Hi Robert, thanks for your work on this. Personally I support the Drupal UK Society propsal and will spread the news with the Cambridge Drupal Group (DrupalCambs) so that our members can also give feedback. Besides the valid points your raise, I think the name 'Drupal Society' is a beter than 'Drupal Association' because it sounds less authoratative and does not mislead anyone into been confused about it been arm of the Drupal Association. But I hope that people will vote on the basis of the content of the proposal and not on the basis of the name or who proposed it.

I am just wondering about two aspects of the proposal for society.

1. Subscription based.

If it is due to be subscription based, which I am not necessarily in opposition to, I fear that that may infringe on what the Drupal Association already does. The prices do appear above that of Drupal Association membership (I have converted to dollars for easier reference).

DA

1. Individual Membership $30
2. Organisation Membership $100

UK Drupal Soc

1. Individual ($23.45)
2. Professional ($70.42)
3. Agency 120 ($187.81)
4. Associated 250 ($391.23)

2. Politics

If Scotland/Ireland already have "associations" and the UK Society intends "Drupal UK Society will aim to support local initiatives by the Scottish Drupal association", does this mean that control of that is assited by Drupal UK Soc? Also Ireland I believe contains both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, therefore I assume it is actually Drupal GB Society (not UK). I believe that within Steven's proposal he suggested that Drupal Scotland and Ireland remain independent from UK Association?

3. Website/segretation

Currently this website operates outside of Drupal (not within groups.drupal.org) and therefore doesn't contain the same restrains of Drupal (I believe that Robert privately runs it). Can I assume that ownership would pass to the Society? By utilising another website the UK Drupal Society does seem somewhat segregated from global drupal. Would we be looking for some official Drupal recognition?

I do like the idea of a governing and steering committee though. and feel that could possibly be brought into the Association idea?

So a little history before Robert's introduction to his post, we actually discussed a UK Drupal association on groups.drupal.org at the end of January 2012 here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/206303 there was a lot of positive feedback and ideas, and it was decided to move the discussion over to drupal.org in comments: http://groups.drupal.org/node/206303#comment-680753 and http://groups.drupal.org/node/206303#comment-681203. After a little bit of discussion on drupal.org.uk it basically stalled and came to nothing.
At the recent Drupalcamp Oxford a lot of people told me that I should just put a formal proposal forward and time-box it so that we could make some kind of progress. So I did just that and wrote something up on groups.drupal.org: http://groups.drupal.org/node/239543

Also the notion or idea of having a UK centric Drupal body has been floating around for years, before I came or was involved in any way.

When I wrote my proposal up on groups.drupal.org I deliberately made the 'founding' document, the constitution, a wiki page, so that other people can edit it. It was my intention that some kind of discussion would arise and that things would be edited and changed until there was some kind of agreement, I apologise if this intention wasn't clear from my post.

It saddens me somewhat that we have seemingly arrived at a place where people are essentially being asked to choose sides, when really we should be working together in the spirit of the Drupal community. I see no reason why people need to be forced to choose between the two, we could easily combine the goals and resources of both if that's what was wanted.

Just a thought. I'll cross post since we're now discussing the same thing in both places.

Why don't we hold a CHAIRED public meeting on IRC (or skype etc.) where the main topics at issue here are discussed. Many people are talking about being committed to this idea so to commit to a 1 or 2 hour session on a given date shouldn't be a problem.

The example agenda could be seen as:

• Legal entity (Constituted Group, CLG, CIC)
• Membership Structure (List location, Payment or not, committment)
• Committee/Directors structure based on entity structure
• How committee members are elected
• Name (association/society etc.)

This way the minutes could be recorded and then we have one discussion from that point with clear deadlines. Also as I've written before, we should probably have a questionnaire that asks the main questions so that we have some quantitative data to base decisions on?

Let me know what you think.

Hi Robert

Thanks for this thread and related discussions (and to Steven Jones et. al. also).

An open, transparent and collaborative UK Drupal Society / Association has been a topic of discussion both offline and online for some time now. Personally, I would welcome its formation and be very willing to support and contribute time and resource - and I know of a number of other UK Drupal organisations and individuals who would feel the same way and whose voice ought to be represented.

The Drupal community in the UK contains people with a broad and deep range of skills - and this ought to be utilised by including as many of them as possible within a representative body, society or association. 

However, I would suggest that it would be useful to take a step back and address two fundamental questions for this process:

1) The Aims of the organisation should probably by higher level than the initial post, and address concepts such as to: 

i) represent, support, promote and set professional standards for practitioners of Drupal - be they companies, partnerships or individuals;

ii) engage, attract, and teach potential users of Drupal/future Drupal project stakholders;

iii) partner with relevant organisations and bodies across sectors, technology or geography.

Without wanting to be overly critical, what you currently have as aims are more akin to a subset of objectives to achieve the above (but I realise the inital post was a starter for ten - and hence this is a constructive contribution not a criticism).

2) The Benefits of membership - for all potential members will need to be fleshed out. A whole lot more. There are a wide range of benefits on offer from most societies and associations which charge a subscription - and so I would raise a concern as to whether charging a fee is even appropriate at this early stage if it (a) goes against (1)(ii) and (b) there is not enough tangibile benefit to warrant it.

On reflection I do have to say that I have a slight reservation towards creating an archaic, stuffy structure to govern something that is modern, innovative and fluid. However, if done in the right way, the plusses will inevitably outway the minuses.

Regards

Leon

Wow - lot's to read tonight!

I gues I'll offer my feedback on the specific ideas outlined in this proposal first.

Aims of the organistion

I broadly agree with the aims of the organisation, although also agree with Leon's post suggesting a higher level set of aims. All good food for thought.

Need for a local body

I totally see the need for a UK body. 

'Society' instead of 'Association'

Not sure on this one. I don's see necessariy that 'Society' better reflects the collaborative nature of the Drupal community than 'Association'

But it is true that : Britain has a long and proud tradition of societies advancing science, medicine, the arts – to which a Drupal Society can make it's contribution

And it sounds from Steve like there more positive reasons to affiliate ourselves with the international Drupal Association than there are objections to using the words 'Drupal' and 'Association'.

Membership fees

As has been expressed by others, I think voting should not require a paid up membership, but some other qualifcation of community membership (like an d.o account / account on this site /  membership of the relevant group on g.d.o).

Perhaps indivudal membership could be free, while supporter members pay a fee and companies pay more.

One good thing about keeping membership free to start with is that it removes a massive barrier to getting the mermbership mechanisms up and runniing and to building up the initial membership. 

 

Governing Committee

I agree that it should be volutary, at least to start with and that the committee should be elected by members.

 

Legal entity

Not sure about this. My gut instinct is to set up a lighter weight vehicle initiatally, with a constitution adn committee, but leave the legal entity for a little while, perhaps let that come later. I do see the arguments for limited liability of committee members, which is a strong one. All other points can be achieved without a limited company. Other than that, why does the organisation "need to: Be a recognised legal body" ?

 

Constitution

I haven't seen the draft constitution (was there meant to be a link to it) - but a constitution is important - and it is important that enough of the community agree with it - so collaborative writing is important here.

 

Why we believe this proposal is stronger that the other proposal?

That's a bit 'us and them' isn't it? I don't think this is a competition. How has this project been forked before even an alpha release? The recent revival of the conversation started together and I hope that these two proactive proposals will come back together and be discussed in one place. Can't we just 'git merge' and get on with the discussions? It does seem like most people are commenting on both so far!

The main differences seem to be 1) name 2) legal structure 3) pricing 4) voting rights and these are surely reconcilable. It does sound like this proposal has had some more detailed thought on the specifics of these and made some decisions based on these thoughts. I'd be interested to know how this evolved, but perhaps that's less important right now.

I think what is important is that we remove the deadlines for both proposals and try to bring the discussions together. I assume the deadlines were created without knowledge of eachother, and were mainly intended to jolly things along a bit. Now that we have two threads of discussion I'm not so sure this is useful.

I agree with adshill that a public meeting would be a good next step to flesh out these differences of oppinion and make some collective decisions. Whether this is on IRC / Skype / in person - or perhaps a combination of these, it would allow more stakeholders to state opinions and argue their points and those present could vote on specific issues, assign working groups to survey the wider community to guage wider opinion etc.. set deadlines and take minutes, maintaining the all important openness and transparency of the process. Perhaps we could Doodle a time for such a meeting?

Damn, it's tomorrow already, and I still have to post our Oxford Drupal User Group meetup in several places. If only we had a UK Drupal Assoication/Society to aggregate all our events in one place!

(PS Is it just my posts that get Mollomed? Every time!)

 

 

 

 

 

A few thoughts -

• Because the organisation will have to handle money to do anything useful (contract to organise an event for example), I can't see how not becoming a formal financial / legal entity can be avoided. Whether it is a CIC / CGL / something else, should be reviewed carefully.

• As Leon Tong said, I think agreeing the high level goals / principles is important because any subsequent decisions become nearly impossible otherwise.

• Some sort of (low) membership fee makes sense to me as it's going be hard to bootstrap otherwise. My understanding of the DA's finances are that DrupalCon's generate most of the 'profit' they use to undertake other activities. Depending on the organisation's goals it may be that events are designed to be break-even but there will be some operating costs / activities outside of this that need some sort of funding (accounting fees, sponsoring a stand at a UK Symfony conference - ideas off the top of my head).

• It's obviously an controversial topic without a 'right' answer. It's also a topic that has been debated at length and then died (both very recently and numerous times before). Some sort of framework and timeboxing I think is helpful to focus debate and ensure we don't lose momentum, the risk otherwise is a 1000 comment thread at stalemate with everyone disenfranchised.

I think the UK community would benefit from a UK Drupal organisation existing (in whatever form) by giving extra life to the UK community, it doesn't 'control' anyone's behaviour, prevent them from carrying on as they do now or the Drupal project in any sense. It would have to go very badly wrong to get close to doing any harm, particularly if operated in a completely open, democratic and transparent way. It not existing however will mean continued missed opportunities for events and activities.

• Consolidating the debate in one place or the other would definitely remove one challenge from the conversation!

Thanks

Tim Deeson

I bumped into Vamory (Traore) from the Web A-team and we spoke at great length about this thread. One of the things we agreed was to add a BoF at DrupalCon to talk it through (the outputs of which can be posted here and d.o. and anywhere else required)

http://munich2012.drupal.org/content/do-we-need-drupal-uk-society