David A. Harding
Tuesday, 11 Oct 2005
I've met everyone who has a syndicated blog on GNUJersey. I know who you are, and I know what your contributions to the New Jersey free software and open source communities have been. But I don't think anyone else has had that opportunity. Identifying our blogger's contributions to the community is essential to the success of GNUJersey. It will help the readers identify with the blogger. It will help the blogger recruit readers to his or her cause. It will help acknowledge the prestige of GNUJersey to the world.
When I was in Boy Scouts we had a simple way of identifying skills and contributions: badges. I propose to adapt that concept to GNUJersey.
In the article section of gnujersey.org, there's a bunch of empty space to the right of each blogger's name. In that space I want to add badges (logos) indicating the bloggers contributions. For example, my badges would be:
Dave Harding {CHLUG Presenter} {RUSLUG Presenter} {LPIC-1}
I plan on visualising the text between the brackets. The visual imagery of a few badges after a person's name will quickly, simply, and effectively communicate the blogger's contributions to the community.
Before creating a badge I will need permission from the person with the (implied) rights to the trademark. For CHLUG I will need permssion from Jerry Neale, CHLUG's organizer. For RUSLUG it's Mike Kazin, SLUG's president. For LPIC-1, I received permission to use their logo when I received my certification.
Here is a list of the first set of badges I want to begin creating and using. Badges are denoted by bolding.
I would like any GNUJersey blogger's feedback on the badges idea. Also, I would like to hear from the officers who control the trademarks I want to use. Please contact me.