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<p>Bas has made a valuable and pointed comment comment about
OSGeo-Live's communication strategy (and my involvement in
particular):<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/6/17 8:39 pm, Bas Couwenberg
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:a747fd34b1ee7208e2d4aa02b828b3a5@xs4all.nl"
type="cite">On 2017-06-07 12:33, Cameron Shorter wrote: <br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="color: #000000;">Of late, Vicky has
been a fireball of energy helping OSGeo-Live, from
<br>
setting up translations, to helping reach out to communities.
<br>
<br>
I propose we should invite her to become one of the OSGeo-Live
PSC members.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Agreed. <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="color: #000000;">(If we get all +1
votes, I will share this email thread publicly,
<br>
otherwise I'll keep it private)
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Communication in open source projects should be public by default.
Your tendency to keep threads private and then halfway during a
thread add the list into the loop is highly annoying. I delete
such partial threads, because the community was not involved from
the start diminishing its value. <br>
<br>
Kind Regards, <br>
<br>
Bas
</blockquote>
Bas is right. His comments align directly with the Producing Open
Source Software handbook [1]:<br>
"As slow and cumbersome as public discussion can be, it's almost
always preferable in the long run. Making important decisions in
private is like spraying contributor repellent on your project."<br>
<br>
The challenge I see with the OSGeo-Live project is that we generate
a lot of email traffic, most of which is specific to only a few. As
such, I think that many of the project-points-of-contacts for
OSGeo-Live projects are not following the general OSGeo-Live email
list.<br>
To address this, we send out private emails to each project point of
contact (which results in private conversations). There are also
one-on-one conversations between people, usually on IRC, but
sometimes or private media such as skype or email many of which we
could bring back into the public.<br>
<br>
<br>
To address this, I think we should rethink our communication
strategy, with an aim of:<br>
1. Being transparent<br>
2. Keeping signal-to-noise ratio high for each category of people
involved<br>
3. Ensuring key people (like project-points-of-contact) read our
emails when we need to reach out to them.<br>
<br>
So what main groups of emails do we send?<br>
A. General OSGeo-Live business (such as this email), with both
technical and organisational content. Typically involves the core
OSGeo-Live team. This is what our main discuss list is being used
for.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/live-demo/">https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/live-demo/</a><br>
<br>
B. Announcements: Notices of key milestones, kick off of releases
etc. We do have an email list for this, but we haven't been using
it:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/live-demo-announce/">https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/live-demo-announce/</a><br>
<br>
We create and then store announcements within our wiki:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc#Press_Releases">https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc#Press_Releases</a><br>
<br>
These announcements are then published to our OSGeo-Live discuss
list, and the general OSGeo Discuss List.<br>
They are also published via twitter: <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/osgeolive?lang=en">https://twitter.com/osgeolive?lang=en</a><br>
<br>
And I blog about it, which gets picked up by
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://planet.osgeo.org/">https://planet.osgeo.org/</a><br>
<br>
C. Emails to project Points of Contact. I've been using a crude,
home grown mail merge type feature which I've put into a private
Google spreadsheet. Over the last release, Astrid and Vicky have
started using this too. With this mail merge, we have been sending
emails like "Hi Joe and Jone, as project points of contact for XYZ
project, I'm hoping you can tell us what version of XYZ we should
include in the next OSGeo-Live release. Version 1.1 of XYZ was
installed on the last release."<br>
~ 50 of these emails get sent out at each milestone, so we probably
don't want to CC a main public list (although we could CC a high
bandwidth public list to ensure transparency).<br>
About half of projects reply to a first email sent out this way.
Other projects require a number of manual follow ups.<br>
<br>
D. Auto emails from our Issue tracker are emailed to our discuss
email list every time an issue is updated. This could potentially be
moved to be sent to a high volume email list in order to increase
the signal-to-noise of the discuss list.<br>
<br>
E. Github sends out auto emails for merge/pull requests which I
receive directly to my email address. This information is already
public within the github system, so I suggest doesn't need to be
additionally added to an email list.<br>
<br>
F. I sometimes reach out to people one-on-one in the first instance
related to OSGeo-Live. I do this because in my experience people are
more likely to respond, and respond openly and frankly to an
individual than to a group (especially if they don't know who is in
the group). I think it is appropriate to do this occasionally, but
noting Bas' comment, it may be happening more often than it should.
I'd be interested to hear other opinions on this.<br>
<br>
G. We don't currently have a separate list for PSC members. To date,
I don't think we've needed it. We could potentially set up a private
list to discuss sensitive points. For instance, should we discuss
whether to invite someone join the PSC privately first (allowing
people on the PSC to object and not hurt the person's feelings)? <br>
<br>
So what should we change?<br>
1. I think that we start using our OSGeo-Live announce email list
again, and expect all project points of contact to subscribe to this
list, and ask all points of contact to ensure they don't hide this
list in an obscure email folder they don't look at.<br>
<br>
2. I think that we should stop sending auto-emails to our discuss
email list in order to increase the signal to noise ration.<br>
<br>
3. I think we should create a "high volume" list, and any emails
sent directly to project points of contact should be CCed to this
high volume list. This will address the current transparency issue
raised. I'm open to also having auto emails being sent to this list
as well.<br>
<br>
Thoughts? <br>
<br>
[1]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://producingoss.com/en/setting-tone.html#avoid-private-discussions">http://producingoss.com/en/setting-tone.html#avoid-private-discussions</a><br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Cameron Shorter
M +61 419 142 254</pre>
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