Difference between revisions of "User:Gavinbaker"

Revision as of 21:26, 15 June 2005

Hi, I'm Gavin Baker, a history major c/o 2007 at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla. I founded a chapter of Free Culture at UF, called Florida Free Culture, in Spring 2005. Feel free to contact me at grbaker -@t- ufl .dot. edu or on AIM at gavin baker 42. I have a Web site at gavinbaker.com.

You can also join Florida Free Culture's mailing list by sending a message to LISTSERV@LISTS.UFL.EDU with subscribe FFC-L Your Name in the body of the email. It's a one-way announce list, and low traffic. There is also a Facebook group called "Florida Free Culture."

To-do

edit this list - add to watchlist

User:Gavinbaker/to do

Ideas

• Travel fund, so group leaders / the board can meet, and so students can travel to conferences, etc.
• Speaker's bureau, to help coordinate bringing speakers / presenters to campuses
• Help placing students in internships, work, volunteer, research, or training opportunities
• Scholarship to provide OSS-loaded PCs to students
• Help researchers, promote research in our sphere, produce original research (summer research internships?)
• Provide FC.o & other merch. to new campus groups (along with Activist Packet)
• Action alerts
• Action alert system for campus groups
• Style guide for blog, announce emails, etc. (How to:blog)
• Press section on Web site with readymade info
• Info on Web site in other languages (French, Spanish)
• Merch. / pamphlets for influential people outside the org
• Business cards for directors
• Better integration of wiki with Web site
• Shared address book(s)
• Revamp password system
• Provide funding for grant-writing workshops for students
• Provide small bounties / stipends / mini-grants for students to work on FC.o (e.g. Webmasters, blog writers)
• Section on site with links to free software we use or would like to use, to direct developers to work on those projects
• Section on site with links to upcoming events (example -- but more organized, useful, and comprehensive than this)

Staff positions

These could be employees, volunteers, or somewhere in between (e.g. a small monthly stipend):

• Communications Director (or Public Relations Director): checks and responds to FC.o inboxes, prepares monthly Announce email, writes blog announcements, prepares press releases
• Webmaster (or Web Director): self-explanatory
• Activism Coordinator: prepares action alerts, coordinates with other groups

These make more sense as volunteer or stipend positions:

• Research Coordinator: encourages research of our issues, works with researchers
• Treasurer / Paperwork Type Person: so the decision-makers can focus on making decisions

Questions

• Is "FreeCulture.org" the best name for our organization?
• Should we claim to be "international" when all our groups, and almost everyone involved, is in the U.S.? Should we try to be international -- or let those outside the U.S. start their own national group naturally?
• Should our blog be for FC.o news only, or also for action alerts, or commentary? Should we be encouraging students to write commentary? Can we rely on a regular production of commentary? Would the commentary work better in its own blog (or its own RSS feed, but the same blog)?
• We're about participation. We seem to have given up on being "radically decentralized"; how can we stay decentralized enough that creativity and innovation flourishes? How can we be "radically transparent" (but still professional) instead?
• How can we recognize the contributions that people have made to us (volunteers, money, in-kind donations)? How can we track people so we know who did what?

Jobs I Hate

Tasks I currently perform for FC.o, but strongly dislike. If you would like to take over one of these tasks for me, I highly welcome it.

• Check and reply to FC.o inboxes
  • Could someday be handled by Communications Director, PR Director, or similar
• Compile the monthly(-ish) Announce list email
  • -> Comm Dir
• Meeting reminders
  • -> Comm Dir