[Infrastructure] new working groups

[Gunnar Hellekson]

Cross-posting to the newly created working-groups mailing list, so we  
don't muck up the technical discussions with working group  
discussions. Subscribe to working-groups here:

    http://opensourceforamerica.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/working-groups

On Aug 26, 2009, at 10:02 AM, Melanie Chernoff wrote:
> Pls see email below.  Ricardo looked at our list of groups, but  
> really wants to do something that's not limited to a particular area  
> [eg healthcare, education].  Instead, he'd like a group that brings  
> Federal IT professionals together from different depts/agencies so  
> they can create consistent OSS policies and practices.  He's willing  
> to lead it.  This sounds like a group with a lot of potential to  
> really change government.  But, I don't know that we can (or would  
> want to) limit the group to just gov't employees.
>
> But this brings up the question that I don't know what our process  
> is to approve a group.  Since each new group means additional wiki  
> page, mailing list, etc, I don't know that we'll want to accept  
> every new workgroup that's proposed.
>
> Curious as to others' thoughts on (1) this proposed group, and (2)  
> if we should develop some sort of criteria that we post on the  
> website for ppl that want to form their own group.

I think having horizontal groups is a great idea.

Up until this moment, the approval process has been a "Yes" from  
either John Scott or myself. I don't particularly enjoy the power, but  
I'm also loathe to create a more elaborate criteria until we have  
demand that requires it.

This is exactly the kind of thing we can sort out on the working- 
groups list!

g