Dear all, As some of you may have noticed, it has been a few weeks that I have not been very active on the mailing list. That is mainly because I was deeply engaged in my other work as a publisher. I say mainly, because these few weeks help me realize that I was not able, for now, to fulfill my founder associate duties.
This is why, after a discussion with Xavier and David, we decided that it would be a mistake that I stay as an associate in the company. I need to create the conditions that will allow me, in my life, to contribute better to it. I will stay a contributor, and hopefully, one of the major one. At least I will try. But, as long as my life is not organized differently, I can not see how I could assume an associate responsibility. Even if it is a little difficult, let’s try to sum up what led us to this decision. It is optional to read this J, but I am going to try to provide a full background of this story for the archives of the project. Almost a year before, we decided (David, Xavier and I) to work together on video game. The plan was that we will be equal partner, each one with a peculiar area of expertise : David had a lot experience in production and team management, Xavier in community management and free software, and David felt I could be a potentially good game designer. David and Xavier was used to work together (they had done it before), and knew what they could expect from each other. I had never worked with them, and more, I had never worked in a company with formal and structured process. David is my brother. So, the equation was : Xavier trust David, who trust me to do the job. Very quickly, we met several issue. I was not used to the mailing list sytem (I spontaneously prefer to talk one to one), I had real difficulties writing in English and no technological knowledge at all. But the two main issues were different, and had remained until now : I wasn’t able to liberate time on a daily basis for the project, and, harder to accept, I wasn’t able to be clear on the deadline that I felt I would be able to meet and to be clear on my disponibilities. In one word, almost each time I announced a deadline at which a peculiar task would be done, I failed. The reasons for that are structural (I know I have obvious orgasitionnal flows…) and conjectural (I am really deeply imply in my job as a publisher, wich has been almost my entire life for the last 5 years). Another issue, for me due to my psychic involvement in my job, was that I wasn’t “motor”, but only reactive. Last, and least : I don’t know Xavier a lot, and we have noticed that the communication sometimes difficult, on a formal level at least. The first and obvious consequence of all this was that my relationship with my brother became more complicated. Regularly, we had discussions about the fact that I was not able to accomplish what David and Xavier considered as the minimum for an associate, and we tried to invent practical solution. It didn’t work, and, with the time passing, Xavier and David became exhausted and I became really stressed, being not able to find my place in the project and seeing my relationship to my brother deteriorating.. We decided to use the month of June as an ultimate test. The first weeks of June, I had the feeling I was on the good path. Then, we went to a video games conference with Xavier, where we almost spent 48 hours together. When I went home, I received a private mail from Xavier saying that he wasn’t happy with our partnership. My first reaction was to be furious : why the hell didn’the talk to me, instead of writing me ! I felt disappointed, since I had the impression to have worked well (wich objectively was not the caseJ). I decided no to answer under anger and to think. I took me two weeks, but the answer was obvious (for me, but also for Xav and for David) : I had to step out of the association, meaning the fact to share the same load of work, as benefits and losses. But I didn’t want to step out of the project : I love it and, more, I still believe I can give a lot to it. David Believe that too. For Xavier, I don’t know. So, for us and for the project, it is nothing sad. I feel it more like a better arrangement. See you very soon on the ML, Aurélien politis mailing list [email protected] List: http://foobbs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/politis Wiki: http://foobbs.org/politis/ IRC: http://foobbs.org/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi (#politis @ irc.freenode.net)
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