I am going to begin this post by thanking Gabor Szabo for his recent blog post What I am missing from EPO, and to state that this is to follow up on his comments and queries and hopefully clarify some things. It is not intended to refute, rebuke or denigrate his words in any manner. In fact my feeling is that it is good to have people examine the motives and directions of any cause or process especially if they are outside or new as it gives analytical objectivity. As Gabor stated on IRC he wants to help us avoid making mistakes or at least aid us in spotting those mistakes.

Inside the offices of Circumlocution…

So without any further ado I am going to try and answer Gabor’s points to the best of my ability, explaining the current situation and my thoughts on progression. I hope that people see this as a dialogue as opposed to a monologue and that we all avoid the circulatory  bike-shedding that is so resplendent in these situations and find a clear path.**

A list apart from this one…

“I looked at the web site and could not find an e-mail list to see what’s going on.”

That’s a bloody good point, we need links to the existing Mailing Lists on the site (note taken, will add links) – they are at http://lists.scsys.co.uk. There is no general list at present but I think it is a good idea to have one and I will try to organise setting one up. There are dedicated lists, on the Extended Core run by Perigrin, the Marketing list etc., and we accept any input that we can. If you wish to mail the entire membership before we get that list up simply mail the Secretary (me) and I will pass on your email to the entire membership with a mail out to their addresses, but I would hope we try to get a voluntary list or use IRC as that feels like spamming, especially if it is for trivial things ;).

Who. Where. When. The three standards of journalism

“I tried to understand how many members they have”

Currently there are 25 Ordinary members and 25 Special members in the organisation. We are trying to recruit more.

“how much money they have”

Not a huge amount but as a member you are allowed a complete list of what money we have and where it came from. Please grab me privately for that information and I will supply it. For legal reasons we cannot publish any accounts online until after they have been submitted to Companies House. Our first year accounts are due and will be submitted soon at which point a report and viewing them will be available at companieshouse.gov.uk.

“and on what did they spend it so far?”

Thus far the only money we have spent has been on sponsoring the LPW last year AFAIR. The directors are not going for nightly beer festivals, in fact no fees have been paid to any members we do everything in our own time to try and push this forward.

“Are there any plans on how to spend the rest of the money?”

There are plans. Currently we have the three grants that are available and I am soon to put forward a proposal we have had for re-designing of some Perl sites which you will see as a member.

But why these?!!! And not this?!!! Also that…

“For a long time I did not know what projects are they involved. It is still not clear to me what does this involvement mean or what do they plan as involvement?
Actually I was personally surprised they have not included Padre or at least the idea of a Perl development envrionment in the list of what they think is important for modern perl development.”

The projects were originally chosen as they were close to the ideals of what we are calling Enlightened Perl. The projects in EC are those used by professionals in real world environments and talk to Perigrin/mst et al for more on that. As for why Padre wasn’t included – I have no idea. You would have to have that discussion in channel and with the other members. I feel certain that you would get a response. If of course you want it included in the projects then simply ask for a vote (as any Ordinary Member can) and I will put it to the membership to discuss and vote on.
As for the support. As you can see from the first round of grants part of our aim is to try and get more documents and articles written about the projects we think fall under the Enlightened banner. Padre, if it were included, would get the same focus.

(Also, I work with mst, I thought that Perl was the IDE!).

How much does it cost to convince you? :)

“I met mst in Oslo in the Nordic Perl Workshop where he explained a bit about EPO, but his explanation you can join EPO and suggest anyting was not really convincing.”

Strangely though, you can join EPO and suggest anything. As I mentioned above if you need something mentioned to the whole membership let me know. I will try to help or suggest as best I can. But don’t expect me to act on every word spoken in a channel somewhere. I can only fully act if you talk directly to me, I am your organisation secretary and my email address is on the orgs website, mail me and we’ll take it from there. I prefer email for any thing I am needed to act on as then I have a record that I can easily print if necessary for records or audits.
The process is usually that I will mention it to the Directors first and if necessary they will vote on it or decide to open it to the entire membership.

“I hope I’ll be able to influence the above issues and make EPO and organization that many others will feel good to join.”

As I said at the start of this post, thanks for making the statement. It is necessary to give voice to concerns as that way we can see them and hopefully avoid problems, mistakes and overcome difficulties.

I can see clearly now…

On the subject of transparency. I mentioned that the UK has some pretty odd (in the manner that they are vaguely worded) privacy laws, especially in regards to the display and retention of electronic details and their usage. I personally would like to see a members-only section of the website, where an EPO member can log in and see other members, see their names and contact details and even find lists and projects and collaborate in an environment that is fully transparent to the membership and open as much as possible to the casual observer without breaching anyone’s rights. I also would like to place a list visible to the world of which members are doing what inside the organisation (listed without their personal details) and that is easily achievable just time consuming.
If anyone would like to help me in organising and making the data available and building the membership only area where I can put sensitive reports and yet enable us to be as open as we can to everyone then please get in touch. Honestly, I do not have the technical skill and I really do not have the time to do everything. But I am happy to work with and organise people who volunteer.

* Yes my apologies to Jonathan Swift, I have neither his wit or his wisdom.

** Passionately purple prose anyone? Perhaps I could add that we should restrict our verbiage to a minimum display of syllabic expansion while still containing enough participatory exuberance as to engage and enlighten the reader.