[opensolaris-summit] Advocacy Panel Discussion: An IdeaforDiscussion

[Jim Grisanzio]

Stewart, David C wrote:
> OK, the reason I ask is that attracting the growth is a bit of a
> different problem than the infrastructure to handle the growth.  One is
> a marketing challenge and the other is an administrative / technical
> challenge.
>   

Yes, I think they are different challenges. But I hold the view that 
advocacy is much more than marketing. Marketing is certainly part of 
advocacy, but advocacy has to include many disciplines -- project 
management, engineering, marketing, etc -- that work together for a 
common purpose that is /not/ exclusive to any of them individually. 
That's been the biggest pet peeve of mine on this project -- expanding 
the notion of what "advocacy" actually means. For advocacy to be 
credible it must be multi-disciplinary, and that supports everyone 
involved.

> It might be good to think about Advocacy in terms of achieving a tipping
> point for OpenSolaris.  There are a number of techniques described in
> the Malcolm Gladwell book of the same name (recruiting Mavens, achieving
> stickiness, etc) which perhaps have already been contemplated.  But this
> could be a rich vein of discussion for further efforts.
>   

Yep. Read it. Excellent. Agree with most of it. It's been criticized 
recently, though, which is also interesting, since there are many points 
of view on this and some are even getting back to more traditional 
techniques and documenting their value. Imagine that! Anyway, the gold 
standard for me on this issue is Cluetrain. I don't think anything can 
touch it for getting the basics of advocacy right. Just one opinion. :)

> On the other hand, the "scaling the infrastructure" discussion has a lot
> of interesting challenges as well.  What are the inhibitors or barriers
> present in the current infrastructure which put people off.  Some have
> been addressed, now let's tackle the next set.
>   

Well, we are going to have a Website CG soon (it will be on the OGB 
schedule for next week) to help focus those infrastructure 
conversations, and that will be the arena where we talk in most detail 
about about site upgrades (website-discuss currently). This is another 
issue we need to remember: site constraints, although real for certain 
functions, don't preclude good community building and advocacy work if 
we focus on implementing the basics right. What I'm *most* interested in 
moving in this discussion is our attitude. Our perspective. Tools are 
good and we all want more, but a whole heck of a lot of community 
building can be done by empowered individuals who have something to 
share way out in the field.

> Should be a good discussion.  Thanks for proposing it!
>   

Cool. You know, you work at a really big company that participates in 
OpenSolaris. The biggest outside Sun, I guess. It would be good to hear 
about your experiences around the world talking about OpenSolaris from 
your platform at Intel engineering.

Jim

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