[ug-discuss] Re: [osol-mktg] Community Consolidation -- Marketing & UGs

[Bruno F. Souza]

On 06/04/2007, at 04:22, Alan DuBoff wrote:

> On Thursday 05 April 2007 04:42 pm, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
>> Absolutely true. But there's a little 'but' in there, too. Each user
>> group has their own list but I had wanted ug-discuss to be the  
>> meta list
>> so that members of all user groups could potentially talk to each  
>> other
>> easily to share ideas, stories, materials, etc as well.
>
> But if we form small communities within, we end up being divided,  
> to some
> extent. I believe if we do that we encourage segregation, my 2 yen.

Right, and this is good :-)
Small communities that share common local interests, that join local  
developers. This is all positive.

You have to realize that when you talk about people, there is already  
a segregation. People are physically separated. They speak different  
languages. They are convinced by different arguments. The idea that  
communities are formed as "one global community" is false. The global  
community is the merge of small local groups of friends, like people  
in a University or a Company. Those expand their activities to form  
local (city-wide?) groups of interested developers that promote  
activities together (those are the ones we call UGs). Those can work  
together with other, nearby groups, maybe promoting a larger event  
that join a few UGs into some common activity (next week we'll have  
in Brazil several events organized by around 20 JUGs. Other exemples  
are UGs joining together to work on translations and even open source  
projects).

The fact is: it is easier for a developer to interact with local  
peers, in the local language. This is what the "global community"  
will never be able to achieve. By being "global" the community is  
huge, and overwhelming. Only the most daring, english-fluent, with  
large experience, can survive or be noticed in it, and them they  
become "hard to reach, everybody competes for their attention" global  
"stars". Local communities create local leaders, that act to  
influence even larger local communities, and that can at some point  
become global leaders also. The (comparatively) few local developers  
that can survive and strive on their own on the "global" community  
will continue to do so, and can act as the link between the local and  
the global community. But they will also become local stars, making  
the local developers proud and hopeful that they can also "get  
there". This is all positive. Thinking in other areas, this is why we  
have University sport leagues, state leagues, national leagues and  
worldwide sports leagues. To build up pride and confidence from local  
to worldwide. By the nature of open source projects, that are done  
over the network, with centralized accessible code to everyone, we  
tend to forget that local activities matter.

Strong local communities are needed for influencing universities,  
companies, and also governments, to adopt or invest in a product or  
technology. The close contact, and also the understand that there is  
local knowledge, support, services, etc, makes the technology much  
more real and useful to everyone. It lowers the risk when you know  
your neighbors are also doing this. By only having the "global"  
community, there is no local organization that can act as a place to  
come and discuss one's problems. And we all know that we tend to  
think that our problems are different then the rest of the world's  
problems, so, local groups can discuss the "local" problems (even  
when they are the same) in a much better way.

So, no, this is not creating segregation, it is just recognizing that  
people are already separated by location, customs, language. And  
build on this strength. The global community can never come to a  
local government or company, and explain in terms they can  
understand, why adopting OpenSolaris is a good thing. But we can  
explain this to one local person, that can then do the same to many  
others. This is the essence of UGs.

Bruno.
______________________________________________________________________
Bruno Peres Ferreira de Souza                         Brazil's JavaMan
http://www.javaman.com.br                      bruno at javaman.com.br
         if I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe