While at the UN Open Source Week, several weeks ago in New York, I had a number of conversations about what we do here, in ComDev. We have a long tradition, here at the ASF, of being frugal (which is good, of course) but to the extent that we miss opportunities because we assume that everything has to be zero cost, which is not the case. I’ve been trying to think in terms of, what could we do differently if we didn’t assume that.
An interesting side-effect to this thinking is the realization that if we did more things that were higher value, this would also make it more compelling for donors, as they would see more examples of where that money was going. What our Infrastructure team does, while obviously critical to everything we do here, is invisible and boring (as it should be). We have an opportunity to do more things that would grow and strengthen our project communities, while also making it easier to tell stories to potential donors about why this work matters. Anyways, I have a number of things that I’d like to try, and I’ve thought about each of them in three tiers - what could we do for free; what could we do if we had a modest budget; what could we do if money wasn’t a problem at all, or if we could get some positions funded/donated by sponsor companies. My reluctance to dive into this stems in part from the complete failure of my “Working Groups” initiative 2 years ago. I’ve been thinking a lot about why that failed. I have concluded that, at least in part, it has to do with framing these a big ideas, rather than clearly articulating deliverables and the path to get to those deliverables. Granted, I also hoped that folks would step up to help think through that, and I think that’s because I communicated poorly what I was hoping to accomplish. Regardless, I have several things I’d like to try, so if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to send a bunch of emails over the next few days, with the perspective: "What would we do differently if we were a department in a company that actually cared about the health and sustainability of its projects?” I’m doing this as separate emails, because these are separate work streams, and different people will be interested in each. I am hoping that folks will step up to own these - I *definitely* cannot, and do not want to, own them all myself. —Rich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
