Re: Some reflections about community outreach

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hey Flavia,

Thanks for the mail. This is an excellent summary of some of the
challenges we face. In general my view is that the negative
perceptions you describe are just that - perceptions. In most of the
issues that you describe, there are positive examples that we can
point to, and we can hopefully show that GNOME is a great place for
people to contribute.

Flavia Weisghizzi <flavia weisghizzi it> wrote:
...
> 1) Who lead GNOME? Is it still a community driven project?
>
> It seems to me that during last months, many of the Ubuntu contributors left
> the Ubuntu projects in which they were involved because they've felt that
> the role of Canonical inside Ubuntu overwhelmed community.
> Many former Ubuntu contributors I know decided to dedicate their time to
> other FOSS projects, because they were tired to work for Canonical and not
> for Ubuntu.
>
> At the same time, I've heard many friends considering to work for GNOME as
> working, ultimately, for Red Hat.
> I don't mind if this is or this isn't the truth, but, if GNOME desires show
> itself as a community driven project, probably we could discuss ways to give
> the Community an higher profile.

This inevitably depends on what you understand by community. The
overall direction of GNOME is decided by the people who directly
contribute to its technical development, including developers,
designers, the release team, testers and so on. There is also a wider,
more peripheral community of people who help to determine the
direction, but to a lesser extent. People who file bugs and
participate in online discussions can and do influence the direction,
but to a lesser extent.

This is the same as it always has been, at least in my experience. I
think the main thing to emphasise is that the path to becoming a core
contributor is open to those who want to take it. It doesn't matter
who you work for or if you're a volunteer: if you put in the effort
you can play a part and make a difference.

The other thing to emphasise is that everyone gets a say in design
decisions, and that developers play a big part in determining the
direction of the project. We could also talk about how that happens.

One thing we could do here is do some interviews or profiles of people
who have risen up through the ranks in recent times. We also have new
contributors who are making a real difference. I would love to see us
celebrate this aspect of the GNOME project more. It should be one of
our key selling points.

> 2) Where GNOME is going?
>
> In my post blog I've talked about the circle of trust made by developers and
> designers, and the difficulties for a newcomer in joining this circle.
>
> I believe there are at least 2 problems. The first one is that the
> (perceived) lack of focus, of guidelines, of roadmap, bring with it the
> vibes that everyone could give an hand just giving an hand, and of course
> all that create some confusion because if the contribute doesn't fit to
> project, it could be useful, or worse.
>
> I well know this problem, e.g. when someone ask me to participate to Media
> relations projects, and she/he's not able to distinguish between press
> release and (technical) release notes.

Communicating the overall vision is harder. It's something we need to
do more work on for sure. I do believe that we have a compelling
vision that needs communicating. Part of that vision is about where
GNOME 3 is heading, but it also about our guiding principles.

This is another good observation. I think that, if we can make the
path to becoming a core member of the community clearer, then we can
hopefully dispel the notion that the circle of trust is
impenetrable. Right now the path is unclear, and that makes it look
like there isn't a path at all. Yet, new members join our community
all the time, and they have to come from somewhere. :)

> Moreover, a not so clearly shared roadmap, and the lack of small tasks,
> gives the opportunity to contribute only to those people who are able to
> spend many of their time on some projects, or can discuss directly with
> project maintainers via IRC channels, IM, and so on.
>
> This is a great way to have full time employed people, but cuts off all the
> contributions of that we can call “casual lovers” that, IMHO, are a large
> amount of possibly contributors.

Every Detail Matters [1] is specifically intended for "casual lovers"
and people looking for small tasks. This can definitely be publicised
more, and is a good example of the efforts we make to help people get
involved. Another thing I would love to do is hold events for new
contributors. There have been GNOME Love days in the past but it is
years since we held one.

...

> 3) Everything is given
>
> When GNOME Shell has been released, I have been a first time lover, and one
> of my friend (a GNOME guy) asked me my feedback about it. I wrote many
> blogposts and the conclusion was, in a nutshell, “Very good, too black to
> me”.
>
> He accepted my provocation of a pink shell (you can take a look here [1], if
> you please) and nodded about the usefulness of a light theme, that never has
> arrived.
>
> Is very easy to comprehend why many people reconsidering their participation
> in GNOME, believing their efforts are totally useless, because it seems that
> everything is given.
>
> At last UDS, in CPH, I was attending Andreas talk about new desktop features
> (sorry Andreas if I'm trotting you out :) ) and the guy who was sitting
> beside me was very disagreeing with Andreas. So I've asked him to chime-in
> and explain his doubts, but his answer has been that it was useless, because
> everything has already been planned elsewhere.
>
> [1] http://weisghizzi.ilcannocchiale.it/2011/04/26/vita_da_shell.html

I personally don't think that everything is given. If you look at the
history of GNOME Shell and GNOME 3, you will see that the design has
changed a huge amount over the past 3 years or so, and things are
still evolving. Most of those changes are a direct result of feedback
and testing. I think the challenge for us in marketing is to remind
people of this, and to publicise areas where changes are being made in
response to feedback. I could point to a list of areas that we are
seeking to improve based on what users have told us or what we've
observed.

The other thing to emphasise is that implementation doesn't exactly
match design. There are plenty of things we'd like to improve where we
are waiting for people to work on them. I'm sure there are lots of
issues where we could say "we know this is a problem, who wants to
help us fix it?"

> 4) Is GNOME really welcoming?
>
> Yes, definitely, it is. But, really, single persons are very often much
> better than working groups.
>
> As Allan said, there are too much bad même out there, that could sometimes
> offer a distort vision of GNOME Community.
>
> I know, sarcasm, irony, jokes, are concrete that make relations of some part
> of this community stronger, and they could be very funny, but, by an outer
> glance, they could be read as a sign of self-referentiality, sometimes of
> some kind of machism too.
>
> I believe that, as marketing team, we should take more spaces (on blogs,
> social networks, IRC meetings and so on) to demonstrate that yes, we could
> love joking, but here there are people worth to be known and to work with.

My view is that positive behaviour is reinforcing. If we publicise
examples of the community being welcoming, and if we are overtly
welcoming on our main communication channels, then it will encourage
better behaviour as well as new contributors to step forward.

Mediation and active community management is also something that can
be very effective - essentially having a group of people who are
active on the internets, encouraging newcomers and working to defuse
potentially damaging situations.

Allan