Brainstorming ideas for next user base discussion

[Robyn Bergeron]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 15:06:26 -0400,
>   Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I took the meeting minutes from the user base discussion meeting last
>> week and wrote up a blog post on the meeting -
>> http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/**2013/04/09/fedora-board-**
>> fedora-userbase-discussion/<http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2013/04/09/fedora-board-fedora-userbase-discussion/>
>>
>
> Thanks! That is a pretty coherent summary of what was a very chaotic and
> fast paced meeting.
>
>
>
>  1) "Who Do"
>>
>> We start off with a goal or vision statement. In this case, the
>> statement could be:
>>
>> "Fedora will be an awesome platform for building things."
>>
>
> This one seems like it might give us some idea of what would need to
> change to make Fedora a platform. (Though there is likely to be some big
> differences in opinion on the kind of platform.)


It's probably worthwhile to note that any potential changes should involve
getting the thoughts/possible effects on any groups that are impacted. For
example: QA - how would their testing be affected, things like release
criteria, etc? How do ambassadors market and talk about a "platform" vs.
other things? How would documentation be affected?


>
>
>
>  2) "3-12-3"
>>
>> Depending on how many people show up to the meeting, we might want to
>> break out into groups, but it should work for up to 10 active
>> participants.
>>
>> This one is based on timing. We start with a topic, again it could be:
>>
>> "A platform for building technology"
>>
>
> I don't imagine this is going to work very well over IRC at this time. I
> think it may be too chaotic to manage well in a short time.
>
>
>
>  3) "Cover Story"
>>
>> Pretend that we've reached our goal of being the ultimate platform for
>> building technology on top of, and that we're being featured on the
>> cover of a prominent mainstream magazine. As a group, brainstorm what
>> the magazine issue's content will contain:
>>
>
> I think this might be better after we have explored more of what being a
> platform might mean.
>
>
>
>  4) "Pre-Mortem"
>>
>> Pretend Fedora failed and is dead, and we need to come up with an
>> obituary of the achievements it accomplished over its life and how
>> things went wrong. There's going to be two main threads to the
>> discussion on this one:
>>
>
> I don't know that this one will help us move forward very well. Though it
> might be fun as a combination of a history lesson and nostalgia. And I'd
> like to see more group fun in the project.


I think it's a bit... morbid, personally :)

That said: I think something more like a "living history" would be
interesting. How has the project evolved and changed over the years?
Why/how did anyone - current or past contributors - get involved in Fedora
(this could be a goldmine for "how we find people," what motivates them -
and help us to understand what motivators, methods work for attracting new
contributors, and/or what kind of offering we need.)


>
>
>
>  5) "The 5 Whys"
>>
>> You start off with a problem statement. Our problem statement could be:
>>
>> "Fedora is not the best platform for building new technology."
>>
>> As a group, brainstorm a set of reasons why the problem is a problem.
>> Number each reason.
>>
>
> I think this is another one that might not work too well until we have a
> better idea of what kind of platform we want to be.


I think there is interesting potential here - in doing strategy/forecasting
in the past (the ever awesome space of "how many widgets can we sell if we
do X,"), doing monte carlo analysis and "what if" scenarios has always
proved to be useful to establish the likelihood of various outcomes towards
a goal. Now, in business-land, that goal is usually "make the most money"
or something like that, so here things are a bit different.

But I will say that as we go through this, should we proceed this far, we'd
(as mentioned) likely have a variety of options, and we'd want to think
through them. Basically: A list of scenarios, and their likely outcomes.
It's definitely more "what if" than monte carlo type of thinking, but I
think it would help to solve the "putting the cart before the horse" issue
- where people jump to conclusions without considering what we're trying to
solve, or whether or not that conclusion is likely to work out in any
meaningful way.

This is off the cuff and by no means thorough or concrete, but as an
example:

If Fedora offers $thing,
* What needs to be done to create $thing? Do we have the pieces, or gaps?
* What problems does this solve?
* What are the potential pitfalls?
* How do we define success (or at least, increasing success)? What are the
milestones? (Important for making people feel like their work has a
positive impact, things are going places, etc.)
* What is the audience we reach with $thing, and how do we reach them?
* Do we have people willing to do the work?


>
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