Leadership (Re: [libreoffice-design] They need graphic material, WE NEED A MOTIF!)

Hi Nik, all!

Oh well, you raised a pretty tough topic ... you seem to be good to
point out things like that ;-)))

Am Mittwoch, den 23.02.2011, 02:59 +1100 schrieb Nik:
> Ah, good to hear from you Ivan!
>
>
> On 2/22/2011 4:46 PM, Ivan M. wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 3:40 AM, Nik <nik@tdf.nikashsingh.com> wrote:
> > > I would really appreciate if some of the Design leadership (Bernhard,
> > > Christoph, Ivan) commented on whether they thought this plan is feasible. Or
> > > updated it with times that are more appropriate.

> > I share Christoph's reservation about the term 'leader', but I do
> > think we need a clearer project structure - it might just be a matter
> > of semantics (i.e., choosing a better word than 'leader') since some
> > people have established themselves very well in the project (including
> > Paulo and, of course, you), and it would help new people to
> > distinguish whose words (currently) carry more 'oomph' in the project.

> I wish you, Bernhard and Christoph would reconsider this, or at least
> discuss it amongst yourselves.
> Right now we have informal leadership from the three of you, and many
> of the long-term members recognise this, but without formality, there
> is no way of our many newer members to be aware how much has
> transpired before or why your opinions/recommendations should
> (rightly) be considered to carry more weight than the average
> response. This is a meritocracy, we have meritorious members, without
> recognition of their status, how are new members supposed to know who
> to listen to so we don't keep making the same mistakes as before.

Although I didn't invest the time to think about this intensively, here
are some initial thoughts. To me, the thoughts are totally valid and
quite understandable ... at the same time, the issues relate to very
contradictory points. On the one hand - and this is pretty design
specific - it is important to speak with one (visual wise, and usability
wise) voice via the product. On the other hand, this community tries to
overcome the many leaders (*) and support a community based on
meritocracy.

So having some kind of guiding role seems helpful to me ... but how to
establish this without interfering with the TDF mission statement? To
(also) not discourage others from joining? For example, you referred to
elections - something which had been established quite some time ago on
the German OOo developers list (they have detailed rules for
establishing their official "representative"). But, there are - of
course - some downsides like organizational overhead, ...

        (*) At the FOSDEM, somebody said to me, that OOo was the team of
        leaders. Everybody had a leadership role - of course, that's
        somehow incorrect, but his is how the external people perceived
        the project.

What it makes even harder (for me), that we have more (insanely) skilled
people than ever before ... so assigning (like Ivan said) more 'oomph'
will be pretty tough :-)

Funnily, the same questions arose when we thought about the Steering
Committee - before we went public with the TDF. We ended up with a
selection of people who cover "all" aspects of the community, the
product development and the business stuff. And to enable consistent and
fast decisions, the number of people was limited right from the
start ...

Phew, I have to admit that I'll require a bit more time to elaborate
this topic - and I'd like to invite the others to join. Ivan, Bernhard,
all ... any thoughts on offering a "guidance"/"contact person"/"veto"
role? Or do you think (this is what I currently hope) that the normal
community process - having a more stabilized environment - will work
perfectly well? Because, at the end, it is hard to emphasize merit if
other/new members prefer to work on stuff they are personally interested
in ...

Apropos - today was not a "Design" team day (as you may have noticed),
and tomorrow (didn't knew that before) I'll have the chance to see a
friend (after a loooong time). So, I'll be back on Thursday ... sorry
for missing / ignoring some of the other important topics here. I'd like
to ask you (all) to continue with the banners and the motif stuff :-)

Cheers,
Christoph


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