Re: [Debconf-team] Fixing the Debconf Delagation
Hi
TLDR:
* "You can set direction in Debian not by telling people what to do
but by changing what is easy in the project"
* "If there is one thing, it's getting people to talk to each other
and find out which parts of *their* work they can think about
differently in order to have it be easier. We can do this
peer-to-peer. How can we make it more cooperation and less
collaboration." We all need to think about making our tasks work
better, not just the chairs. We need to be devil's advocate.
* We need to build trust, I give some ideas on how.
B
___________________________________________________________________________________
Preamble:
* I signed the 'on the local team' email because I wanted to let it be
known that I consider the way things are currently working to be
broken. The details are less of a concern to me. I think it is
important to see how many people felt this way; it was not a single
person being rebellious.
* Theorising that it could work if people only give it a try is not
good enough. Let's agree that things are not working as they are, and
find ways to improve them.
* I am taking my cue from Asheesh's talk [1], "You can set direction
in Debian not by telling people what to do but by changing what is
easy in the project" (20:35)
What is happening here has happened in previous events I was involved
with too (One person made unrealistic promises to sponsors. We made it
happen and it lead to an overall better event, but it damn near killed
us). This is not unique to DebConf, and it is not unique to one person
being cantankerous or wayward. So don't bash yourself up too much. I
am writing this long email with the DebConf16 hat firmly on, but I
hope it can contribute to all DebConf functioning.
>From Tincho "The power to override decisions ... budgetary decisions,
sponsors relationships, volunteers motivation, and even some basic
tenets of the conference were at stake. Every time this happened, it
was because somebody from the
local team acted on their own, overstepping other people's
responsibilities, and without prior consultation."
I would argue that it may have been because the understanding of what
was expected was lacking. If there is no structure that makes it
clear, I would also tend to act in what I believe is the best way. It
is hugely damaging to then have my best intentions questioned.
So going forward, we need to make the values more explicit for each of
these things, and I use the examples Tincho listed as places where we
can start - the 'easy' changes. (thereby my answer to Tincho's "I
would like to ask fil or any of the people who think the chairs should
not exist what would they do in situations like these.") I've
rephrased these to be more constructive.
* The tension between short-term benefit for sponsors (e.g. being
acknowledged on the website, authorising in-kind donations) vs
long-term relationships with existing sponsors:
The issue: There is not enough time for the whole team to find
consensus on a service that was not considered and therefore not
discussed before the conference. This happens. There was no way to
find input quickly, so he made the call.
How to fix this: To mitigate the tension, I would suggest that there
is a clear understanding of what constitutes a sponsor, well in
advance, with a bigger focus on the very small sponsors. I think a
bigger issue that needs to be articulated, is how do we acknowledge
the many, many material things that make a conference happen? I see
this as a critical issue for the DebConf in Cape Town, because we may
have many small companies who want to contribute and be part of
something, but who fall far short of the official perks. We need to
bring them in somehow - this is our community and directly part of the
DebConf Goals. I can remember the sponsor being quite sad at how
things went - we need to think about how to prevent that. (I can't
find that thread now though).
Then, I would think once there is a decision to be made in crunch
time, to revert to a/the Chair to make the call. For that to work
though, I would need to trust that the Chair would make a good
decision - one that if there was time to bring in the whole team, they
would agree with and support. I cover trust as an overarching thing
right at the bottom of this email.
* The tension on what to spend money on, and the unclear Debconf
goals. Taking sponsored food and accommodation vs 'more fancy perks'
as example:
For a start (and wow, so many seemingly simple questions asked of me
at DebConf15 make sense now!), looking at the budget and seeming
conflict of interest between the conference dinner and sponsoring more
people to come, the problem here is that it is unclear what the goal
of DebConf is [2]. At the orga sprint this unclearness was
articulated, and half of the people interpreted that the goal is to
bring more people to Debian (aka sponsor more people to come) and the
other half interpreted it to mean that the conference should be a
place for Debian Developers (and those aspiring to become DD's) to
work and be socially pampered (as the name of DebConf suggests: the
Debian Developers conference). The former gives emphasis to the
"sponsored food and accommodation" and the latter on "more fancy
perks".
How to fix it: These goals need to be clearer. Is the primary goal to
enable face-to-face interactions between Debian Developers? Or who?
Who exactly are the proposed attendees? Let's decide on that and then
work towards that.
My personal feel for Debconf16: If DebConf is primarily for DD's, then
DebConf should always be in Europe, or where most DD's are and that
sponsoring people should be more vigorously controlled to (only) allow
DD's and people applying for DD's to attend. But the next DebConf is
in Africa, unless you want it back, so I think for us it would be
reasonable that the budget would reflect bringing more awareness to
Debian. From my side the conference dinner, or more fancy perks for
example, is not part of that. This may change for other DebConfs and I
suggest there is a set of questions making this explicit, that bid
teams can answer and think about. We were asked these questions in
vague terms only at DebConf15, which is too late.
* Volunteers participation and motivation was at risk, example used:
coordinating childcare
This seemed to be a communication issue, and personpower issue (I read
all those childcare emails as they happened). The way I am trying to
fix this is by making people more cooperative (see Asheesh's talk;
collaborative needs a lot of communication, cooperative can work more
independently) and clear on communications. These are currently coming
across as exhausting and laborious, when they should be energising, so
they are not perfect and I need help here. The way I am doing this is
by the weekly meetings as a place to bond, the meeting template that
should make things easy to read and hence easy to stay informed, as
example.
As a meta-point, again from Asheesh's talk (Questions time): "If there
is one thing, it's getting people to talk to each other and find out
which parts of *their* work they can think about differently in order
to have it be easier. We can do this peer-to-peer. How can we make it
more cooperation and less collaboration." We all need to think about
making our tasks work better, not just the chairs. We need to be
devil's advocate. Madduck, looking at the points Tincho raised, how
could you have done it better? What structures could have been in
place that would have prevented you from taking action without
consultation, that you would have agreed with (and not try to
side-step)?
Maybe this was the point of the orga sprint at DebConf, but it failed.
I suggest we try one-on-one with people who are either not involved
with DebConf at all, or who are not involved with our tasks.
* Setting up events external to DebConf, that is still associated with
DebConf by design or otherwise, with tension of affecting the DebConf
'image'. Example: madduck's workship, and for DC16: ShowMeBox.
How to fix this: Tell the greater team about it, well in advance, and
get input and then go-ahead, well in advance. Find a constructive way
to answer "Is lack of response a yes or no?" We need to understand as
a team that there are other things happening, linking to, but
independent of DebConf. This is unavoidable and a good thing. We need
to find a way to make this work better (a 'wider-initiative' wiki page
with tips and e.g. Disclaimer requirements?)
The issue: Doing other things, e.g. outreach activities takes a lot of
work, but they add to the bigger picture and should be encouraged.
These things may be intimately linked to the personal 'agendas' of the
people leading them - my main reason for being involved in Debconf is
to learn about open hardware, for example. These things start very
long in advance of DebConf, and the team members don't see it as
urgent, so don't respond (and then later said they were never
consulted at all). We need to work harder to think ahead. For
DebConf16, a sub-group is planning to do a ShowMeBox competition. We
need to start now to do it well, and by the time the greater team
decides no (e.g. two weeks before DebConf) it's too late.
I drafted this in response to some questions when I sent the ShowMeBox
notification:
1. Why am I sending this if it's not really orga related and there's
more urgent stuff to do?
Because I want you to be aware of it and on board, so if you hear
about it later you don't feel this was done behind your back.
2. Why am I sending it so early and asking for commitment by mid October?
There's a lot of work required and I don't want people to get
emotionally and otherwise invested in the project just for it to get
trashed. We need to engage with schools before the end of the year, so
mid October is the latest we can pick this up.
* Who decides how to spend the budget? (After budget approval)
Another thing that was not mentioned by Tincho, but may underlie the
'more fancy perks' discussion is who gets to decide on how budget gets
spent, when (additional) money is sourced by people in the (e.g.)
local organisation? If the budget is approved with a certain amount
committed, and more than that amount gets raised, you need a clear set
of guidelines (not a policy, but a set of questions to guide
conversation between the team and chairs and DPL) to get everyone on
the same page. Said another way, are the people who source extra funds
in charge of spending it? What about the people who are not involved
in fundraising but had ideas or feelings about it? Instead of saying
this group or that group can decide where this money goes, what are
the priorities that would decide where the money goes? What set of
questions can make the thinking behind the decisions explicit?
In closing, people like madduck are enthusiastic and energised, they
make things happen and we should encourage that. That they make
decisions 'too quickly' or 'not consultative' is a symptom of the
organisation needing to give better guidance, and the Chairs are not a
catch all answer to this (perhaps rather addressing the symptom, not
the cause). Their behaviour is not the core problem.
The trust does not currently exist, and I can be the first to admit
that I'd rather get something through under the radar than submit it
to bikeshedding and flamewars (following the 'it's better to apologize
than ask permission' tenet). This is not healthy. I try to be devil's
advocate to myself here by including it in the meeting agendas and
emails *long* before it is required...
So how does one build trust?
It takes a long time, so I would argue that the chairs need to be
involved a lot, yes. But one does not build trust by (just) doing
stuff, but by capturing the gist of things. So I agree with Lucas that
"they shouldn't become team leads, or be in a position to make
important decisions" (and I'll add "when there is time for the team to
make those decisions on their own" Emergencies may be different) The
chairs should be able to articulate the values of DebConf in their
every thought and action. As Gunnar said "During my time as a Chair,
my *main* Debian task was to be as close as possible to DebConf
organization, to be able to answer (or to point to right answers) to
questions about DebConf, be they originated in outsiders, in Debian
people, or in the orga-team(s?) themselves. "
In short, I see the chairs as the grandmothers of DebConf. They should
know all about DebConf so that in a moment of crisis they can act in
full confidence that they are doing what the rest of the team would
agree with. The whole thing about grandmothers is that they've been
around for at least two generations without getting expelled from the
family.
I find the power to override decisions damaging to trust. If you need
this power, you are not doing your job as chair well. Your power to
override should be the social pressure you can exert because of the
respect afforded you. I can see how this power needs to be written
into some agreement for real emergencies, but I am really worried that
it is a sword hanging over our heads because the respect is not there.
And respect is earned.
I suggested over a beer to someone during DebConf15 that we do
expressive change exercises with the team, I don't know how people
would feel about this as a way to get peer-to-peer input and gently
rebuild the team? [3]
[1] - http://gensho.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/The_Economics_of_Volunteers_Three_Debian_stories.webm
[2] - https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Goals
[3] - http://indiebio.co.za/blog/expressive-change
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