You have touched upon several good points.
On Wednesday 18 Jun 2008, senthilraja P wrote:
/** I agree about effective management of volunteers.
But then the managers in such activities/events are also
volunteers, as humans they are not perfect. Individuals from these
"10 to 20 volunteers" should also take on leadership when they see
a gap, instead of just following and looking for instructions from
"managers." **/
the managers are visionaries.. the rest are volunteers :)
My opinion is that we dont have leading volunteers.. (including
myself).. we are ready to contribute.. But, we expect some one to
lead us.. This is the basic problem in volunteering in india...
Some suggestions:
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1. Not everyone can do every work. There is a need to analyse, plan
and split up work, which itself is a big task.
Can we form a team and do this? ie, to identify core areas of
volunteering, the works to do, to collect volunteers, and direct
them..
This team should focus only on managing..
2. Volunteers who will be working on the ground.. they will be freed
from the hassle of managing everything, and hence they could
concentrate only on the work they have to do...
Ways to promote FLOSS:
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1. To assist in developing skillset among academics. Once the
professor gets empowered with knowledge, it diffuses to the students.
We can start with selected colleges, and create a model..
2. Create a platform, to network interested students and the
academics across tamilnadu..
the mailing list is not an one shop for all purposes.. this is just
for communication..
3. To form a team to lobby colleges, to adopt floss, and related
management processes.. this lobby team would contain the network of
teams who has in one or other way some influence over college
management..
4. To evolve a Open source policy, which would guide us long term.
Now ILUGC is a directionless ship.. (apologise, if i am wrong or if
i have hurted any one).
Some introspections:
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* Today, i spoke to my sister, who is working as a professor in an
engineering college. She has good influence over the management
too.. I told her about the use of open source softwares such as wiki,
blogs, forums, groupwares, mail server, to enhance students & syllabi
managment.
She told, she dont know anything.. (she has completed ME, and
completed a project in neural networks).. and asked me teach
those..
I realised the enormous gap b/w academia and the industry
professionals.. This is one area we need to addres as core thing.
* When we propose anything to college staffs or management, the
first thing they want to know is how they will be benefitted.. this
cannot be avoided,.. but when we could project some paradises ( :) )
out of open source softwares, they will surely adopt..
For eg, we can project that they can showcase some technological
implementations to AICTE to get good feedback..
Secondly, we can project some cost savings, in terms of operational
management, by using wiki, mail server, etc
also, they have the next big advantage of attracting new students by
showcasing these simple implementations.
* when we could create initial batches of students with knnowledge in
key FLOSS softwares, i believe, it will spill over to successive
generations..
