[Imc-tech] The Future of Chambana.net

[Zachary C. Miller]

I want everyone to know that I will, in all probability, be moving to
Chicago sometime in the next 3-4 months. 

I am 100% committed to maintaining continuity of service for the
chambana.net server and all the myriad of websites that it hosts. I am
not selling my house in Urbana and the server can continue to live
there for at least the next year. I have worked over the last year to
ensure that the server is remote-administratable and will be
continuing to improve that capability. So there should be no immediate
concern that the server will be going away when I move.

I would however like to have a meeting of all interested/invested
parties about the future of chambana.net.

I have created an email list chambana-future at chambana.net. This is an
open list with public archives. You must be a member of the list to
post. I encourage all interested parties to join this email list and
take all commentary about this issue to that list. Please do not
respond to this email.
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/chambana-future

Chambana.net is a project of the UC-IMC to provide low cost web and
email hosting to community organizations that have at least one UC-IMC
member. Chambana.net hosts 112 websites and 220 mailing lists for
around 80 organizations. Chambana.net currently runs on a server that
I donated to the UC-IMC. It uses bandwidth from a T-1 line that I pay
for out of my pocket. In the past it has run on DSL lines paid for
primarily by me but also subsidized by the UC-IMC. My house also has
an active backup SDSL line that can be used if the T1 goes down for an
extended period of time.

In the past the UC-IMC has done invoicing for the organizations that
we host and has collected donations from our clients. This money is
put into a Community Web Hosting fund in the UC-IMC's books and I can
ask for payments out of that fund to help offset my bandwidth
costs. Because I have been making good money at my job I have not been
keeping up with the billing OR asking for payments from the fund. The
fund should have a pretty significant amount of money in it (at least
$3000) as I recently donated my share of Acorn Active Media's 2005
surplus funds to the UC-IMC Community WebHosting project and we have
also continued to receive some payments from some organizations
despite the lack of invoicing.

The long range goal of this project has always been to house the
servers at the new IMC space at the Urbana PO. In order for that to
happen some folks need to step forward to take responsibility for this
project. 

We need some folks to start keeping QuickBooks up to date with client
information and to send out invoices to everyone that we give service
to (including back-dated invoices for clients who have enjoyed service
for the past year without being invoiced). It is important to remember
that while we send out invoices, these are suggested donations to
support the service and we don't generally cut anyone's service off
for failure to pay.

We need some folks to take over the day to day system administration
of the server. I can train anyone who is already familiar with UNIX
sysadmin how the specifics of this server operate.

We need some kind of oversight body that meets regularly. For the past
5 years I have run this server as my own personal hobby. I was
offering this community service before the UC-IMC even started. The
UC-IMC has trusted me to take care of it myself. For the sake of long
term sustainability, I think this service should be overseen by a
regularly meeting imc-tech collective in public meetings and by
consensus.

If the server is to be housed at the UC-IMC, we need to get a proper
network connection set up, and to set up an area in a machine room for
this project. We need to do all the preparations neccessary for a
smooth transition from one location to another.

I do not want to dictate the future of this resource to the UC-IMC or
the community. I want the UC-IMC and the community of users to figure
out what you want to do to preserve these services in the future. I
want to facilitate that by calling a meeting of interested parties and
by offering in depth training to qualified volunteers who are
empowered by the UC-IMC to take this project over.

Ultimately it will be up to the UC-IMC Steering Group to approve any
change in the Community Web Hosting program but I would like to see an
ad hoc group of interested parties come together and consense on a
proposal to deliver to Steering. In order to find a consensus proposal
we'll need not only good ideas but people willing to commit to seeing
them through.

It occurs to me that there are several possible options: 

   Some great synergy could be achieved with OJC if there was interest
   by OJC's sysadmins in running the server. I haven't talked to
   anyone at OJC about this and they may be uninterested but I am Cc'ing
   this message to their staff. Perhaps OJC folks could think about terms
   on which it would be reasonable for UC-IMC to outsource the project to
   them (with oversight from imc-tech). But perhaps neither OJC nor
   UC-IMC would want to do this. This is just my own thinking.

   Similar synergy could be achieved with Acorn Active Media.

   Another individual like myself could step forward and do what I've
   been doing for 5 years.

   The project could be managed directly by volunteers from the tech
   collective.

   Some folks could step forward to make sure the billing/invoicing
   gets done and I could continue doing much of the technical side but
   not paying out of pocket. I am able to do the sysadmin stuff
   indefinitely but I will not be able to pay the expenses out of pocket
   forever and I don't have the time or energy to do the invoicing.

I want to reiterate that I have no intention of leaving the community
high and dry. I will continue to run this server for at least the next
year from Urbana. I can continue to run it indefinitely from Chicago
if neccessary, but I do not think that is in the interests of the U-C
community.

Another issue here is that some of the clients of chambana.net came on
board before the UC-IMC was ever involved (back when the server was
called "groogroo"). Some of those folks may have become involved
because they wanted to work with me and may not be interested in
working with the UC-IMC. I will continue to run my own server
regardless of the fate of the UC-IMC chambana.net server. So clients
may choose to continue with me or to stay with chambana.net/UC-IMC. I
would enjoy feedback from clients on that either privately by email or
at this meeting that I keep talking about.

So we need to all have a meeting (probably a series of meetings) to
hash this out face to face. I am thinking early November. Let's talk
about it on the chambana-future list, please subscribe to that email
list and send a message describing your interest in the project, and
what your constraints are for meeting (weekends or week nights
prefered, days you absolutely can't make it, etc).

-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://zach.chambana.net/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
 Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
 Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology