The questions asked were:
> > [a] What, in your eyes, is the worst thing that london.pm has ever done?
> (i) why?
> > [b] What, if anything, would you have done to stop them from carrying
> > out this heinous act, if you were leader?
> [d] What is the best thing that london.pm has done, and what will you do
> to try and make sure that it, or something similar happens again?
The trouble with these questions are that they treat London.pm as if it is
a single entity that thinks coherently or wields under a single form of
control. Which it is not. It is a collection of people that listens more
or less (depending on the phase of the moon) to one another. You cannot
make or stop anyone in it from doing anything.
It may be more accurate to say "what is the worst thing members of
London.pm have ever done", "what is the best thing members of london pm
have ever done" and how I will help to ensure that more of the later than
the former is more likely to happen again."
We've done many good things in our time (YAPC::Europe, NMS, numerous tech
meets to name just a few) and we've done many bad things, the worst of
which is easily to cause harm to other people trying to do good things,
both in our group and outside it.
Before we go any further though, it's important to note we've also done a
hundred and one small things that on their own arn't that big, but are,
when looked at as a whole are just as important. The guy that sticks an
extra fiver in the kitty when it's running low; The person who helps you
debug your website; And the bot that cheers you up at work; All just as
important as the big things - it's just they're less hard to quantify.
When it comes down to it the only thing you can really do to encourage
good things, and hopefully lessen the bad things, is to nurture the
environment. The only thing London.pm really has is it's group culture -
there's nothing else holding it together. Whilst the leader isn't in a
position to singlehandedly change the culture, they are in a better
position to do so (with the right help) than anyone else.
Most of best things I've seen come out of London.pm have merely been
'bootstrapped' here, and then have gone off on their own. London.pm
itself can't actually run a project - London.pm is too large and an
indistinct group to actually control such a thing, but it's members can -
and do - rise up from the ranks to take on a particular challenge. Now
the question becomes how do we encourage more bootstrapping? Well, there
are two basic things needed for a project to come about: An idea, and the
ability of a team (or an individual with help when needed) to work on it.
The first problem is something that can be addressed by having a more
inclusive group. The more people (and the more people that are prepared
to talk) with the more diverse views the more interesting ideas you tend
to have. An important aspect of this is ensuring that group members are
willing to discuss their ideas, rather than just responding with a bigoted
remark. I personally don't see this kind of thing happen a lot on
London.pm, but it does happen occasionally and is jarring when it does.
I think one of the more important roles a leader has is to encourage
people to encourage good social behaviour, and the exchange of ideas.
The second important part of this is communication. It's important that
people in London.pm be comfortable working together on things, and
organising things. This is where my nefarious schemes to have things like
code reviewing and mentoring come in. The more we can encourage people to
work together the more they will be used to doing it, and the less barriers
to entry there will be on individual projects.
> > [c] What are your leaderly plans for penderel (the computer)?
First off, I don't think I'm able to make a decision about this kind of
thing without talking to the people involved in the project, and nor
should I attempt to. penderel relies on good will and support from many
people, and I won't make any assumptions without talking to them first.
As of this time I have no plans to replace penderel, but this is simply
because I don't have enough knowledge of the situation. I have plenty of
hearsay and second hand knowledge, but I would really need to talk to the
people involved in person and ask their advice. I'm not the kind of
person that thinks just because someone is elected leader it instantly
makes them better qualified to deal with the situation than those that
have been dealing with it day to day.
> (i) who will have root?
> (ii) how will you go about making sure that people who aren't
> supposed to don't have root?
I really don't thing it's a leader's role to make these kinds of
decisions. It's the roll of the penderel sysadmin - and I wouldn't dream
of dictating to someone the way they work. When it comes down to it
*that* person is bestowing the trust so *that* person has to do it.
Of course, the leader has to monitor what the minions are up to, and step
in if they think there is a problem, but only when they think there is a
problem. Of course, if the sysadmin asks for advice, then that's a
different matter. And ideally the leader should be talking to their
minion enough so that problems don't suddenly happen.
However, this all sounds like I'm dodging the question...I'm not, I'm just
answering what was put in front of me. In short if someone makes me
sysadmin (which I'm willing to do as leader if no-one else takes the job,)
then this is what I do.
I treat everything on a case by case basis.
It's that simple. Giving people access is about trusting people. There
are no universal rules for trusting other people, so each case must be
thought about properly.
> [e] How will you try and attract more new faces to london.pm, so that it
> doesn't just become the same old clique?
Hmm. Be Inclusive. Oh, wait covered that point to death already ;-)
I think, when it comes down to it, we can only attract new people if we've
got something to offer then. Every time I speak to someone and ask them
how they got involved in Perl Mongers (or anything else for that matter)
it's always like "Well, I was doing this, and I stumbled across this which
helped/I was interested in/made me laugh and then I got involved in this
related thing and before I knew it I was involved in everything."
So, in short, we need more hooks to get people involved. My three pronged
attack is as follows.
Firstly, we start a scheme of peer code review, documentation review, and
website testing. This should hopefully interest at least a couple of the
two hundred or so people who read this list (hello, yes I mean you ;-) .)
Helping Perl Mongers help Perl Mongers.
Secondly, I think we should work on some things closer with other user
groups (something I see Dave Cantrell agrees with me on.) This will
hopefully bring more of them to Perl Mongers, but more importantly I think
it could be really beneficial to many of our members.
Thirdly, I as I talked about in the bonus section of my manifesto, I
propose starting a scheme of doing lightning emails (must come up with a
better name for this) which essentially are just like lightning talks, but
in email form. If we set up another list, subscribed to the main list like
announce is, and we do this right we could easily end up with a resource,
whist being terribly useful and entertaining for existing list members,
could also be a resource for perl users that arn't part of the community
and might get some of them involved in other Perl Monger activities.
Of course, as I said I'd help do any of these crazy schemes if I'm elected
or not, you might chose to ignore this section...
Hmm. Late. Sleep Now.
Mark.
P.S. Tech meet on Thursday, Don't forget.
--
s'' Mark Fowler London.pm Bath.pm
http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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){for(0..30){$|=print$t->Tgoto(cm,$_,$y)." $w";select$k,$k,$k,.03}$y+=2}
