Use of planners and apachecon-discuss mailing lists

[Steve Holden <st...@holdenweb.com>]

Yesterday there was a planners conference call. One of the things that came up in discussion was the uses of mailing lists, and these two in particular. So I was tasked with trying to provide a clarification of their intended uses. I hope anyone with more insight than me will feel free to correct any mistakes I might make.

The main difference, I think, is that apachecon-discuss@apache.or is intended to host abstract discussions (what kind of conference do we want to have this year, should we pay speaker expenses, etc.) - issues that apply to all ApacheCons, for example, or specific discussions about future conferences and the principles that the Foundation wants to observe in their organization. This list will have a broad membership, and anyone (any ASF member?) who wants to have a say in the running of ApacheCon should fee free to voice opinions, which will at least be listened to and commented upon respectfully.

planners@apachecon.com is where the rubber meets the road and work gets done towards putting events on. The discussions here should usually be geared towards specific events in the near-term (< 6 months?) future. Membership should be mostly those who are doing the work (track chairs, volunteers). People will disagree sometimes, but hopefully consensus will be reached and we will move on. So we are currently taking about ApacheCon EU 2012 (Community Edition) and will shortly be adding ApacheCon NA 2013 to the mix.

Some posts, such as this one, are clearly suited for both channels. Beware, however, of starting a thread on an apachecon-discuss topic and then morphing into discussions about a specific conference. Or vice versa, and don't hesitate to move threads from one list to the other, or to delete one of the lists from the distribution, when discussions drift off-topic.

Better still, of course, don't let discussions drift off-topic, but since we are human beings and geeks that seems somewhat unlikely.

regards
 Steve
--
Steve Holden steve@holdenweb.com,  Holden Web, LLC http://holdenweb.com/
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