On 10/16/2011 6:01 PM, Graham Lauder wrote:
On 10/15/11, Dave Fisher<dave2w...@comcast.net> wrote:
...snip...
- Brand Manager. Dedicated to the OOo brand.
A whole Marketing team task pretty much, a dedicated individual could
get swamped.
I think that is a little confusion sometimes with the seemingly
hierarchical nature of legacy OOo projects. Yes each project had a
“lead” and a “co-lead”, the terms however were somewhat misleading. A
more accurate description would be an administrator. It is true that
closer to the core code there was a more “managed” process simply
because of the corporate heirarchy active in Hamburg and even that had
flattened out over the life of the project. The “Lead” simply had
access to the admin tools, he certainly did not dictate policy or
direction, that was generally the result of discussion and consensus.
Branding is simply part of the wider marketing strategy and branding
right now is what should be our primary marketing focus and a group
task. Decisions have to be made.
So I'm with Ross on this, we have some excellent people to make up the
team, those people will each take the lead on whatever task they feel
that they can contribute best. Really that's not a lot different to
the way the old OOo marketing project used to function in any case and
what made it so successful.
That's good to hear, because I've been trying to figure out how to
explain Apache styles of working together, especially to contrast them
to the past OOo world. From what I can understand of it, the old
organizational style - of many separate groups, each with leaders,
co-leads, managers, whatever - is very much the opposite of Apache best
practices.
I would urge people to think of the new "Marketing team" as something
very new, and focus on where we all want to take AOOo. Personally, it
really started to worry me when people call it the "Marketing team", but
maybe that's just me.
Apache projects do need leaders. But leader isn't at title in an Apache
project. Leadership is more about what you do and how you encourage
others to follow, rather than directing others or simply doing it all
yourself.
Justin Eerenkrantz has it exactly right in his "ASF: No Jerks Allowed"
presentation, as do many other ASF'ers who give Apache Way talks:
Whomever has the best idea “leads”
...until a better idea is presented to the group
and then that person “leads”
Leadership in Apache projects is getting the community excited and
willing to help work on your idea. And being willing to listen to other
perspectives, and to work with the whole community to improve the
project for the project's sake.
- Shane
P.S. And as always: PMCs need to manage their projects independently of
outside influence. This PPMC is the body that's in charge of the future
of the AOOo project - no one else. There are a few legal, branding, and
organizational details that the board (thru the Apache Incubator in a
podling's case) requires of Apache projects - but technical direction is
solely handled by this PPMC.
P.P.S. +1 for an ooo-marketing@ list, I'll be on it.
