate to which meeting or group of admins 
this information applies.

* We need more discussion on it.  I would like to hear from Gus and Crawford 
on this matter.

Jeff