Diana Martin's draft report

[Paul W. Frields]

As many community members (and hopefully all Board members) are aware,
Diana Martin has been conducting anthropological studies on the Fedora
Project, and you can find a draft of her report here:

http://www.cyber-anthro.com/?page_id=343
http://www.cyber-anthro.com/research/Harrelson-Fedora.pdf

It's a reasonable expectation for Board members to set aside 30-60
minutes to read this study carefully (yes, it is long, but
informative), and to use it as a jumping off point to identify
specific issues that Fedora leadership could help improve or solve.
And of course interested community members should feel free to do the
same, and help in those discussions.

For instance, one of the points raised in the study was about how new
contributors set their expectations.  Mike McGrath recently wrote, in
collaboration with some other members, a fantastic and much-needed
wiki page[1] to help both new contributors and the teams they join set
expectations for involvement and success.  Wiki pages aren't the
solution to every problem, of course.  More generally, the process of
transparently exploring (and then possibly documenting as a result)
some aspect of Fedora can be key in building consensus and agreement.

Diana is looking for input from the community on ways to improve the
study, so I would encourage readers (including the Board) to send
questions and suggestions directly to her for consideration, although
certainly discussion's welcome here too.  For instance, you might ask
her to present and discuss certain metrics gathered in the study but
not shown yet in the report.


* * *
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_be_a_successful_contributor

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Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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