Organizational Change Proposal

"Dareing to be different."

As discussed in #EB, our mindset with DareNET is to do as much to make it as community-centric as possible. Less "here's an IRC network" and more "here's a multi-purpose community centered around an IRC network." This, of course, implies we are not your traditional IRC network, and that's fine -- we have no desire to be. Our organizational makeup should reflect this. Below is a brief written outline of some of the proposals brought up during the channel discussion.

Hierarchy & Structure
The network's administration would be divided into two distinct groups (Operations and Support), each lead by an appointed director. Operations would mainly be responsible for the logistical aspects of the network (e.g. development, maintenance of servers, etc), while Support would be responsible for the "customer service" aspects of the network.

Below is a visual representation on how the staff hierarchal breakdown might look in such a setup:


 * Executive Board
 * Director, Operations
 * Development Manager
 * IRCd Development
 * Services Development
 * Web Development
 * Server Manager(s)
 * Server Coordinators
 * Server Administrators
 * Server Operators
 * Security Manager(s)
 * Director, Support
 * Abuse Manager
 * Investigators
 * Support Managers
 * Support Operators
 * Support Agents
 * Training Manager
 * Trainers
 * Trainees

Breakdown
Tiered below our Executive Board, as shown above, are several teams which are responsible for the day to day operations of the network:

Operations
The Operations department, lead by the Director of Operations, will be the technical arm of our day to day operations. Responsible for managing the technical infrastructure and providing a solid, reliable technology experience for our user base, Operations is one of two departments.

Development
Development, lead by the Development Manager, is technically broken down into 3 sub teams; however, full all intensive purposes, IRCd & Services have been combined below:

IRCd & Services Development:

What IRC network is complete without its own in house development gurus? These bit magicians are responsible not only for our professional quality IRC Services system, services-darenet, but also maintain patch sets and fixes for our IRC daemon, ircd-darenet.

Web Development:

What happens when you put web designers and web programmers into the same room? You get a highly functional, well designed web experience. Our Web Development team is responsible for the design and development of our end user website, as well as our integrated Staff Intranet, which will soon provide the solid operational basis for our network to run. Managing a network requires copious amounts of information management and these web divas and gurus turn bleeding edge into rock solid stability allowing for multiple teams and staff members to co-manage and provide the best possible network experience to our end users.

Server Management
Building a geographically diverse, yet well structured network is both an art form and science. These fine folks have both aspects down. Their responsibilities include reviewing prospective servers and collectively reviewing the network on an ongoing basis to ensure link stability.

Security
With an ever increasing number of security vulnerabilities, our Security team, which will be made up of both DareNET staff and outside industry experts, performs periodic audits ensuring the network is secured as can be.

Support
One of two departments, the Support department is lead by the Director of Support, and is also made up of well respected individuals in our community who over a period of time have shown great dedication to the network and a propensity for management. These fine folks will be responsible for the customer service end of our network operations. Managing several sub teams and a volunteer staff, these cat wranglers will work to keep the end user experience on DareNET a positive one.

Support also consists of the following two sub teams:

Abuse
With any network, large or small, there are rules to enforce, botnets to thwart, and individuals with a complete disregard for rules and those around them who need to be dealt with. The Abuse team, a sub team of Support, is responsible for that. These defenders of harmony and foes of would be system exploiters, script kiddies, and packet attackers have protecting DareNET down to a science.

Training
Another sub team of Support, the training team wil be responsible for ensuring staff posses the necessary knowledge and tools to effectively do their job on DareNET.

Proposed chain of command is the following

 * EB
 * Server Managers
 * Server Administrators
 * Server Operators
 * Support Managers
 * Support Operators
 * Training Managers
 * Trainers
 * Support Agents (Network Helpers)
 * Support Agents (Support Helpers)
 * Trainees

See the discussion on this.

More to come...