Stephen (I'm the "you"): >> Jose Marchesi I don't know, he may be credible but not to me. You >> and Andrew I know and respect, but both of you have big blind spots >> around marketing and human resource management.
Andrew: > I don't have a blind spot about them, I simply detest them and avoid > going anywhere near them. Stephen, I don't have a blind spot about those things. Please remember that volunteers and other participants in the GNU Arch project are not now and never have been my employees or people whom I've funded -- they could not ever have been "human resources" from my perspective except in a con-artist sense which I reject. As for users: a busker's users are not customers. My relationship to this group has been strict and formal, even if my language sometimes "colorful" and often critical. There was a time in my youth when I most definitely had a blind spot. "Why doesn't everyone just think a little and do the right thing?" Yes, back then, I lacked perspective on perspectives. That's far less true now. I've met, interacted deeply with, and appreciated people from far wider backgrounds than just about anyone you've ever met. I think I get the "herding cats" thing far better than most of the people of power who quietly toss that offensive (and indicative of attitude) phrase around. (I also understand actual cats far better than most people.) As for colorful and critical language: may I point out that my language is also persistent, patient, and varied. I say the same things again and again in many different ways. It is very, very rare that I utterly reject communication with participants although I certainly tune and time manage. And may I at last hypothesize that, as a result, I communicate more effectively across many cultural boundaries than most people. Do I put some people on the spot, sometimes in a way that "sticks" and lasts for years? You betcha -- isn't that life? And may I point out that I've achieved some remarkable results and, no, I don't simply mean technically. I survived to this point, against all odds. No small part of that is due to generous support at critical junctures from people of considerable relative means but, also, no small part of that is due to generous support from people of quite humble means. By most conventional theories I shouldn't be here at all, by this point -- but I am. If I have a blind-spot about what's happened over the past 4-5 years, at least mine is not the only one. I am not fatalist or defeatist in my approach to Power and, indeed, it is in the society of the powerful where I think the real problems reside and solutions are possible. You sometimes seem like someone who tut-tuts that I should prostrate myself more towards elites. When you do, you strike me as intrinsically defeatist. I prefer to recognize at least a subset of elites whom I viscerally recognize as peers who share a common pedagogical experience, life experience, ethical outlook, and so on. In the first year of the Arch project their turning their backs on me was a plausible thing. The plausibility seems to me to have monotonically decreased over time, from all perspectives. Shame is not a comfortable or generally recommended motivator but that doesn't mean it is always inappropriate. And after shame comes --- not humiliation, necessarily, not at all -- just banal and relatively painless participatory problem solving. It is about time (a bit overdue) for certain people of power to join the community rather than just tossing around the word "community". I don't have a "big blind spot", Stephen --- I'd just rather die than sell my soul and "dance with the devil in the pale moonlight." The unexamined life is not worth living. Examination sometimes compels hard choices. -t _______________________________________________ Gnu-arch-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-arch-users GNU arch home page: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnu-arch/
