[wplug-plan] Kathy Sierra on building a community

[Vance Kochenderfer]

Many of the ideas in there are about increasing openness and
transparency.  Fortunately we don't have a problem with that,
since pretty much everything is already happening in the open.

I would point out that meetings are one area of (unintentional)
opacity.  Not being able to announce the topic, speaker, and
location 2-3 months in advance I think lends an air of mystery to
our meetings (and not in a good way).  Of course, part of this
isn't under our control, but we should try to improve where we
can.

The survey is a good vehicle for learning about the desires of the
local community and we should keep that on track.

As I see it, ability to get things done is positively correlated
with aptitude and enthusiasm, and negatively correlated with
barriers to entry.  We may want to sit back and think about how we
can get people involved who have an aptitude for the things we
don't do well.  One can in the short term overcome a lack of
natural aptitude with one's enthusiasm, but this leads to burnout
on the part of the people involved.

As for barriers to entry, I think the wiki is an excellent
opportunity to lower those.  As we're all well aware, the main web
site is creaking along and having a site that can be improved by
everyone would be a great opportunity to engage people in making
WPLUG a better resource.

I realize that much of the above is pretty general, so I'll try to
re-read Kathy's article and think up some more specific
suggestions for what we can try.

Vance Kochenderfer        |  "Get me out of these ropes and into a
vkochend at nyx.net          |   good belt of Scotch"    -Nick Danger