[libreoffice-design] Flying the ship... [please everybody, post a short reply]

Hi all,

Within such a vivid team, things evolve quite fast - it's great to see
what can be done here in short time frames!

With this mail I want to reply to Nik and his suggestion in the thread 
about the mail subject [tags].

If this mail is too long for you, please scroll down to the end, read 
and reply there.

Nik wrote:

> I know Christoph wasn't too keen on the Leadership thing, but you're
> flying the ship solo now. We can get more done if the rest of us
> focus on Designing, and you focus on steering.

I didn't want to be called "leader" too, thought of "senior team member"
instead (this would include more people experienced in this special kind 
of collaboration).

But you're right. There are more important decisions to be taken by our 
team - and the minor ones (with minimal or no impact on our work) should 
be just established.

My time is limited - and especially during these days with uncertainty 
by Oracle's announcements and the remnant OOo community thinking about 
re-unification - so I can't reply to all mails in the way I want to, I 
can't draw mockups and drafts of what I have in mind, I don't even can 
create the website and wiki pages I consider important for our work.

So I have to focus. And if you all want me to focus on steering  - and 
if this would help you to focus on designing - I'll try to fulfill these 
wishes.

I will certainly not stop throwing in some drafts and ideas (sometimes 
we just need to see what we don't want to become true in order to start 
contributing our ideas), I will comment on topics where some important 
points have not been mentioned in my eyes.

But I will try to reduce the number of my mails, when my thoughts have 
already been mentioned by one of your postings.

You will not have me in a position of being the one and only deciding on 
official artwork or to approve a certain design - this is one of the 
most important tasks for our team in my eyes. But I will step in if I 
see a possible move in the general branding language or any other 
important area ...

The first case I'll try to follow this way is the Conference Logo:
I will not comment on the thread (even if Nik asked me directly). I 
really like the way you all work collaboratively on the design and you 
are very near to the final draft, I think.

The general question of two-parted logos should be discussed in a 
separate thread (we can re-use them for team logos too), but in my eyes 
this is a good idea.

So I want to come to an end and invite the people scrolling down to 
start reading here again:

-------- Conclusion ------

Work might become easier and less distractive, if someone would focus on 
structure, orientation and organization of the design team, while all 
the others can focus on designing.

All of you know me as someone with high interest in collaborative work 
and concordant decision making. I took care of the members of the OOo 
Art and Branding Project without being formally approved and we had some 
impact these days.

Here our tasks are much broader and more important, because there is no 
main sponsor art team responsible for all the central design decisions.

I still feel hesitant to any official title and position, but if you 
want me to decide on less important topics, if you feel represented by 
me talking to other parts of the community, I'll assume the duty of 
steering our team.

You will have to post your opinion even (no: especially) if it is 
different from mine. If I propose a draft or design, it's quality is 
nothing better than your's and it should be criticized in the same way 
as any other design.

If you think you can live with an unofficial lead and the conditions I 
describe above, please reply here:
(And if you don't, your reply is even more important!)

Best regards

Bernhard

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