Session Name: Taking Care of Community Members
Session room and timeslot: 10, 2pm
Organizers name: Ben van 't Ende <ben@vantende.net>
Note Taker Name: Tom Callaway <spot@fedoraproject.org>
My Notes:
Taking Care of Community Members[]
- Ben van 't Ende (TYPO3)
- Kevin Turner (OSBridge, Portland Python)
- Van Riper (Google Community Organizer)
- Phil Bellew (Ubuntu Contributor)
- Sarah (Fedora)
- Kristina Hoeppner (Catalyst IT)
Overview[]
- interested in talking about responsibility and leadership
- paths that communities should take/not take
- Do we have organically grown OSS project, or do we have governance?
Notes[]
- (Ben) involved in lawsuit relating to taking developers from company into open source project
- community manager means to take care of community around you
- at what stage can you just kick developers out
- who has the authority to do that?
- (Van) who has responsibility to take care of community?
- (Ben) Leadership in OSS projects is important
- examples of people leaving communities because of lack of leadership
- maybe OSS projects are organic and losses are part of that
- (van) there isn't one right way
- being intentionally conscious about how you're running the group
- some are organic and run themselves well
- others are very structured and run well
- becomes an issue when they aren't running well
- (Ben) two levels:
- community
- leadership of community
- (to van) what level of responsibility do you feel?
- (van) Google recently rebranded developer initiative
- Google Technologies forced to become part of it, forced to lose
established brand
- had to convince community to adopt new brand, community revolted
- but there were a lot of good reasons to do it
- surveyed community about advantages, 98% said they would
- only very early adopters were very attached to branding, very vocal
and toxic in community
- people were getting personal, nasty for the first time
- had to step in, said i thought it was right thing, but would not force it
- did survey, told community i was their advocate
- thankfully they were on board!
- (Kristina) No community manager in my community
- interested in what you actually do as a manager
- sometimes has a negative connotation
- (van) don't describe myself to the community that way
- but to my employer (google) i do
- more of an advocate for community to google (company)
- tend to think of it more like organizer, not manager
- global organizer of organizer, not managing them
- (Ben) i agree, role is to pick up on what is going on
- sit in on meetings
- appointed as community manager to provide big picture, connect teams together
- management doesnt have bad connotation, but not in that business
- (van) local meetups run by independent organizers
- no real power over them
- basic guidelines (mostly relevant to google, majority of meetings
around google technologies)
- google employees can't run them as organizers
- had to step down as organizer to work for google
- act as facilitator on mailing list
- organize global organizer summit
- choose active community members (150+)
- spend money on them
- (Ben) Taking care of community members
- how do you run your community, how do you take care of them
- aside from giving them money
- (van) they're developer groups
- early access to API programs
- early invites
- organize visits by important developers
- path for addressing concerns and complaints
- (Germany has issues which delay API/functionality releases)
- (Ben) do you resolve disputes?
- (van) mostly about organizational issues
- some people not running it appropriately, making money off it
- running a group without affiliation (improper)
- (Ben) is it rewarding?
- (van) mostly trying to get people to work together
- people in same place not getting along, if only they could work
together it would be better situation
- (Kristin) my perspective, i try to connect people
- if people email me with interest, and i know of someone else with
same interest, try to connect them
- point to forum, encourage posting publicly
- if i know that devs aren't watching forums, i send them emails
notifying them of things in their area
- ensure that forum posts are answered
- not everyone can wade through mailing lists
- gentle prodding, i like to encourage a large amount of people answering
- (ben) to group: just starting as comm. manager?
- (Kevin) more involved with local communities
- not much event organization, but i help with conference
- lot of physical things involved in taking care of conference
- making sure people have food they can eat with dietary restrictions
- i like OSBridge because of yoga class offered, safe space, code of
conduct
- we do some conflict resolution policy for event, but don't usually
have to use it
- (Sarah) not a manager, just a member
- moving from a small community into a larger one (fedora)
- observing how people interact, how decisions get made
- as far as fedora and responsibility towards comm members, havent
thought about that
- my view is that people join a community to scratch their own itch
(dev perspective)
- write code they want to use
- havent thought about how to look after, help, reward
- (ben) My case is specific, i do a lot for the project, might be an exception
- still an interesting question, what is the responsibility of governing organization
- how do you handle governance, how do you change it?
- (van) could become more of an issue as we mature
- thinking about making a steering committee for 800 community managers
- (ben) like a community council?
- (van) want them to run like a community, self-govern, just be there in
a support role
- but not there right now, have to be benevolent dictator, not push
them in direction they dont want to go
- (ben) is there a plan to get more governance?
- (van) want to turn it over to community, from philosophical relations
- google head of community gets this, knows it is there community
- (ben) you have to "massage" community
- recent transitions in software, changing naming scheme
- thought after discussing it 10 times in steering committee and core group, we had a decision
- but when we took it to community at large, they erupted
- you can get acceptance when you don't call it a decision
- (kristin) any difference in older vs younger communities
- (phil) we had a youth council, other council wanted to do their own thing for a few months
- sent them all an email telling them they were fired now
- rest of ubuntu youth said "hey phil, you're the best"
- (kristin) sometimes you have to be a bit autocratic
- (phil) you have to take a stand
- 20 year old running things for 15 year old
- have to make them look like an asshole sometimes
- (van) more like a kill the messenger thing
- (phil) ubuntu has code of conduct
- had a user making anti-semetic comments, took him aside told him it was unacceptable, he repeated and i had to kick him off
- if i dont make that decision, the other 30 people would leave, don't want one guy to ruin it
- (van) what i'm trying to do is be very careful in order to reach a decision
- sometimes better to follow gut feeling
- (phil) much easier to shoot out an email to see if people care, to take temperature
- if no responses, then probably okay
- when i had to axe some top people, i emailed them to ask if they wanted to stay, no reply means no
- youth can be different to work with, normal OSS community is range of ages, don't know how old ppl are over the internet
- big diff between someone 85 and 12, life experience, makes them act
different, sometimes 12 year old has new perspective
- sometimes you have to listen to what ppl say but not act on it "thats
cool, but we're not doing it"
- (Sarah) make them feel like they are heard
- (phil) do you have to make tough decisions like that a lot
- (ben) my community is pretty decent, but also quite old (12 years old)
- organic community, very balanced
- (phil) lack of stance leads to bickering
- flaming each others ideas on mailing list, leads to personal battles
and people leaving
- (ben) main things in my comm are around leadership
- how does board function?
- issues around transparency, didn't realize we weren't transparent to community
- (van) i have that issue too, even in corporate
- they think i know things and am holding back
- but i couldn't share even if i did!
- (phil) jono not telling us everything we know
- its true, fact of life
- (ben) sometimes you have to be harsh
- (van) nice if you can be harsh with a smile
- (kristin) point about transparency is a big one, especially in distributed comm
- want to know what to expect, how processes work, making sure everyone is on same page
- (ben) one thing to get a good feeling, but to keep it, you want to meet up
- (van) one lesson i would have: get folks in the same room, very valuable
- lasts way beyond actual event, it is a psychological thing
- adds context to conversations online
- people will be more forgiving, defend people that they know
- quality of interaction goes up because of level of trust
- (phil) when working w ppl worldwide, perhaps his slang/rhetoric/humor is different from yours
- (kevin) comment abt transparency got me thinking
- one of my communities was openid community
- fascinating because i got to see ppl trying to develop OS specification
- then trying to get google to sign on
- two totally different worlds
- do you have a charter for your community that defines what it is about
- (ben) we do, motto is "inspire people to share"
- (kevin) a chartering document, in addition to board?
- (ben) describes more about how community should act and less about governance
- works for leadership and governance
- (sarah) all committee meetings are logged, visible on irc
- no decisions behind closed doors
- (ben) at lower levels yes, but not higher levels
- higher levels refuse transparency
- (sarah) all in fedora are open
- (kristina) everything in our community is open and logged as well
- we use meetbot, generates irc meeting minutes automatically
- #topic sets topic, #idea for ideas, #action sets action items
- irc log available and meeting
- (ben) dont use irc, use google hangout
- (kristina) we use it because of time difference as inbetween people, can't meet in person due to geographical differences
- koha community uses it for years, very good results
- (van) tend to use irc along with google hangout, ppl dont use chat
built in
- (kristina) dont use hangouts
- (phil) ubuntu devs use it so ppl can watch
- (van) automatically recorded for youtube video, but can watch it live.
- (ben) summary:
- real life meetings very important
- kind of looking for confirmation that a board/governing would need to take responsibility for comm. members
- really depends on type of community
- (kristina) most situations board doesnt have to step in
- want self-regulating community, except when absolutely needed
- (ben) our community's growth is amazing, dips and peaks of activity
- but doing very well this year, so many events popping up spontaneously
- TYPO3 community (very big in germany)