[SoaS] generate list of Spins of Sugar

[David Farning]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>  > I really don't think this is helpful right now I'm afraid.
>
> Imo, it's okay if it isn't helpful to everyone; it helps a few (myself
> included) keep better track of information. What I'm concerned about is
> whether it's *harmful* to anyone.
>
> Sean, I respect you tremendously, and defer to your *far* greater
> knowledge of Marketing-fu on basically everything, especially SL stuff.
> I don't want to pick a fight with you on this (or on anything)

I find it troubling that one can defer to someones *far* greater
knowledge and yet repeated undercut them.

There is nothing wrong with any of the many long conversations
swirling about.  I fact, they are extremely valuable.

Many of the conversations that happening are the same conversation
that we had 18 months ago when we first spun off Sugar Labs from OLPC.
 At that time there were about 6 people involved and maybe 10 people
following along.

Now, we are having these same conversations again... with a new set of
participants.  Notice how few old timers are participating.  They have
all gone back to work.  The people participating this time tend to be
much newer and have more varied backgrounds.

For Sugar Labs this is just a natural part of growth.  As long as it
does not become personal or distracting it is very valuable for a
number of reasons.

1. Many people outside of the original 'core' are expressing
themselves and having their voices heard.
2. There is a new set of leaders and consensus builders emerging.
3. A few individuals are marginalizing themselves because of
unreasonable stances.
4. These thoughts and conversations are being archive for future generations
5. The community is refining its self image.
6.  Most importantly, we are establishing that Walter, Tomeu, Bernie,
Simon, and I are not a secret group who makes decision in a smoky
room.  We have just established a reputation for making more good
decisions than bad ones.  This is a chance for a new generation to
earn the respect of their peers by making and implementing good
decisions.

> - I know
> it's frustrating to have so many of these boundary-setting
> meta-conversations one right after another; it's a lot of time and a lot
> of churn and very little immediately apparent Actual Stuff Getting Done
> results.
>
> I say this because I'm about to push back, and I want to be clear about
> where the pushback is coming from - it's not coming from me disagreeing
> with you about Marketing, it's coming from me going "I think,
> community-wise, this is what we need to do," and not being able to see
> as clearly as you do how it impacts our efforts marketing-wise.

You are thinking in terms of your employer's stage of community building not
Sugar Labs stage of community building.  Your employer has has spent
somethinglike 8 years working this stuff out.  Please give Sugar Labs
a chance to get there too.

david

>  > And I don't want to get into wikipedia-style edit/unedit/edit/unedit.
>
> Nor do I. Right now, though, we're having the mailing list equivalent of
> post-counterpost-countercounterpost-countercountercounterpost - which I
> think we've all had enough  What I'm trying to do is break the deadlock
> by nudging us towards consensus in an accelerated (and therefore likely
> to be uncomfortable) way.
>
>  > I'm not talking about "someone's" interest, I'm talking about Sugar
>  > Labs' interest.
>
> Sugar Labs is made of lots and lots of individual someones; to some
> degree, if it's in an individual SL communty members' interest, it's in
> SL's interest. When individual interests collide (as they seem to be
> doing here), then we talk, and figure out a way to work things out
> between those individuals (as we are doing here). It's all made of
> "someones" - I can't speak for the interest of Sugar Labs, I can only
> speak for my own interests as a member of Sugar Labs.
>
>  > What's the point please?
>
> Something I've learned from open source culture: When things take more
> effort to discuss than to do *and* to revert if needed, just do them. Or
> rather, "discuss by doing."
>
> It took me... *looks up timestamps* exactly 10 minutes to make those
> edits to the wiki. It would take far less than that amount of time to
> undo what I just did. The total sum of all the time we've spent writing
> and reading emails on this topic is far, far more than 20 minutes. Ergo,
> "ask forgiveness, not permission." ;)
>
> This does operate under the assumption that the edits I made benefit at
> least one person (me, because we can hypothetically stop talking about
> it) and don't harm anybody else - though I seem to have mis-guessed
> this, since this is causing you concern. I'm sorry about that, and would
> like to hear what I can do to fix things. I'm happy to pop on IRC early
> tomorrow morning my time, if you'd like to talk about this and find it
> easier to do that than continuing a mailing list thread (we can post
> logs to this thread).
>
> Culture-matching and norm-building are *tough.* They're messy. They take
> a long time. I promise it will be worth it when this overhead eventually
> goes down.
>
> --Mel
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