<br><blockquote style="margin: 1.5em 0pt;"></blockquote><br>Executive Summary: <br> * I'm really excited at the prospect of a new committee chair<br> * Let's give the nomination period another week<br> * Formal PSC call for votes on new chair on Monday March 2<br>
* Vote must be unanimous (all +1's)<br> * Objections to previous three items are welcome. Please say something.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><br>On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 22:49, Schuyler Erle <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:schuyler@nocat.net" target="_blank">schuyler@nocat.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div>On Thu, 2009-02-19 at 21:55 -0500, Christopher Schmidt wrote:<br>
> ><br>
> > I'm happy to throw my name in for the PSC Chair position. And I also<br>
> > like the idea of having term limits to encourage circulation. (And if<br>
> > someone else wants the upcoming shift more, I will gladly wait.)<br>
><br>
> I, for one, welcome an oppourtunity for a new Bozemaian Overlord.<br>
<br>
</div>Isn't that "Bozemanian"? Either way, I welcome it, too.<br>
</blockquote><div><br>Heh, yeah. Although I do believe the man in question was just recently<br>spotted in our 50th state, so who knows. (err, wait... we'd need an <br>extra 'i' for that, wouldn't we)<br>
<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
It's worth noting that the main function of the PSC chair as we<br>
originally envisioned it, and as Erik has dutifully carried it out, is<br>
more of a secretary than an executive, properly speaking. It will<br>
continue to be, I hope, light duty, but a role very necessary to the<br>
project.<br>
</blockquote><div><br><br>This is a good point, Schuyler. Though I would add that it is a position <br>that can sort of "become what you make of it". <br><br>I guess it's a little hard for me to separate my activity as "chair" from <br>
actions that I would have taken anyways as a normal participant in <br>the project, but I do think that with the title comes a subtle, unspoken<br>devotion to/responsibility for the stability and the momentum of the <br>
project. <br>
<br>Sure, the democratic, participatory nature of open source means that<br>the chair does not have any sort of concrete executive power to make <br>laws or give orders. But, for that very reason, I feel that there is a <br>
natural tendency towards disorder and stagnation. Especially as the <br>project matures out of its new-exciting-features-every-week phase, <br>I think the magic of self-organization and drive sort of peters out. <br><br>
So one issue is stability. With developers and contributors and users<br>
distributed throughout the world, there is a huge communication issue<br>that needs to be dealt with proactively. Different people have different<br>ideas and different ways of expressing them and different ways of <br>interpreting what they read/hear. Most of the time everyone is psyched<br>
and on the same page, but not always. <br><br>I think part of the role of the Chair is not only to resolve disputes when<br>they surface, but moreover to keep a pulse on the project and its <br>diverse participants and to work proactively to *prevent* conflict before<br>
it manifests itself. In the end, this is some pretty classic "manager"<br>bullshit, but I do think it's worth noting how the aspect of distance <br>and communication plays into this challenge.<br><br>As for momentum, the structure of the organization -- namely the PSC <br>
and its Chair position -- is essentially *defensive*. It operates on the <br>assumption that the impetus for improved order and progress is <br>something that will occur naturally in the community... and so it <br>assigns a committee of elders (of sorts) to sift through the proposals and desires of the <br>
community and thereby craft a direction for the project. <br><br>Again, I think this works splendidly at the beginning when there is a <br>lot of excitement and energy and (at least in the case of OpenLayers)<br>money vis-a-vis corporate support. <br>
<br>As those resources dry up, however, I think we have seen that it becomes<br>necessary (or at least helpful) to have someone(s) in the community who<br>takes it upon him/her/themselves to organize and motivate the troops. <br>
<br>There was a time for me when I felt like I had the necessary knowledge of <br>the library, relationships with its main developers, and of course *time* to <br>do just that sort of thing. I would help to coordinate semi-regular "coding <br>
bunkers" where we'd get everyone together to bang out a set of new features,<br>or slog through a list of open tickets. I would read all the mails to the lists,<br>try to help track all the bugs, and keep an eye out for exemplary uses of <br>
the library out there in the real world. With the tireless help of release <br>manager Chris Schmidt, we even managed to prod each other enough to <br>tie up loose ends and put out some quality releases of the library over the <br>
years. <br><br>Over the course of the last year or so, however, my ability to do all those <br>things has waned. First and foremost, I no longer have the intricate working<br>knowledge of the different parts of the library that I once had. Partly this is <br>
due to inactivity, but it is also due to a certain, understandable lack of <br>vision. I came into OpenLayers three years ago with zero GEO background, <br>and despite my zeal for the project and a pair of really amazing conferences, <br>
the direction of professional life has not managed to bring me any much <br>closer to the world of GEO than it was at the very beginning. <br><br>When OpenLayers was just getting started, the path was pretty clear and I <br>
didn't have too much trouble following it and helping to build consensus <br>around it. As we had all hoped, however, the project has grown well beyond<br>its infancy and is now reaching out into territories that I simply don't have <br>
the resources to become familiar with. <br><br>For this and all the above reasons, I am incredibly happy that my call for <br>nominations to the post has not gone silent. The whole point of this block <br>of text was to illustrate that there are some unwritten, soft-spoken aspects<br>
of the job that dance the line between the secretariat and the executive...<br>and I think that having some fresh blood in the position is the ideal way <br>to renew and recharge the project: It is high time that someone else took <br>
the reigns of this beast and led us into the new era. <br><br>I'll hold off on voicing my official opinion on Tim's nomination for another week <br>or so to see if there are any others who are interested in the post, and let's <br>
make the PSC call-for-votes on Monday, March 2nd. I can't remember <br>if we discussed this previously or not, but I think this should be a unanimous<br>PSC vote, not a "no -1's" one. So I would say that the standard time window <br>
of two days will not apply and we'll wait until we hear back from everyone.<br><br>Thanks for your ear/eye on this and please, if you or someone you know is <br>interested in the chair position, please speak up now. <br>
<br>Vive la transition! Vive OpenLayers!<br>Erik<br><br><br><br><br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
SDE<br>
<div><div></div><div><br>
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