Community Office/Meetings/Brainstorming 12-7-10

Revision as of 16:38, 3 December 2010

Reminder: Community Office Goals for 2011

• Get more people actively contributing to the MeeGo Community (code, application developers, documentation, community facilitation, other participation - technical and non-technical) - more details
• Better marketing and promotion of MeeGo - more details

How can we make the community office meetings more productive / useful?

• So far, I don't think we're really accomplishing much in these meetings. How do we use this meeting to accomplish our goals (see above)? --Dawnfoster 16:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• Due to conflicts with my day job, I have only been able to attend 2 meetings but want to attend more. I would like to see a unique approach taken to meetings, where they could possibly run 24 hours with handoff of moderation between coordinators in different timezones. This could be challenging but still possible I think.--Texrat 18:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• We need to focus more on root cause issues during meetings so has to have greater impact. Too often it's easy to get bogged down on symptoms rather than causes. One specific example relevant to the marketing bullet point: many of us have asked for clarification on branding/identity issues with no response and/or no resolution. We need the owners of activities to be present so that root cause issues can be properly addressed, resolved and communicated. --Texrat 18:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• If we want to use these meetings to get new and current contributors involved, then it is better to escape from the "meeting" concept (several topics, decisions, minutes, end of meeting at 60 mins...) and have only one topic for the whole session, let participation flow with soft facilitation, make sure the right people related to the topic will attend, stay as long as there is stuff and willingness to discuss... Also the role of Dawn and myself should be minimized (unless the topic of the day is something we happen to drive).--Qgil 21:23, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• In general, real time meetings should be used sparingly in distributed communities. The meeting time coincides with either bedtime, training or dinner time for me (21h French time) so it's never easy for me to attend. I imagine others further East are having even more trouble. Texrat mentions that we need to focus on root causes rather than symptoms - it seems like the community office meetings are treating a symptom ("Not getting enough information on in-progress tasks") rather than the root cause (why aren't we getting more information?). --Dneary 13:50, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
• It might be worthwhile restating assumptions: My belief was that the community office, and all the infrastructure & overhead created around it, was created to help the community to get stuff done (where community = everyone involved in MeeGo), and to avoid a situation where only Nokia, Intel or Linux Foundation people could get stuff done. If that's the case, the getting information about in-progress tasks is only part of the solution - in principle, you get information to identify opportunities to participate and spread the load around. But if those opportunities aren't being created, then the information itself is not very useful. --Dneary 13:50, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
• Listing unclaimed tasks in a wiki page has not been productive so far. People do not feel empowered to claim them, and many of the tasks listed either require some kind of special access, are waiting for a decision to proceed, or are quite big, vague & scary for one person to take on. Some suggestions for improving this might be: --Dneary 13:50, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Use Bugzilla to track infrastructure, marketing & outreach tasks, and get people assigned tasks in the habit of using it
    • I continue to be of the opinion that an open source project management tool that integrates with Bugzilla (there are some available) could be helpful here. --Texrat 16:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Invite people individually to do stuff that you know are up to the task, and who communicate well what they're doing, and will include others along the way - personal invitations are infinitely more effective that asking people to volunteer.
  • Concentrate on making tasks a bit better defined, with a clear "win" result - make it easy for volunteers to have lots of small wins & mark things as "DONE" even if it means spending more time planning a task you won't actually do yourself.
• Add your idea / comments here (with signature / timestamp)

Community Office task lists - what works / what doesn't?

• The idea behind creating proposed / committed task lists was to avoid duplication (multiple people working separately on the same projects) and get more people working on tasks that we needed to complete, but it seems to have just created a barrier to participation. I was hoping that the task lists would give people tangible things to work on, but other people aren't really volunteering to take on new tasks. Should we scrap this whole idea and do something completely different? Should we take what we have and make some changes? --Dawnfoster 16:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• Visibility is key. Tasks need to be in a database and published to a dashboard for all to see, easily. Best solution IMO? The common calendar: http://wiki.meego.com/Common_Calendar. This would help solve a great many issues and provide a single portal for time-bound activities. But who will champion? --Texrat 18:38, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• I agree we have a problem with lack of contributors willing to coordinate a task and pursue it until completion, but I don't think the (actually quite light) process is the obstacle. I'm not sure what the obstacle is, though. See below.--Qgil 21:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
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How can we get more people contributing to the MeeGo project?

• We have a Contributing to MeeGo document and the CO task list but they don't seem to be helping much. What else can we do to get more people involved? Do we need better incentives (what kind)? --Dawnfoster 16:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• We need the owner of branding/identity to step up and help us with sticky questions like logo and character use by the community. Many of us want to create graphics, songs and videos for grassroots marketing but what we can and cannot do is still fuzzy and sometimes prohibitive. Specifically, the chosen MeeGo font version (Alte DIN 1451) is commercial, closed source. Personally I find that contradictory to MeeGo, especially since there are free, open versions of the typeface. Other issues like the excessively large amount of whitespace required around the MeeGo logo need to be changed. Fundamental issues like these get in the way of grassroots marketing, which will be vital to MeeGo's success. --Texrat 18:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• I would like to see more contests like the tee-shirt contest for the MeeGo Conference. How about MeeGo slogans? Derivative logos? Grassroots ad campaigns? Incentives could naturally include event sponsorships. --Texrat 18:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• One reason might be that MeeGo currently is attractive to platform developers, less so for all the rest due to lack of products out there. While those developers are busy to take new tasks, non-developers still see the project as too abstract to get really involved. Maybe we at the Community Office could do a better job searching contributors, encouraging, empowering and praising them. Also sharing a clear vision of what is important, what is urgent and why.--Qgil 21:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I strongly agree Quim, this is definitely one of the issues. How do people get involved without a clear reason, and due to lack of hardware (which will surely be solved in 2011) there isn't a pure "community" interest yet - just a developer interest.
  • The Ideapad seeding was an outstanding idea and gesture by Intel, resulting in a virtual army of problem-solvers. Yes, MeeGo-branded product will be wonderful but more efforts like that can only help! And TI is stepping up with some free Pandaboards: http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=2134 --Texrat 22:14, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I also think we need to clearly and strongly answer "Why MeeGo": http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=813 --Texrat 22:16, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• I'd like to see the MeeGo Community reach out to the Python Programming Community. Python has an engaged and spirited community that holds itself apart from organizations like IEEE or ACM or from allegiance to particular platforms. The Android Market will not, for reasons unclear to me, accept any Python apps, which presents a real opportunity for MeeGo. The relationship between Linux and Python is already strong as witnessed by the ubiquity of Python in Linux configuration scripts. Inviting contributors to Python to participate in the next MeeGoCon in May is one way to get started. --Alison 00:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Agreed, Alison, and some of us are already doing that on the local level. It's a start. --Texrat 01:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
• Add your idea / comments here (with signature / timestamp)