Status - Pattern Study Group

[Tim]

Hi all,

Last week Miika has attempted to re-gather people's interested in the
PPPPkh group meetings and proposed to discuss how we could move
forward with this group. Participants were Miika, Kim and me who
showed up. That low upcome made it quite difficult to come to concrete
plans for this group as i think this should be a democratic process.

Therefore I propose yet another meeting to discuss the same topics. As
I am posting this quite late, I will make some phone calls later today
to check availability of the "core" participants (namely Moor, Yoolk
and Aruna people). If not enough people are available, let's
reschedule for next week (Tue 27 May).

Thy, Piseth and Sereyvath have confirmed that they can be available
tonight as well as next week.

I would like to encourage everybody to come up with more ideas today
or next week so that we get a better idea of what direction we could/
should move with PPPPkh.

Here are some of my thoughts:

What Chris proposed earlier (I refer to
http://groups.google.com/group/ppppkh/browse_thread/thread/85ff89b1fba1141c)
sounds good to me. Here are some of my ideas that I would like to
suggest additionally (some of these were earlier raised by Miika):

-Formalize this group in a legal entity as this would make it easier
and a more organized form.
-Attract interesting (foreign and local) speakers, get participation/
support from IT companies such as Microsoft, Sun, have a formal
representation at exhibitions etc. Getting a legal status will make
those things easier.
-I propose a membership as follows in case there is enough support for
the idea of formalizing into a legal entity
-Unemployed students - free membership
-Employees from non/low funded non-profit organisations - reduced
membership fee
-Employees from commercial and funded non-profit organisations -
full membership fee, to be paid by the employer.
-All fees to be collected through a yearly contribution round.
-In case no legal formalization is desired, we should still have a
contribution system with a fixed price that covers cost for the formal
part of PPPPkh sessions. Cost for socializing will be on everyones
personal account.
-Change the current meeting location to a more formal place.
-PPPPkh session times should change. The current schedule (Tuesdays at
18.00) seems to be quite difficult for many people. I have no
objection to have the meetings take place during office hours.


Hope to hear from everyone soon.

Tim