[seul-edu] Call for help

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Folks, I need your help.  I've been managing SEUL/edu for almost
four years now.  Lately I've been noticing some signs of incipient
"burnout" in myself (for you non-native English speakers, "burnout"
means a feeling of being overwhelmed and in need of a change).  You
may have noticed that for the past few weeks I've made little
contribution beyond the minimum needed to keep the site running.
I'd like to forestall my burnout and at the same time reduce the
likelihood that such burnout (if it were to happen) would seriously
affect SEUL/edu.

I think the best way to do that would be to hand off some of the
responsibilities I've taken on myself for SEUL/edu.  I've already
done a bit of that, with Les Richardson maintaining the databases we
use for the Application Index and case studies, and Karl Peņa
maintaining the case studies themselves.  But there are still a
number of things I'm doing that I think it would be best to share
around.  I'll list them below:

* Check Freshmeat, LinuxApps, and other sites (as they occur to me)
every day for newly announced educational applications and add those
apps to our Application Index

* Maintain this mailing list, forwarding appropriate messages to it
that come in from non-subscribers and adding and removing addresses
to keep the list up to date

* Write the Linux in education report every other Monday

* Work to get the ISO project off the ground

Those four are the major things.  I'd like to have some volunteers
to take responsibility for some of these.  The first one, checking
for new apps and adding them to the Index, could be done by more
than one person; it's important that it gets done every day though,
I think.  The second one is a one-person job, but not really all
that tedious if it's the only mailing list you're adminning.  I
don't mind doing the third one, but it wouldn't hurt to have others
willing to fill in when I occasionally am overwhelmed at work.  Up
until now Karl has done so when I'm on vacation, but otherwise I've
written them all myself.  The fourth one is where I'd like to put my
own major effort.

In addition to these tasks there are some that aren't currently
getting done that really need doing.  Our App Index has a number of
records that are incomplete (lacking author's names and email
addresses, for example) or out of date (bad URLs, etc.).  Les can
generate reports of which records need updating, but we need help in
making those updates.

Our case studies submission form has a field where we ask if the
submitter would like assistance.  I don't think _anyone_ has said
"No" to that question, but we have never done anything with that
information.  We need to come up with some idea and personnel
committment to do something about that.

We made long-term plans a while ago to create LUG support materials
to help LUGs in working with schools.  That would be a nice project
to get started, but I know I won't have the time or energy to lead
it.

I'd like to get FUDForum or Phorum installed on a SEUL server so
both SEUL/edu and Schoolforge could use it.  That would give us a
web forum interface to these discussions in addition to this mailing
list.  Again, that's something I don't have the time to install or
maintain.

There you have it.  I'll be happy to give details on what I do for
those things I'm already doing to anyone interested it taking some
of them on.  I think it's important that we spread the
responsibilities around so that if any one of us has to bow out
temporarily or permanently the work will continue.  Let me hear from
you!

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Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant