Hi all,
This is not exactly a new proposal--we have discussed it on-list and
off and on for years--but I'd like to raise it formally here for
discussion. The proposal is to establish a more or less formal role,
"Regional Community Lead." One could also call it, as I used to,
"Regional Mentor", but the term, Regional Community Lead is probably
more descriptively accurate. I would also like to propose that we
start with this role in India.
* Reasons for the role
In some regions, the community needs people local to that region who
can ably represent OpenOffice.org to regional Foss groups,
universities, government, wherever. The NLC leads do this now and do
it well. But they are tied to particular languages--that's the point--
and are not regional, though obviously, in practice, for many
languages they are.
But in places such as India, where there are something like 21
official languages, I and others believe that we need someone who can
effectively unify the disparate groups and represent OOo. That person
would also work as a regional mentor and help new community members
learn OOo; and would also necessarily have a tight connection with the
developer and contributor members. Of course, any other community
member could establish such connections, and in fact that's the goal--
to get more developers, world-wide. But in places such as India (or
Africa or North America, and elsewhere), a regional lead who can help
unify the local community seems required.
And I think it's important to act now. The case of India is the
prompt. When we went to Foss.In last December, and used it as our
Indian Regional Conference, we were delighted to see that the Foss
community in India was eager, friendly, vibrant, but dismayed to
discover that there was no coherent OpenOffice.org community. It was
atomized; work was being done by the government sponsored CDAC, and by
Red Hat, and by a couple of independents, but there was no real
community that could reliably share things. What's more, I learned
that much of the source that was being worked on by the disparate
communities was not coming from OOo repository; and there were many
minor forks. There was in short a bit of a mess.
The solution, it was impressed upon me, was to have a more visible
presence in India. I don't mean Sun; I mean OOo. OOo may be used by
millions there, but few work on it, and they don't work on it because
for many, the obstacles of working on it are too steep and because
there was no real community there. India depends on CDROMs and
personal contact, and appreciates the visible efforts of the
community. (I'm also trying to form a Sun team in India that can help
nucleate the effort; but that is different from this proposal.)
That visible presence is substantially achieved by establishing a
Regional Community Lead: someone who can knit the various groups
together and someone who can help coordinate overall communication
among the international and regional groups.
So, my apologies for the long post. But I do have a few more points:
* Does this add bureaucracy?
I hope not. Rather I hope it does the opposite.
* How formal is this role?
It is formal enough to grant the holder the ability to use it
tactically.
* Does this mean that regional community members must go through him
or her to reach OpenOffice.org?
No. Rather, it means if anything that the regional community lead will
*help* those who want that help and strive to establish active
participant communities.
Thanks
Louis
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