Re: [Fsfe-uk] Membership

[Ramanan Selvaratnam]

This is a good model.
I have am important additon to propose (again) , so we do not leave the 
common (wo)man,  out.
We really need to enocurage the responsible adult population to 
participate too. Many will if we can explain the need for our organisation.
Most of those who will bother to listen to us are more likely to be 
invovled with their children's school related affairs too (eg: governors).
-- most likey to participate in local political pressure groups also.

I propose we extend any such free offer of associate (or similar) 
membership scheme *to anyone* through an information quiz of some sort 
(no this will not be seen as a cheap game...especially if we carefully 
advocate the need for software freedom).
This will fullfill more than one objective as spelled out in our 
constitution. We need informed / educated  people. Not just statistics.

Andrew Savory wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Hmm, ok, to recap:
>
> * there was a suggestion for an "associate" membership that we could give
> out freely to interested teachers / lecturers etc, which would swell our
> numbers, making us a more viable campaigning body and giving us a bigger
> voice when speaking to government, etc.
>
> * there's also been mention of an AFFSED (AFFS education network) /
> AFFSEdIG (AFFS education interest group), for people specifically
> interested in the issues of Free Software in Education to interact
> (possibly through separate mailing list, for example).
>
> * there's also been mention of associating/partnering/allying with
> schoolforge-uk, to avoid duplication of effort.
>
> To be honest, I think we should go for all three --
>
> - AFFS needs to be bigger (because there's too much work for the existing
> active members, but more importantly, because people won't take an
> association with 60-odd members as seriously as 60,000).
>
> - AFFS needs to work on the education focus, and a SIG may help focus that
> and reduce subject-specific traffic on the main list (kudos to the work
> Richard Smedley has done so far, but all our campaigns need more work /
> volunteers).
>
> - We should build on our relationships with other organisations, but be
> careful not to wind up with us all being members of all of them.
> Partnering is the solution to this, I suspect.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Andrew.
>
>