[advocacy-discuss] [osug-leaders] How can we help?

[Jim Grisanzio]

Adding advocacy-discuss because this is a bigger issue that should 
involve community development itself.

Blake wrote:
> More visible roadmaps for OpenSolaris features/releases would be cool.
>  Talking about future plans always makes group meetings more exciting
> :)
>
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Teresa Giacomini
> <Teresa.Giacomini at sun.com> wrote:
>   
>> Would it be helpful to have a periodic concall where you
>> could hear about what's coming?

There are a few projects that do open con-calls, so this is a perfectly 
fine idea.

But what is the topic? Is it a UG leaders call? A general community dev 
call? An event call? Also, if you do con-calls, please rotate them in 
time so that all parts of the world can participate so we don't all have 
to accommodate California. And don't try to get the entire world on one 
call. Do a call for the Americas. Then one for Europe. Then Asia. Etc. 
The community is global now and there are Sun operations and user groups 
and distros and associated OpenSolaris communities all over the place. 
Multiple calls should be possible now. Also, it needs to be ok to start 
small. Having a few people on a call to start is wonderful. You can 
start a revolution with a few people. These things need not be big, but 
they need to be consistent.


>>  share your concerns and issues?  That sort
>> of thing.  What about a group on FaceBook (one was set up recently) where
>> you could communicate more easily across groups?  
>>     
I have found about a dozen FB groups for OpenSolaris, and I've started 
one for the Tokyo community on FS as well (with Shoji's orange shirts). 
I also started a group on LinkedIn last year. The community is all over 
now so these social networks are all good. I see no single place that 
OpenSolaris people hang out now, though, so I think we have to go where 
the people are (wherever that is).

Another idea is to involve the community and the user groups in the 
launch of next Sun distro. That could be a topic for calls. I think 
people know what's coming in terms of features and such, since people 
are running dev builds right now, but what cool things could we do as a 
community to support a global launch? Mozilla does these things very 
well -- they build tension and excitement around the world and they have 
a cause to believe it and that's easily explained. What's the 
OpenSolaris cause? This is important because we will not be able to 
distribute such activities without defining some basics like this or at 
least observing what is already there in the community and amplifying 
that. What do we stand for, anyway?

>> A user group conference?
>>     

What's cool is that some of the UGs are already doing their own 
conferences now. And I think many people here have asked about how we as 
a community can organize better around various conferences. The 
OpenSolaris conference efforts have grown substantially in the last 
couple of years.


>>  (
>> Heck, I am quite a novice at the user group stuff.  Let me know what would
>> help you out.  What you'd like to see.
>>     

We've had discussions like this before and kicked around some good 
ideas, but we have had difficulty really implementing those ideas as a 
community. I think two things are needed: (1) we should hack around some 
plans for activities and events and ways Sun can help (as you are asking 
in this mail) but we should do that /as a community/ so that we are all 
not just waiting for what's  going on at Sun, and (2) we should 
implement small things consistently and rapidly and not worry about 
going big until we get the basics right. Communities are built from the 
ground up one person at a time. They don't scale well at all unless a 
good foundation is built.

Here's an excellent article on community organizing. It's Obama's stuff, 
but it's non-political and can be applied anywhere: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/the-new-organizers-part-1_b_132782.html

What I like about the piece is that things were pretty massively 
decentralized for those guys, and the field was empowered to run things. 
They built a foundation first. That is a lesson we can learn. So, for 
instance, if you want to do con-calls, perhaps we can use those calls to 
do community development planning sessions that can be implemented at 
conferences, at user groups, on list, on IRC, or at the next launch.

Also, Sun should not necessarily be the center of the operations or the 
briefings. It would be cool to have a call on Belenix one time and here 
from that community in Bangalore and then maybe do one on a conference 
idea next and then maybe on some new dev project next and etc. It could 
just be a community call with whoever wants to join. Languages may be a 
challenge, but it would be cool to hear people from around the world 
talk about their communities and what they are doing -- and how they are 
doing it.

Long ago I floated the idea of building a global team of "OpenSolaris 
Community Managers" but it never went anywhere. I had in mind both Sun 
and non-Sun people spread around the world each with the title of 
"Community Manager" of whatever region and their responsibilities would 
be to do community building ("organizing" to use the political term of 
the day in the U.S.). And although there is no "Community Manager" for 
OpenSolaris, what has developed naturally over the course of time is 
that many leaders have emerged -- either as user groups leaders or 
distro leaders or project leaders. This is very clear to see. So, maybe 
it's time to start pulling some of these guys together and building some 
programs that come from the community?

Please note: I am not necessarily talking about evangelizing the 
community or the technology. I'm talking about basic grass-roots project 
management, community building, and organizing -- the people who bring 
people together, hold events, and make the trains run on time. Stuff 
like that.

Anyway, just some ideas ...

Jim
-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/