Hi all,
please forgive me that I'm breaking three rules for our mailing lists:
- double posting on two lists
- not replying in the thread
- causing moderators to moderate my mail because I stay unsubscribed
For the people not knowing me: I've been working extensively on the Art
Project from August 2005 to the end of February 2007, presented the Art
Project on the last OOoCon and proposed it's independence there and
afterwards on the lists.
It's now more than 4 months ago, that I decided to stop all my OOo
activities (except the moderation of [EMAIL PROTECTED]) in favor to my first life
tasks.
I discussed an independent Art Project shortly after the OOoCon [0] and
started an official proposal for an incubator project [1] in October
2005. Finally I withdrew it in November [2] just before it's
installation. Why?
I'll tell you after replying some of Alexandro's comments:
Alexandro Colorado wrote:
Hi Florian, this is a chicken and egg situation. Art would not be able
to have strong leadership when it has been depending on marketing
which lately have had gone through many changes on leadership itself.
In my eyes this is not really true. During the time I've been active in
the Art Project, there have been more than a hand full of people working
on art related tasks.
We talked to new members, commented our artwork and created some kind of
an Art Project identity. We knew each other and worked together quiet
well. Only a few mails stayed without reply, most times we invited new
members to join us - and some did.
You most know about it :)
So the lack of leadership comes from the problem I explained earlier,
art is good at attracting tallet but is really bad to retain this
designers. This is mainly because of the lack of infrastructure to
attend the designer. The list is full of first person presentation but
there is no continuation. I have done a research on the last 6 months
of the project and is hard to point out steady contributors.
There are a few - but most of them involved in other tasks.
If you had started in last summer, there have been much more activity,
even without an independent project.
You're right, the infrastructure is not optimal, but if someone provides
an issue where new contributors can attach their work, this will not be
the main problem.
In my eyes there are two other points much more important:
- invite new members to join the project and lead them to the right
issues to upload their work
- present the uploaded artwork in quite a short time frame to the public
Both is quite time consuming - and it must be done by people actively
involved in OOo.
I did my best during the last two years, but especially the second point
needs even more time than I was able to spend (and I spent more than 20
hours a week for OOo).
So I am not sure it makes much sense that we need to be big and active
to become a project but rather we need an Art project period. The next
task is making it good.
I don't see a reason to have a homepage art.openoffice.org without
really good (from an artist's point of view) content. I created such a
homepage last autumn [3], but the subpages are not finished yet.
IE, native lang will need contributions from art to improve the design
of their websites which as you can see this goes from very appealing
to very plain depending on the native-lang. Art could do something
about it to have a better precense. This is something marketing
doesn't do for the most part and webdev also doesn't support.
Just talk to the marketing and website people - I did get all the
support I needed.
But you can' ask other people to do the work. Everybody involved in OOo
is spending as much time as she can afford (or even more) for the most
important (or attractive) tasks in her own eyes.
Also we could make the group more appealing from 'inside research'
getting ourself full of leadership from other native-language projects
like the french, spanish and japanese which have people with strong
art background who are not necesarily on marketing.
An independent Art Project might be helpful to inform these people, but
IMHO it should be one of the tasks for the native-lang project leads or
other internationally active people in the native-lang projects to
spread the word about the Art Project whether it is a sub-project of
Marketing or independent.
Like I mention on the first email, most people in art acknowledge the
lack of leadreship but they see that as a symptom of the lack of
identity.
As I'm not part of the Art Project in the moment, I can't comment this
for now, but up to February there was neither a lack of leadership nor
of identity - there were just too less people joining discussions and work.
If you want to establish an attractive Art Project you have to spend
quite a lot of time in project administration, webpage, lists and other
infrastructure.
You need more than your personal dedication if you want to get something
more attractive than the present Art Project. My proposal last year got
only a few positive replies from inside the Art Project and even less
from outside.
That's the reason I didn't continue on that way - spending my time in
directly working on Art topics instead of metawork. And if the Project
doesn't grow, it's done in vain...
In the first time a new project might be kept alive by three or four
people, but there must be enough active people to replace you (or the
one spending most time for that project), otherwise the risks for that
project are too high in my eyes.
Most leadership on art comes from the leader in marketing
which also has to engage on other 6 subprojects.
You mean that no one feels responsible to invite new members, telling
them what to do and keeping work going? You don't need a Lead or CoLead
title to do that - I did it for more than 18 months.
Before you start a new incubator project, you need to find these people.
Please don't misunderstand me: I'm all for an independent Art Project.
But you need the people doing the work first.
Last October we were quite close to an incubator project, but I wanted
to have two or three people more in the "active circle".
Perhaps this might be wrong - and if you want to you might reuse my
proposal from October [1].
But I fully agree to Florian:
On 7/22/07, Florian Effenberger <floeff <at> openoffice.org> wrote:
> Hello Alexandro,
>
> [...]
>
> So we need people willing in actively contributing to the art project
> over a long period of time, just as we have in other projects as well.
Best regards
Bernhard
Idea of an independent Art Project
[0]: http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=art&msgNo=2185
Proposal of the incubator project
[1]: http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=art&msgNo=2217
Withdrawal of the incubator project
[2]: http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=art&msgNo=2237
New Art Project homepage:
[3]: http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/new_index.html
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