DDB Newsletter 1: 2008-04

DDB Newsletter 1: 2008-04

Since the launch of the project, a few months ago, a lot of things have changed. Recently the idea of a newsletter was accepted, and from now on the entire forum population will receive a monthly summary of how things are going. As you can see this mail is sent from discographydb@hotmail.com, a temporary address owned by dmaxx which will serve as long as there's no official DDB e-mailaddress. Replies to this newsletter are welcome.

In this newsletter:
- Wiki launched
- Name "DiscographyDB" accepted
- Steering Committee active
- Subcommittees created

Wiki launched
Although this occured a week before April (the 23rd of March), it was important enough to place it in this first newsletter: we have a wiki. It serves to centralize our ideas and gather every decision taken so far.

Everyone can become a member by registering at Wikidot and entering our wiki with the password "ddb-start". The wiki can be edited by every member. It is owned and maintained by SC-member deejsasqui, questions can be private messaged to him or placed on the Wiki subforum.

Interesting pages are, among others, "Our skills" and "Steering Committee".

Name "DiscographyDB" accepted
It took until the 12th of April to accept "DiscographyDB" as a permanent name. Out of 64 votes, 38 went for and 26 against. It was the first fundamental decision taken, and it was as democratic as it could get.

Arguments pro where: professional sounding, to the point, guaranteed top domains, nice abbreviation: DDB (or DdB), used a lot by many members.
Arguments against where: too long, too difficult to pronounce/spell by non-english people, too technical ("DB"), not catchy.

Steering Committee active
On saturday the 5th of April, the very first Steering Committee was elected. 14 canditates competed for 11 places. These are the ending results (with the number of votes between brackets): lazlo_nibble (50), Stormbringer (50), dmaxx (45), deejsasqui (39), little_alien (38), asylum27 (36), hmvh (32), MR_E (32), quisquilla (31), Kergillian (28) and pusha (27). Those who just didn't get in are: azzurro (26), ultra_ambient (20), pano4423_004 (19). However, since the resignation from Stormbringer, azzurro now takes his place.

The Steering Committe is a small group of people who take the very basic decisions of this project, in co-operation with the entire forum population. At this moment the SC is focussing on forming a Mission Statement and forming the foundations of the project. They have a private subforum, which everyone can view but not change. The public SC subforum guarantees free speech for every member.

Since the opening of an internal chatbox (here), the SC has gathered four times. In those sessions, the Mission Statement was formed one line at a time, proposals were voted and the SSCs were created (more information below). The entire sessions have been saved and can be read here: session 1: 2008-04-12 || session 2: 2008-04-13 || session 3: 2008-04-20 || session 4: 2008-04-26.

More sessions will be held in future! They can be followed live by any member, however input by people not in the SC may be limited during times of contentious discussion, as to keep things orderly. More information about the chatbox can be retrieved here.

The first SC term started on 5 April, and will end three months later (which is the 5th of June). Not long before that day, the SC will poll whether or not the same group should take on the second term. In case the result is negative, new elections will be held.

Subcommittees created
In the third chatsession (20 Apr), the SC agreed to create three subcommittees (SSCs). Those will group all individuals with sort-like talents to work on specialised subjects:
SC.Vis: vision and general principles
SC.Tech: technical (subdevided into DB programmers and interface/HTML programmers/designers)
SC.BFL: business, finance and legal issues

The groups will consist out of five, five and three SC members respectively, with the first group (Vision) consisting out of three dedicated and two bridge members (one from Tech, one from BFL). They will all be sharing one subforum, and use tags ([VIS], [TECH], [BFL]) before topictitles to keep things clear.

The SC wants input from everyone with ideas on these topic areas, even from those who don't think are skilled enough to create or implement a final product. They will pool all willing and available forum members based on their areas of expertise.

The SSCs will gather and sort the ideas, provide feedback and focus discussions if they get off-track. They have no special powers, but are meant to gather and focus the efforts and energies of the 300+ members at this project.

That's all...
... for now! We'll be back next month with a brand new update. Things are moving fast, so don't forget to check out the forums from time to time... Witness the birth of something big!

Cheers!
The Steering Committee.

Thanks dmaxx. Missed the SC change with U_A now in the SC though.
Rest looks great.

corne_mo wrote:

Thanks dmaxx. Missed the SC change with U_A now in the SC though.

It will be included in the next edition, cheers.

"It took until the 12th of April to accept "DiscographyDB" permanent as name."

It took until the 12th of April to accept "DiscographyDB" as a permanent name.



"They will all be sharing sharing one subforum"

They will all be sharing one subforum

I've now placed this newsletter on the web site home page.

Dmaxx: The website is now error free so if you like you can direct all the URLs to it so people will see the Newsletter first thing.

Thanks, ultra_ambient. The only thing I ask is that you forward all wiki info to the forums, without the password on the main page. Thanks!

I'm not sure I understand deejsasqui

I was thinking that due to the main page being a public page, while the majority of the forum content and all of the wiki are closed, that the wiki password shouldn't be posted on the front page. The newsletter was sent to all members of the forums, so that's not available to all.

Am I trying to be too restrictive? Everyone has to register on wikidot, so it's not anonymous access.

OK, I have removed the password.

Thanks! Looks good!

Hej, not sure if I've done this already but just want to give my compliments and praise for the News Letter.
Really simple yet informative, serious content with a friendly tone and a nice acceptable length.
I realise there's some work put into this and even though I'm a frequent guest it still felt nice to be updated on the crucial activities and recent events.
Nice work.