[OpenLayers-Dev] Project Steering Committee Chair

[Erik Uzureau]

Executive Summary:
 * I'm really excited at the prospect of a new committee chair
 * Let's give the nomination period another week
 * Formal PSC call for votes on new chair on Monday March 2
 * Vote must be unanimous (all +1's)
 * Objections to previous three items are welcome. Please say something.



On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 22:49, Schuyler Erle <schuyler at nocat.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-02-19 at 21:55 -0500, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm happy to throw my name in for the PSC Chair position.  And I also
> > > like the idea of having term limits to encourage circulation.  (And if
> > > someone else wants the upcoming shift more, I will gladly wait.)
> >
> > I, for one, welcome an oppourtunity for a new Bozemaian Overlord.
>
> Isn't that "Bozemanian"? Either way, I welcome it, too.
>

Heh, yeah. Although I do believe the man in question was just recently
spotted in our 50th state, so who knows. (err, wait... we'd need an
extra 'i' for that, wouldn't we)



>
> It's worth noting that the main function of the PSC chair as we
> originally envisioned it, and as Erik has dutifully carried it out, is
> more of a secretary than an executive, properly speaking. It will
> continue to be, I hope, light duty, but a role very necessary to the
> project.
>


This is a good point, Schuyler. Though I would add that it is a position
that can sort of "become what you make of it".

I guess it's a little hard for me to separate my activity as "chair" from
actions that I would have taken anyways as a normal participant in
the project, but I do think that with the title comes a subtle, unspoken
devotion to/responsibility for the stability and the momentum of the
project.

Sure, the democratic, participatory nature of open source means that
the chair does not have any sort of concrete executive power to make
laws or give orders. But, for that very reason, I feel that there is a
natural tendency towards disorder and stagnation. Especially as the
project matures out of its new-exciting-features-every-week phase,
I think the magic of self-organization and drive sort of peters out.

So one issue is stability. With developers and contributors and users
distributed throughout the world, there is a huge communication issue
that needs to be dealt with proactively. Different people have different
ideas and different ways of expressing them and different ways of
interpreting what they read/hear. Most of the time everyone is psyched
and on the same page, but not always.

I think part of the role of the Chair is not only to resolve disputes when
they surface, but moreover to keep a pulse on the project and its
diverse participants and to work proactively to *prevent* conflict before
it manifests itself. In the end, this is some pretty classic "manager"
bullshit, but I do think it's worth noting how the aspect of distance
and communication plays into this challenge.

As for momentum, the structure of the organization -- namely the PSC
and its Chair position -- is essentially *defensive*. It operates on the
assumption that the impetus for improved order and progress is
something that will occur naturally in the community... and so it
assigns a committee of elders (of sorts) to sift through the proposals and
desires of the
community and thereby craft a direction for the project.

Again, I think this works splendidly at the beginning when there is a
lot of excitement and energy and (at least in the case of OpenLayers)
money vis-a-vis corporate support.

As those resources dry up, however, I think we have seen that it becomes
necessary (or at least helpful) to have someone(s) in the community who
takes it upon him/her/themselves to organize and motivate the troops.

There was a time for me when I felt like I had the necessary knowledge of
the library, relationships with its main developers, and of course *time* to

do just that sort of thing. I would help to coordinate semi-regular "coding
bunkers" where we'd get everyone together to bang out a set of new features,
or slog through a list of open tickets. I would read all the mails to the
lists,
try to help track all the bugs, and keep an eye out for exemplary uses of
the library out there in the real world. With the tireless help of release
manager Chris Schmidt, we even managed to prod each other enough to
tie up loose ends and put out some quality releases of the library over the
years.

Over the course of the last year or so, however, my ability to do all those
things has waned. First and foremost, I no longer have the intricate working
knowledge of the different parts of the library that I once had. Partly this
is
due to inactivity, but it is also due to a certain, understandable lack of
vision. I came into OpenLayers three years ago with zero GEO background,
and despite my zeal for the project and a pair of really amazing
conferences,
the direction of professional life has not managed to bring me any much
closer to the world of GEO than it was at the very beginning.

When OpenLayers was just getting started, the path was pretty clear and I
didn't have too much trouble following it and helping to build consensus
around it. As we had all hoped, however, the project has grown well beyond
its infancy and is now reaching out into territories that I simply don't
have
the resources to become familiar with.

For this and all the above reasons, I am incredibly happy that my call for
nominations to the post has not gone silent. The whole point of this block
of text was to illustrate that there are some unwritten, soft-spoken aspects
of the job that dance the line between the secretariat and the executive...
and I think that having some fresh blood in the position is the ideal way
to renew and recharge the project: It is high time that someone else took
the reigns of this beast and led us into the new era.

I'll hold off on voicing my official opinion on Tim's nomination for another
week
or so to see if there are any others who are interested in the post, and
let's
make the PSC call-for-votes on Monday, March 2nd. I can't remember
if we discussed this previously or not, but I think this should be a
unanimous
PSC vote, not a "no -1's" one. So I would say that the standard time window
of two days will not apply and we'll wait until we hear back from everyone.

Thanks for your ear/eye on this and please, if you or someone you know is
interested in the chair position, please speak up now.

Vive la transition! Vive OpenLayers!
Erik






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