Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS strategy (Was: Beyond bitching...)

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 22:52 +0100, Graham Seaman wrote:
> > (Re: FSFE-UK)
> Except it's not hosted by the FSFE, it's hosted by the FSF, as are an
> extremely large number of other lists, many of which seem to have no
> particular relation to the FSF other than mutual sympathy and co-operation.

Oh, I totally agree, and in many ways FSFE-UK is basically an AFFS list
- the aims are very similar. 

> But if this is the FSFE's UK list, is the AFFS the FSFE's UK branch? If
> not, does the FSFE have a UK branch?

AFFS is the FSFE's sole UK associate. AFFS is independent from FSFE, and
is not (nor would be) FSFE-UK. There is no UK branch at the moment, but
I think/hope there will be one in the not too distant future. 

> No. I don't want to be in an organisation which communicates with its
> members. I want to be in an organisation where the members communicate
> with one another (and if necessary give instructions to a committee
> which does the boring but necessary stuff).

Ah, I'm probably asking a slightly different question to what you're
answering :) I have no problems with the idea of members communicating,
that's clearly a good thing! 

Currently, when AFFS asks members to join, we promise that we'll send
them newsletters and official announcements (mainly invites to the AGM),
so there is a responsibility on the part of the AFFS ctte to have a
communication channel to the members. The newsletter is effectively an
announce list (although it's technically not setup as a mailing list),
AGM invites are a slightly different matter (they're snail mail - we
don't actually have e-mail addresses for all our members, so couldn't do
it electronically even if we wanted ;)

What I was getting at was whether you saw any of the above subsumed into
a new members' list, or whether this is a completely new function that
we don't currently offer.

I'm actually thinking that we don't need a new list right now; we just
need to actually use AFFS-Project more and publicise it more. Having
checked the membership, I'm actually surprised the number of people
subscribing to it - while not huge, when we first set it up we didn't
get past 10 or something for ages.

Cheers,

Alex.