Re: about the european pug

2007/8/23, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <ads(at)wars-nicht(dot)de>:

I don't know if I've already introduced myself but, I was not in
Prato this summer but I'm the PostgreSQLFr secretary (you may have the
whole association head with president (Stephane Schildknecht),
Jean-Paul Argudo (Tresurer) and I on the list).

> > Some people discussed the idea that a local community association
> > could "upgrade" its status to embody the whole european community.
> > This is more or less what the mozilla guys have done. Mozilla Europe is a
> > non-profit association under the french law, devoted to promote Mozilla
> > stuff and help local communities all around Europe. But i'll talk more
> > about this in another e-mail. Stay tuned :-)
>
> I'm awaiting this other mail, i think, forming something "legal" is the
> mos important part of our work for the next time. By the way, FOSDEM in
> Brussels would be an excellent time for a first official meeting ...
> This gives us about half a year for preparations.

I think this could be possible to upgrade PostgreSQLFr to that way
(keeping a team on Fr dealing items). Technically this should only be
a "statements" upgrade, this should not take more than 1 or 2 month to
be validated by the french government. Before we start proceeding
this, we should make and have a vote + extraodrinary meeting of the
administrative council. We would have to change statements for the non
profit association in order to :
- redefine the geographic area action range
- redefine and determine if it's legal to have non french people
in the association's head/council
- redefine association strucuture (federal, globalized,...)

and more and more stuffs. The second item implies we'll have to ask
other teams (Mozilla btw) to know how they managed to get the stuffs
work legally (I hope it won't imply we should hire a lawyer)

> > Goals
> > =========
> >
> > Of course, most of these early talks were about defining the goals of the
> > user group... Quite logically, the following goals were proposed :
> >
> > * Helping to get PostgreSQL more popular. Especially in smaller countries
> > with less active community.
> > * Fighting together to defend "European issues" (like encoding, FTS)

* Having a "political" proselitism, to make sure PostgreSQL will
always be in good place in public markets (just an idea)

> > * organizing PostgreSQL related events
>
> * organizing any OpenSource related events (with a booth for PG)
> as example: FROSCON, Linuxday, LinuxInfoDay, Systems, FOSDEM, LWE

+1

> > * sharing experiences
> > * editing membership cards
> > * selling merchandising material
> > * providing booth material ( Table cloth, etc. )
> > * paying some travel costs
> * having an official bank account

PostgreSQL already have such an account, I think i shouldn't be too
difficult to create a special account for PostgreSQL Europe.

* Searching for mecenes and sponsors!

> > * defining guideline for certification on PostgreSQL
> > * maintaining a web site
>
> postgresql.eu is already on the way, what we should have beside the
> official website is some kind of CMS for the local usergroups itself.
> Rotarello was speaking about Drupal on IRC, are there some news about
> this available?

Yes we do use Drupal on Postgresqlfr.org with quite the same look than
on postgresql.org website.

> * translate documentation and PostgreSQL Weekly News

Already done in French and German (IIRC). Other languages (Devrim, do
you translate it in Turkish ?) ?

> > Please note that these are only items that have been discussed, some of them
> > make unanimty ( advocay ), others are more controversial ( website,
> > certification ) and nothing is written in stone for now...
>
> I added some more ;-)

( Stones ? ;) )

> > Website
> > =========
> >
> > Some people ( Andreas ?) are already working on postgresql.eu to bring the
> > domain back into the PG infrastructure.
> >
> > Now the big question is what do we put on this site ?! Here's the various
> > proposal :
> >
> > * an agreggate from local website news
> > * a wiki
> > * an online shop
> > * lists of events
>
> This domain (postgresql.eu) should look like the main website on
> postgresql.org. This new features should go onto a usergroup website.
>
>
> > By the way, some people said it would be nice to have the same design rules
> > (same look and feel) on every pgug sites.
>
> Thats my question about Drupal earlier. Having one system ready would
> things make easier to maintain.

We do have postgresqlfr.org theme for drupal. It should be easy to
localize (i18n way) it !

> > Czech Rep. : http://www.pgsql.cz

France/*French speaking country* : http://www.postgresqlfr.org

> > Germany : http://www.pgug.de
> > Italia : http://www.psql.it
> > Polska : http://www.postgresql.org.pl
> > Turkey : http://www.postgresql.org.tr (?)
>
> EU: http://www.pgug.eu