also sprach Martín Ferrari <tincho@debian.org> [2015-09-28 10:33 +0200]:
> I agree with big parts of it, but I really don't understand what
> is being proposed here, or even what is being criticised. That the
> local team is asked to join long-lived teams instead of roaming
> free? Well, that was one of many points where there was almost
> universal consensus last year: that we need institutional memory,
> clear responsibilities, and boundaries.
There was almost universal consensus among the people present in the
room at the time that this was a worthwhile idea to pursue.
However, since this series of meetings and since the installation of
the teams structure, it's become crystal clear that it's not working
as we had envisioned it, and there've been calls for change.
A decision made in the past is not an excuse to turn a blind eye to
problems and keep trying to install a structure that altogether does
more harm than good. Your job is to help the team find
decision-making processes and a structure, not to enforce them.
This is not to say that everything about the teams structure is bad,
nor that "institutional memory, clear responsibilities, and
boundaries" aren't necessary. But that there are learnings of the
past 12 months that need to be considered, and two of those are:
- embracing the local team
- ensuring people can use their time to do work towards the
conference organisation, rather than losing their energy trying
to figure out how to start
> I wonder how many people did the exercise of thinking of how any
> particular change will fare with the real orga team, with bid
> teams ranging from barely existent to all-encompassing, and how
> the actual people involved would work with those rules.
We should certainly be careful regarding this when evaluating bids
and the teams behind them. In fact, rather than focusing on gritty
details about the bids themselves, we should be choosing a team that
we believe is capable of organising a DebConf in their country, 18
months into the future.
> You can find in the minutes of last year's discussions many
> comments about the local/global split being a problem. This year,
> some other decision was taken, but we keep going back to it. Next
> time somebody complains about decisions being challenged all the
> time, I will point them to these discussions...
I hope you are not trying to purport an environment where decisions
should never be challenged.
Please be reminded that we all went along and supported the teams
structure installation for the first 6 months, even though it really
hurt us to have to wait months for the teams to be formed before we
could resume work on DebConf, and we some of us disagreed with
aspects of your proposal.
But when the teams were finally defined and memberships canvassed,
it didn't work out as expected. Some teams remained leaderless,
others had leaders and shadows who didn't participate, and the were
countless open questions about competencies and roles that nobody
ever addressed.
So actually, 12 months into this experiment, I think it's about time
that we challenged the approach and actually tried to fix stuff.
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> @martinkrafft
: :' : DebConf orga team
`. `'`
`- DebConf16: Cape Town: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16
DebConf17 in your country? https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf17
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