[web-team] Steve and Joyce need a break

[Steve Traugott]

Hi All,

Joyce and I had a long talk this morning.  We've both noticed my
stress level spiking the last two or three months, right around the
time of the SVLUG meeting.  Many of us have talked about some of the
reasons why.  

With a baby on the way, due around the end of May, Joyce and I have
come to a tentative conclusion that it would be better to plan a
sabbatical for us now rather than have both of us burn out and hit the
wall in June.  Joyce and I both want to stay involved in a leadership
capacity; we both value SVLUG highly.  

We're thinking about the following plan:

- Don't plan for Steve or Joyce to be very useful for the next several
  months; this being our first kid, we don't know what the workload or
  sleep deprivation is going to do.

- Find at least one more web team member, to fill in for Joyce's time off.

- Find someone who's interested in being primary speaker coordinator
  for at least the next several months.  By "primary" I mean they own
  the job, have the weight on their head, assume full responsibility
  for making sure we have quality speakers lined up, do the intros,
  pick up the tab for their dinner, etc.  The whole job.  My
  suspicion is that they'll want to take a break themselves after
  several months of this, which should work out about right.  
  
- Over time I think we should build up a cadre of people who can
  remain on the "speakers" list and rotate through this role.
  Rotation could be for several months at a time, or a better
  alternative would be to have the various members of the speakers
  list volunteer for filling particular months -- "I'll find someone
  for July if you find someone for August and September".  This would
  solve a central problem; I've found it takes months to figure out
  how to do this job well, by which time you're burned out.

- Keep Steve on the officers and speakers list and Joyce on web-team.
  While we can't make any promises of how much we'll be able to keep
  up, at least this lets us serve as backup and transition, and will
  help us ease back in after the baby starts sleeping more normal
  hours (usually about 6 months).

- I still want to do the CGI automation of much of these jobs.  I
  already generate the monthly e-mail notice from XML input and a
  template, on my own machine; need to write a template for the
  meetings page, create some input forms to generate the XML, and move
  the whole thing to the svlug machine.  I won't plan to do this until
  after the baby dust settles later this year.  In the meantime I'll
  supply the XML form, template, and build script to whoever is doing
  the job for the next several months.

- I'm going to put the PGP key signing sessions on hold for the time
  being; I might start this back up sooner rather then later, since
  it's pretty easy by comparison, and I do still plan to come to
  meetings when I can.

- As far as moving the svlug machine, if Marc's interested, the offer
  stands, now or later.  The T-1 and rack space is there (ERPS.Org
  hosts their web site and cluster there now).  If Marc wants to think
  about it for a few more months, that would be fine too; maybe then
  I'll have time to do more than just plug it in.

I'd like to make the two announcements tonight, looking for new
volunteers for web team and speaker coordinator.  With Joyce's due
date, there's a high probability we'll both be in the hospital during
the June meeting, so this is our only chance to do this right.

Feel free to call me (650-868-6358) if anyone sees any refinements to
this plan that might work.  I'll get to the meeting early tonight so
we can huddle and go over any details.

Steve
-- 
Steve Traugott  (KG6HDQ)
Speaker Coordinator, Silicon Valley Linux Users Group
http://www.svlug.org
--
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt at TerraLuna.Org   
http://www.stevegt.com