[Ccil-user] Re: tech-priesthood@lists.ccil.org (Miles Nordin)

[Jackie Patti]

Miles, I think there may be some misunderstanding and I'd like to 
straighten it out a bit.

I didn't suggest the tech-core list because it was low traffic, in my 
experience at CCIL, it gets much more traffic than ccil-user.  Ccil-user 
is intended for ideas about CCIL overall, as opposed to technical 
discussion.  Why?  Because non-techies eyes tend to glaze over when you 
start talking technical.  We've discovered that it's best to keep 
technical conversations amongst the techies.

The tech-core list is intended primarily for ISP-related technical 
discussions - and security and such is discussed there (and archived), 
so I was mistaken to point you there.  You may be a hard-core geek who 
could be wonderfully helpful to us there, but we don't know that yet.

Are we a bit paranoid?  Yes.  We have the experience to back up our 
paranoia though - a volunteer who insisted he needed root to "learn" and 
an ex-president who agreed - our systems ended up trashed.  We've also 
had experience with users who are outright hostile to CCIL.

I have subscribed to the list Chuck set up, and hope the rest of the 
techies have also.  It's probably the best place to have *this* discussion.

We don't know you, and therefore don't know what you mean by being a 
technical volunteer.  There's technical and then there's technical.

For instance, I was appointed by the current president to be technical 
advisor for CCIL, a Debian-based ISP, with no experience whatsoever in 
Linux.  I'm "technical" in the sense that my job was "translating" from 
the techies to the board, but am not actually terribly useful to CCIL 
technically as far as it's ISP services go, as I barely know a little 
shell scripting.  Further, I'm a programmer, not a networking or 
sysadmin type, which is what CCIL needs most for it's ISP work.

But CCIL is not entirely it's ISP work.

CCIL works with other nonprofits, doing web development 
(Apache/PHP/Postgres platform), training their end users on computers, 
and doing technical assessments.  As an example, see 
http://shelter.ccil.org - an app that lets homeless shelters with no 
beds see what other shelters have beds available.

CCIL has a rebuild program for rebuilding new computers for poor 
families and nonprofits, in conjunction with training underprivileged 
youth on both hardware and open-source software.

CCIL is just beginning projects to increase the CCIL community, likely 
weblogs and possibly a Jabber server will be installed.

Some specific technical needs include:

1. Some of the stuff we need done includes someone to conduct technical 
assessments for nonprofits.  Basically, many granting organizations 
require techncial assessments in grant proposals and most local 
nonprofits don't have any IT staff at all.  Someone needs to go in, see 
what they have, discover what they need or could use, and write a 
blueprint from going from here to there.  This is pretty critical stuff 
- they have no clue and often little resources.  For instance, I was at 
a nonprofit a while back that had 6 machines networked to a single 
dialup modem for net access - and only a parttime person to help on some 
weekends with anything computer related.  This is one of the many 
projects CCIL is writing grants for and we need people for that.  So 
that's one technical need CCIL has now.

2. CCIL's techies are planning to rebuild the boxes, migrating some 
services, to make the overall system more stable.  I worked with the 
tech core to develop a general draft plan, and since then Chuck has 
developed a detailed plan.  There's gobs of networking stuff involved. 
Our current techies are capable of doing all this work, but have time 
limitations to getting it done.  Talk to Chuck if you're interested in 
helping with that.

3. CCIL has had major problems getting LDAP working properly with myriad 
applications.  We could definetly use an LDAP expert.  Again, talk to 
Chuck for this if you can help.

4. The community-based stuff is probably going to be mostly built by 
Jason - if you're interested, you should discuss with him.

5. The rebuild project is currently missing a leader.  When it restarts, 
in addition to someone to organize and plan, it desparatly needs both 
hardware experts and someone expert in setting up boxes for end users.

Your qualifications are relevant, obviously CCIL would not survive if we 
gave root to everyone who volunteered to do technical work.  But knowing 
you a bit is also relevant before administrative level stuff happens, as 
there's malevolents out there.

And aside from your qualifications, there's also the question of 
interest.  Bright folks will learn what they need to if they're 
motivated to do so.  What sort of projects are you interested in helping 
with?

Talk to us a bit!

-- 
Jackie Patti, Director of Project Management
MainLine Consulting Consortium, Inc.
http://www.mainline-consulting.com
(610) 873-2589