Frank Warmerdam wrote:
WebCom / Board,
Daniel Brookshier has left CollabNet for a new job, and while he is
interested in some participation in OSGeo he won't have time for much
work due to his new responsibilities. So the Web Committee will be needing
a new chair. I also think this would be a good time to try and re-invigorate
work on the Web Committee if we can.In discussions at the face to face meetings in San Rafael it seems unlikely
that we would be renewing the CollabNet contract past this January. So going
forward, I think WebCom ought to spend less effort wrestling with particular
features based on the Collabnet platform, and more on informational content
for the web site since the content can move to a new platform easily, while
the detailed integration work will presumably be left behind. (stuff like the
RSS feed for instance)While we will be assigned a new community manager from CollabNet, and I
would like them to be active on WebCom, I think it would be best to have
someone not from CollabNet as the WebCom chair since a big part of it's
mandate will relate to the transition off the CN platform.I have been in contact with Jason Birch, who has been a very active
contributor to the web committee and he has indicated a willingness to
chair the committee. Jason obviously will need lots of support, and he
indicated he would like to see a representative from each OSGeo member
project on WebCom if possible.If anyone has suggestions for other possible chairs for WebCom or other
input they would like to provide, please reply to this message! Lacking
additional feedback I'll likely propose Jason for the committee chair position
at the next board meeting (one week today).Best regards,
Hi,
i want to propose reconsidering (as discussed at the f2f meeting) to join WebCom and SAC to form InfraCom (Infrastructure Committee). Less people can do more work. Or was it vice versa...
I checked on some of the activities related to WebCom by re-reading the corresponding Wiki pages. Spawned from VisCom Targets (last edit April 2nd) a lengthy list was put together addressing site foucs at
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/WebCom_OSGeo_Site_Focus. This is valuable work that has not been continued there (last edit April 3rd) possibly due to VisCom taking over some of the related work. It should be moved to VisCom completely.
There are two different lists of Web Site Committee Members. I guess the Owner and Co-Owners list on the static page should be updated:
https://webcommittee.osgeo.org/
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/WebComTODO has not seen an edit as of March 20th, so the todo list is either stable or deprecated. Anyway, as one of the first committees to get active it is time to clean out the WebCom Wiki pages anyway.
{{The idea is that Wikis run through cycles of disorder and pruning. After stuffing all sorts of content into a Wiki more or less aimlessly at one point it has to be consolidated by deleting, redirecting and merging pages. This point has come for WebCom (...and probably the rest of the Wiki should follow soon).}}
This organizational effort also needs to be exerted on the general structure of the OSGeo web site and that of the sub domains. Some time ago we have gone through the main entry points of osgeo.org to make sure that there are not too many dead mailing lists, a short description of each project, etc. I would again suggest to make this a regular policy and to assign it to a single person (or two). Do I hear volunteers? It can be done in turns but on a regular basis.
SAC
The current state of SAC is not transparent, the Wiki pages and the mailing lists are dead. The latest Wiki edits by Frank suggest some points that make a lot of sense:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=Infrastructure_Working_Group#System_Administration
Requests for status reports went unanswered. What is the formal process to be invoked by the board once these kind of things happen (or rather do not happen)? Yes I know, I am a pain. Should I go to the IRC and talk to people instead of complaining here?
Knowing that there are highly competent people at work they must have produced really cool results by now. Someone will just have to clobber this information out of them. Otherwise (they are not done yet) they will need support by other techies. The last date that I have in mind is mid of May. I can just repeat the offer that we can jump in any time on anything.
I would be prepared to spend time invigorating this new committee and help getting the SAC infrastructure to run. I believe that very capable people are involved already and presume that the lack of visibility of progress results from simple overwork and missing time. That said, I am not overworked and don't miss any time at all. 
Best regards,
Arnulf.