Re: Maybe this will help, maybe it won't

JD,

Things natually get organised in a hierarchical nature because it's
the only way we can deal with things when there are large numbers of
people involved. You yourself for example were talking only the other
day about having a US parent group for the local PUGs for example.

To keep things sane, we need to keep things organised in some fashion
- and that naturally becomes a geographic thing. It's easy for a small
group to meet at the pub each Friday. It's a little harder for a
larger group to meet once a month in a restaurant. It's harder still
for the global group to deal with getting everyone together for a
large conference on an annual basis. Like it or not, things work best
when organised hierachicaly by locality.

I think just about everyone has agreed that we want to ensure this is
a European group for people in Europe, under which will be local user
groups, and above which will be the 'global community', and I'm
confident we have no intention of closing ourselves off from the rest
of the world - so can we please drop this and move on?

/D

On Jan 25, 2008 8:01 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
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> Hello,
>
> I was talking with a peer about the particular PGEU problem that I am
> currently arguing on the following thread:
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgeu-general/2008-01/msg00128.php
>
> I wanted to see if I could explain my position outside of the thread to
> allow the thread to stay productive.
>
> I am aware that there are variable levels of cultural idioms in all
> countries. Americans have theirs, Canadians, Germans... all of them.
> Whenever I make a comment about the succinct nature of PeterE's
> responses, the response I get back is, "He's German". It's not
> derogatory, it's a statement of a particular cultural perspective.
>
> I on the other hand am trying to look past cultural divides. This
> isn't about Europe or America or Japan. This is about PostgreSQL. I
> don't care if you are a Platypus from Australia, if you known and love
> PostgreSQL I want you involved.
>
> To take it back to a practical example. I posted the following email
> about PostgreSQL Conference East a while back:
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgeu-general/2007-11/msg00051.php
>
> One of the responses I got back was, "Why do Europeans care about an
> United States conference?" My response to that was and still is:
>
> "It is not an United States conference. It is a PostgreSQL conference
> being held in United States".
>
> Because we are all members of PostgreSQL you should care.
>
> I specifically ignore (much to others dismay) cultural, racial and sex
> boundaries because I believe those boundaries are the implicit bases
> for most problems created within the world as a whole.
>
> If we take the idea of no boundaries to PostgreSQL we have
> (initially) three distinct cultures that will end up applying:
>
> 1. EU
> 2. JPUG
> 3. NA (north america)
>
> (note there are others that are forming like Pg.BR)
>
> I believe it makes absolute sense to have legal organizations in
> place that represent the community in a regionally. They should however
> be representing the PostgreSQL community as a whole, strategically
> located within their particular geographic region.
>
> The problem arises when you limit who can be active within a particular
> organization. When an organization generates artificial limitations
> based on cultural divides you are not representing PostgreSQL as a
> whole. You are representing a subset of PostgreSQL which will in the
> long run creates rifts and weaken the global fabric of our community.
>
> I see this to some degree within the JPUG community already. They
> barely participate in the larger community. Now there are some even
> larger cultural and language concerns that assist in the divide but
> those concerns don't exist for the EU community.
>
> The macro community of PostgreSQL is based on the idea of meritocracy.
> The tallest order being an invitation to -core. Through the hard,
> diligent, responsible and respectable work of the contributors you
> garner different levels influence, respect and responsibility.
>
> The current path of the micro community of EU is that the meritocracy
> is limited. Someone from Chile could in fact become one of the most
> beneficial members to the the EU community and yet never be in a
> position to authoritatively influence the direction of the
> micro community itself. That removes a lot of the attraction to
> crossing regional divides and create bonds between the micro community
> and the macro community.
>
> If we continue down this path we are going to end up with a bunch of
> micro communities that have zero distinct tie to the larger macro
> community of PostgreSQL.org.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake
>
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