Requests for Advice from the Board

[Máirín Duffy]

Don't hate me, but...

On Tue, 2012-02-14 at 12:59 -0800, Max Spevack wrote:
> I know that John is just paraphrasing here, but the truth is that there 
> are a number of times where all you see is something along the lines of 
> "not an issue for the Board" or "Board says that $PROJECT should do what 
> it thinks is best".
> 
> If I were on the Fedora Board, or the FPL, I would make it a rule that 
> answers like that are no longer going to be given.  It's okay for that 
> to be the message -- and there are many times where it will be the 
> message.  But my point is that there should be more.

'Not an issue, do what you think is best' with no other guidance can at
times come off as being a polite / well-intentioned 'we don't care' or
worse, 'go figure it out yourself.' 

Sometimes you have a general issue around Fedora, and you want to bounce
ideas off of other people. Maybe you're seeking other folks interested
in solving the issue / discussing the problem space. People on the board
tend to be leaders in the project with the drive potential to make
things happen, and they tend to have a higher-level view of the project
as a hold than heads-down 'worker bees,' so don't they seem a natural
go-to group for these types of topics?

E.g. re DuckDuckGo on start.fpo, I was not looking for the board to
formally declare it to be okay or not. I was looking for a discussion on
the topic. I knew the websites team would consider it with good reason;
I didn't approach them because I wasn't sure if it DuckDuckGo was right
for Fedora. I wanted a discussion with a broader group on whether or not
it was right for us.

I expect conversations with the websites team to revolve more around how
technically feasible a switchover would be, what kind of effort would be
involved, how long it might take, and less about the big picture. I used
to think the board was about big picture leadership around Fedora, but
instead encountered mostly uninspiring administrivia when I served on
it. How can you possibly lead a project at a high / strategic level if
you deny yourself the ability to *do* and to hold any authority,
refusing to suggest to others what they should *do* in order to realize
goals that push the project forward? Certainly there's a spectrum
between 'meddle' and 'provide no direction for fear of meddling';
couldn't some of that spectrum provide potential for good leadership? 

[Needless to say, this flows from the frustration & disillusionment I
experienced on the board. I don't mean to be out-of-line so I am sorry
if I am; this is my attempt at tough love.]

Cool things can come out of friends coming together and hacking on
things for fun without the baggage of a grand vision, but *you cannot
rely on that magic always or take it for granted.* Meandering about
aimlessly does not always get you somewhere you want to be [1]. Not
everyone can be a superstar/rockstar/whatever and carve the huge chunks
of time out of their life and sustain the drive required to champion a
big picture idea into a functional thing... and since this is a very
high bar, perhaps that's why it's not happening as much as we'd all
like. I mean, if you show up to the local park looking to play soccer, I
think most days you're going to find an empty field; if you are lucky
you might have a couple fun random games. It's the organization /
framework around organizing leagues and schedules and assigning roles
that I think makes the fun of soccer games possible on a larger scale /
more consistent basis. 

I fear we are missing out on a lot of great 'soccer players' because
they show up to the Fedora field and it's empty when they show up. If
we're *lucky*, they'll ask if anyone wants to play rather than wander
off:

FUTURE SOCCER STAR:
Where's the game?

FEDORA BOARD: 
Go ahead and organize a game! You don't need to ask for permission!

FUTURE SOCCER STAR: 
Well, uh, okay. There isn't already a league I can join?

FEDORA BOARD: 
Nope, you can create a league if you like, though. No permission needed!
Well. Except if you need to use the Fedora logo for your league and
jerseys, we'll have to okay that.

FUTURE SOCCER STAR: 
Hmm. That seems like an awful lot of work. I just want to play soccer.
I'm awesome at that. I'll go look at other soccer fields.

I know a top-down hierarchy for a project like this makes no sense, but
a clear high-level direction with some support structure around it so
folks who don't have the luxury of huge time chunks but do have
something positive to offer can plug into that framework rather than
having to start from scratch with a shovel and a plot of mud. (maybe
this is why there are so many email clients in the world.) Sure,
fedorahosted.org helps, yes, the ability to create yet another mailing
list on our infrastructure sort of helps if you believe in mailing
lists, planet fedora and the wiki help, but these are not the level of
collaborative technology you would expect of a project with Fedora's
dire mission and DNA. 

Note, I'm not advocating for bureaucracy here. I am trying to suggest
that if the philosophy driving the project's formal leadership is,'do
what you think is best' or 'we don't do things, you do' -  then it
better be possible to do those things without requiring great sacrifice.
We need to make it easier to find new buddies with the right skills to
work on something together. We need to make it easier to communicate.
Better tooling. Build a culture around using that tooling. Maybe
institute regular cultural practices to enable better collaboration; the
barcamp format we have at FUDcons helps makes things happen, because
it's an opportunity to pitch an idea, any idea, get it out there in
front of a large group of smart and talented like-minded people, and
gather up a group of interested people. Sadly, it happens once every
year per region, and not everyone gets to go, and sometimes those that
do have a hangover and are rendered useless one of the three days. 

What's the virtual experience then? Maybe FUDcon is months away, or
maybe you can't go. Should you be so inclined to try to sacrifice the
time required to attempt driving a cool project on your own, to have to
join and cc 3 or 4 different mailing lists when trying to drive a
conversation around it to try not to miss interested folks who are only
subscribed to one of the 4. (these kinds of intersections happen a lot
between say ambassadors, websites, design, and this list.) Then the
communication inevitably breaks down when the list denies someone
posting a reply to the 3 lists they aren't subscribed to.... you could
have a central project-wide list I suppose, but then the topics wouldn't
always be about stuff people cared about, and maybe the volume would be
too high. We need a better form of communication so we don't lose the
cool, brilliant ideas and don't suffocate them while they are still
nascent because of so much initial friction.

I used to spend at least 3 hours a week outside of a meeting soliciting
topics for it, devising an agenda and sending it out the day before,
sending out twitter / identi.ca / mailing list reminders, moderating the
meeting itself, manually re-reading through IRC meeting logs to come up
with a summary and action items, mailing them out to a mailing list,
making a blog post with the summary and pointer to the full logs, then
gathering all the blog comments / mailing list / other feedback and
re-presenting them as agenda items the next week. Oh and manually
cataloging each new set of meeting minutes in reverse chronological
order on the team wiki page, every month or so moving another month's
worth of minutes from the bottom of the stack to an archive page
organized by year. All manual (except for the meetbot log). For a
single, one hour long meeting. This is what it can be like to run a
fully-transparent weekly meeting, and it sucks for the person making it
happen, for the 'coach' or the 'league organizer.' It gets great
results, it allows everyone to participate easily, but does it really
need to be so hard? And then, when do you get a chance to play and rock
at what you're really passionate about (which is likely not copy/paste
IRC logs?)

Okay, as in all situations, everything leads to mailing lists sucking.
Sorry for the rant: I promise I only rant because I care so
passionately. Happy Valentine's Day.

@---`----`-----

~m

[1] and sometimes can lead people to think you've got an insatiable
appetite for braaaanes.