[IAEP] community team

[Tabitha Roder]

I am watching this conversation with deep interest. In my attempts to
develop a community of olpc and sugar volunteers in New Zealand I have
experienced all sorts of extremes in emotion, energy drain, feelings of
success and failure, and I still wouldn't give it up because I believe in
what olpc and sugar have been striving for.

Mostly I wish for more hours in the day; more hours for me and for the
volunteers who have been trying to help along this journey with me. It takes
a whole community and each of the players contributes in a different way. I
have been frustrated when I have not been able to fill a role that requires
a certain skill (e.g. translation, programmer, educator, funding guru,
importing guru, etc) and disappointed with myself for not learning all these
skills (obviously you can't learn everything).

As a community of practice subgroup here in New Zealand we have tried to
nurture each other and help each other learn so we all have more knowledge,
we have shared challenges, learned the importance of regular interaction (we
would have failed if it were not for the regularity of same place, same
time, every week). We have had to define what we do and how will we do it,
as well as build confidence in talking to others about what we do and why.
This identity helps us. We have all had to work hard in our roles as
volunteers, whether that be in recruiting others or in sacrificing time to
investigate bugs or in other ways, or in financially supporting events to
get olpc and sugar news out to others in New Zealand.

As community lead for NZ I have had to learn how to set boundaries and
minimums (this has been hard for me, but I have had to learn it for the good
of the community). I have had to provide direction at times and step back
and see what happens at other times. I have been surprised by some of those
things. I have encouraged a culture of support and nurturing with the
community. I have made mistakes and wished I had done better.

My two cents: a community leader MUST have time, understanding of the nature
of volunteers contributions in all their forms, and clarity in
communication.

Tabitha


On 22 May 2010 20:15, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:

> On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 03:59, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org>
> wrote:
> > El Tue, 18-05-2010 a las 11:41 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso escribió:
> >
> >> We also need to ask the Wiki team to create a new instance of the team
> >> template, such as this: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Wiki_Team
> >
> > Perhaps we don't need a new template. The Community Team page could
> > simply be this: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs
> >
> > The header already reads "Community Home", and the content of the other
> > subpages is already more or less appropriate.
>
> Sounds like a great topic for the kick-off meeting!
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
> > --
> >   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
> >  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
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