First Thursday Follow-up and being a Dadamac Volunteer. August 11, 2010
It's great to have you back with us. I know you don't have a lot of time - but we always seem to make useful strides when you are able to join us so, so you are always welcome for however much or little time you have. I I understand that you come and go regarding your involvement depending on work pressures etc. That is okay too, because you always let me know.
I'm making some notes, partly ready for our voice chat and partly to give other possible volunteers an idea of what you do.
How I know you - I have just put an entry on that in my "introductions list" http://www.dadamac.net/network/elaine-hickey
Ref other volunteers - introductions : I need some help in completing the full backlog of who we know (in Dadamac) and how we connect. 'Introductions" is a recent addition to our information store and I'm trying to add people as I refer to them, but there are so many more people who are important to us and who are not on the list yet - including some really key people. Someone who got to know the story of Dadamac by working with us for a while would get to know many of the missing names and could help me to write up the introductions.
Project management Regarding your general interest in helping us with project management and in particular supporting Edi and the health work. Please ask me about the work Andy and I have been doing on the website now we have CCK. This has relevance for the future visibility of projects and how we will be able to ask for help. We also want to discuss some general aspects of project management (how we are doing it now and any thoughts you have on doing it better).
Ambassador role Regarding your work as Dadamac's Ambassador to the Rotary Club - we need to decide what part of Dadamac's work you want to share with Rotary (and when and how) so we can make sure you have the necessary information. Given you are our first ambassador we will simply be guided by your needs and find what information you need as you need it.
Information packs As time goes by we hope to produce a full collection of up to date information packs on all aspects of our work - whatever an Ambassador might wish to have to hand. (Elaine - As a techie and Open Source enthusiast you may like to know more about how we plan to structure and manage information.I can tell you in general terms - it's to do with Drupal and CCK - but you'll need to ask Andy if you want the deep technical details.)
Ref other volunteers as ambassadors - we would love more ambassadors - people who will raise the profile of Dadamac's social programmes and voluntary work. You can be an ambassador to whoever might be interested - your peer group (friends. colleagues, fellow-students etc), local faith groups and other voluntary groups - WI. MU, Rotary groups that Elaine can't reach... any group you can think of.
Ref other volunteers and information packs - The more volunteers we have the easier it will be to prepare and maintain the information packs. Much of the information is available - but it needs to be searched out of Nikki's blogs and such like, collected up for easy reference, and then re-written for the info packs. Once projects are written up we are trying to make the updating as automatic as possible.
Resource Hunter - at First Thursday you referred to your role as Resource Hunter (Open Source). Let's discuss that. It may be that I need to set up another online chat just about Open Source - between you and Kelechi (and maybe Bala and Chollom). Maybe I'll join too at first just to offer extra background information, pick up any mistaken assumptions or cultural confusions etc, until you all know each other better and it is clear where the overlapping interests lie.
Ref other volunteers and resource hunters - there are various needs - if you want to be a resource hunter just ask me.
Guest of Honour
It was lovely having you as our Guest of Honour at First Thursday. I realise that we didn't "bump into each other" online over the weekend as we hoped, so let's fix a time to discuss what you discovered and decide how to move forward.
I wrote up First Thursday and edited the archive so it is much easier to review. I had to post ti up n several parts:
http://dadamac.posterous.com/first-thursday-august-2010-the-people-and-try
http://dadamac.posterous.com/first-thursday-august-conversation-part-1-hea
http://dadamac.posterous.com/first-thursday-august-conversation-part-2-how
and, perhaps most importantly to you a bundle of replies that were held up somewhere and only came through after you had left the conversation
http://dadamac.posterous.com/first-thursday-august-conversation-delayed-re
Talk with you soon
Pamela
Email pamela.mclean(at sign)dadamac.net