[seul-edu] draft letter of invitation to join coalition

["David M. Bucknell" <david@members.iteachnet.com>]

Here's a starting point that could be much improved with suggestions of form
and content. Doug, as you know, is working on governance and getting others on
the "initial members" list. So, if you're willing to put fingers to the keys
for the cause, add your group. I'd add the ones I remember expressing
interest, but it would obviously be a good time for each of us t speak for
his/herself and group.

David

LETTER DRAFT:

 Dear xyz,

 We are writing to you to inform you of a plan to improve our respective
 efforts to bring free and open source tools and content to education. The
plan
 is to form a coalition organizing and linking our sites and establishng a
 means of working together to coordinate our efforts. As an active member of
 the community, we thought your participation in the coalition would be
 valuable.

 The front page for the new coalition is at http://sourceforge.net. We invite
 you to have a look, to consider how involvement could help you and our common
 cause in education, and to respond as soon as possible to seul-edu@seul.org
 with questions, comments or statements of interest.

 This coalition is being discussed on the seul-edu mailing list which we hope
 you will join at http://www.seul.org/edu

 For your information we have included some brief, basic information about the
 development of the coalition so far:

 MISSION STATEMENT:

 To enhance the effectiveness of multiple efforts to foster free and open
 source tools and content in education by working together and coordinating
our
 information (Web sites) and strategies.

 A central Website, schoolforge.net will be developed as a portal to coalition
 members' projects and a working group of representatives from each project
 will form a schoolforge.net collaborative team.

 The goal will be to make it easier for users, developers and newcomers to
find
 what and who they are seeking, and to become contributing members of the
 community/coalition.

 INITIAL MEMBERS
 *SEUL-EDU http://www.seul.org/edu
 *OpenSourceSchools.org  http://opensourceschools.org

 INITIAL PROJECTS

 Case Studies
 Apps
 Apps for kids
 News
 Journal/advocacy
 Curriculum
 Training
 Links/Resources Clearing House
 Help Desk
-----
Suggested Do list:

"David M. Bucknell" wrote:
> DO LIST:
> *ask for collaboration on letter and its topics on the list
> *Need Logo
> *Need suggested way to link to each other
> *Need to tweek portal design
> *Need a mission statement
> *Need agreement on nature of the coaltion as a container/linker and an
> organizer not a replacement for existing sites
> *Need to decide which sites/projects we want to invite or do we invite all
and
> any? (lets be sure to include advocacy projects, app and curr projects,
distro
> projects, schools and relevant organizations)
> *draft and send invitation to other sites/projects
> *Need to form means of working together
>
>From Doug:

I like your draft letter and mission statement.  I'd like to get at least one
other project to sign on and be listed under initial members before we send
this
out cold to other groups.  I'm thinking Paul Nelson at K12Linux is a good one
to
contact about that.  He's already mostly on board with the whole coalition
idea,
which is why I've included him in the CC list for this letter and why I quoted
the
whole darn thing.

I'll work on a description of the nature of the coalition we're proposing and
some
ideas on the "governance" of the coalition to keep it operating smoothly while
not
trying to usurp control/resources/anything else from existing groups.  It may
take
a day or two; I have a compromised webserver to rebuild here at the university
today, and that'll have to be my priority for a bit.