Bad reportage of the meeting

If I try and get specific I'll miss something, so this is a very, very general report of proceedings:

A dozen people turned up - which was a half-dozen more than I was expecting - and we basically had an informal chat for about two hours. The main topic of conversation was obviously data retention and preservation, but we also coverered other subjects that we felt a formal group /could/ tackle, such as copyright, fair use, patents, freedom of information, etc. We discussed whether we /should/ tackle them now, or come back to them later; we covered the different approaches we could take: via the media and lobbying, via the courts and litigation, via both; and we covered things like how we could fund ourselves, and, well... what we could do (shout, jam, lobby, amend, connect, submit, etc).

No-one took minutes as far as I'm aware, but I'm not sure that would have been very useful anyway, since it was very much a "get to know you" type of meeting, to see if we're all reasonably on the same track -- which I think we are. And nothing was really decided, bar that it might be a good idea to start making some decisions. For example, we need to decide:

a) how much time we're (individually) going to have to put into this;
b) whether we're going to step up as a member of some sort of committee/council;
c) what we're going to call ourselves;
d) how we're going to organise ourselves (ltd company, ltd company with charitable status, unincorporated association, etc);
e) how we're going to fund ourselves (personal donations, corporate donations, seat of pants);
f) the scope of our organisation, i.e. what subjects we're going to speak up about;
g) if and how we're going to tie into our counterparts: EFF, ACLU, EFFI, ICLU, SAGE, ILUG, etc.

My answer to the above are:

a) I'd feel hypocritical if I didn't give it some time. I can commit to quarterly meetings in person, and possibly the odd extraordinary meeting, as long as they're on Saturdays if they're held in Dublin. My technical resources are EFF/EFI's, and I can commit some of my woeful skillsets too.
b) Yes. I'll be the first to nominate myself, as long as it's a council and not a committee.
c) I don't know. I prefer "freedom" to "frontier", but "Electronic Freedom Foundation" sounds like a copout.
d) Unincorporated Association for the moment.
e) All of the above. I have pledges of €600 so far, with €100 of that from myself.
f) We need to concentrate on current issues right now; but if we have the manpower, everything that affects our electronic freedoms.
g) We should try to coordinate with these organisations as much as possible.

I'm sure my honourable peers will be able to add to my sordid report.

adam