Hi FSCK, There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.
As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice. He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour. First of all, I apologize for the lack of care for the club. Now we too, are standing on a burning platform. I believe I lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the club through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally. FSCK, our platform is burning. [@Steve Elop] The mailing list was down, everything was down, RAID 5 failed, snowpocalypse,... We had enough bad things on this semester. Now we have to shake things up. With a little help from our team members I believe we can get something done. Something/Someone to revitalize our club. Several things: - We need to organize a meeting. See what's coming up, chit chat, have a drink, talk about linux, helping others out, seeing what will we do next semester, watch movies... - We need to introduce and attract new members, freshmen and juniors to the club, we need to be more active. - We need to broaden our coverage. We have savvy people, and people are all in for tech now. - We need a leader for this, a good, committed one. - We need our website updated and members more informed with the schedule. - We need to be more accessible. The mailing list is the weakest point. I propose to try out a bulletin board. I'm testing http://fsck-tsu.appspot.com/, just a small open source BBS written by some Chinese guy and we need some help to translate it to English, secure it, add more functions... (the code is surprisingly clean, however). If someone can help out on this, please let me know. It's in python so if you're learning python or trying to see what Google Appspot can do, it's good for you (I don't understand Chinese myself, google translate is our friend). Google Apps development platform really a good platform and allows us to work together on a project. - Definitely we need more inputs and ideas how to get our club alive and well. Please reply with your ideas, free software is good, we need to keep it going. Best, - Huan. -- Huan Truong 600-988-9066 http://tnhh.net/
