Re: [Debconf-team] On the "local team"
Reacting to just a few things around remembrances of DC13.
Le jeudi, 1 octobre 2015, 15.51:28 Giacomo Catenazzi a écrit :
> So locals had strong power on flavor of their debconf. Also on the
> meetings, locals' opinions have priority. Experienced people comments
> what went wrong on past DebConf, and try to convince people not to
> make the same errors.
With primarily the DC13 process in mind [0], I disagree that "on the
meetings, local's opinions have priority": that's certainly not how I
felt the DebConf-Team meetings. But I'm not sure either that this
"priority" is desirable, in absolute terms: more cooperation, less
collaboration.
As for the "try to convince people" (again, primarily with DC13 in
mind), that's a _very_ mild way to put it.
> And bid team has every year innovated DebConf. No DebConf is like the
> previous. Some experiments failed, but it helped future DebConf.
Frankly, I don't see that many (if at all) "failed experiments" over the
course of the past DebConfs: constantly referring to these is a thought
experiment, more than a useful fact, IMHO. Sure, some people were
annoyed by ${name-it} at DC$N, but since DC11, I've seen incredible
DebConfs year-after-year.
We should really acknowledge that despite a lot (, a lot) of internal
tension, all DebConfs are successes!
> > Moreover, not everyone involved with DebConf as a whole can muster
> > the same availability and energy to the organisation of the next
> > conference as early as those behind a bid (which can certainly
> > include non-locals, as is the case for DC16 and also DC17 already).
> > We should ensure that active people are not dependent on less
> > active folks, especially in the early stages. The fresh energy
> > brought to the table by the bid team, their ideas and their
> > motivation should be channeled directly towards progress, instead.
>
> Is not yet the case? In general locals had much freedom, and nearly
> all possible freedom on designing their DebConf, which happens on bid
> time and on the period of "previous DebConf" organization period.
> DC13 choose own style (~ camping and communal accommodation, more in
> style of first debconfs), DC14 choose not to have DebCamp, DC15 had
> many innovations.
The DC13 bid team very early chose to do so, but it took DebConf-Team 6+
months of (severe) flamewars until it was accepted as a thing. "All
possible freedom on designing their DebConf" was simply not true back
for DC13, and the discussion we're having shows that it's far from being
that simple for DC15.
> > We should therefore treasure the idea of the "local team" (though
> > maybe call it something else), and strive to leave them the space
> > they want and provide the support they need.
>
> I think we all agree on the substance, just the form make us
> "discuss". We prefer (AFAIK) locals driving the teams from inside
> (and let's them to "exploit" "experienced" people from t0), possibly
> gaining experience on previous DebConf (apprenticeship).
> Just what make sense to globals? [so the note 2], and how much a local
> team can change DebConf from one year to the next?
As long as we're changing continent, country and (some) organizers, the
amount of things that _will_ change will continue to be big.
I've really come to think that there's either a strong Chairs+Global
Team vision for what DebConf should be, or DebConfs organized by new
people in new places around the world; but you can't have both.
> But I find also disturbing that we speak about local team, and Martin
> is trying to dilute the meaning of local team from inside. He is
> local in DC15, DC16 and it seems it try to be local on one bid of
> DC17 [curiously where lives are also much experienced DebConf people,
> and one chair].
You are putting up strong accusations here, could you back your "Martin
is trying to dilute the meaning of local team from the inside" up,
please? I personally haven't seen Martin take the "local team" hat on
for any other edition than DC15
> I was in dc13 bid team, and we designed a different style of DebConf
> (thanks to support of char holger), but we tried also to improve all
> team and sub-team structure: (…)
> Just if we had been more integrated with globals, I think we had less
> stress and a yet better conference [which it was in any case very
> successful].
The DC13 locals certainly made some mistakes, and I have my share of
mistakes there too; but framing the problem like "if we had been more
integrated with globals, we would have had a better conference" is
really misleading, sorry.
There was _a lot_ of friction between "globals" and "DC13 locals" about
the bid _concept_ (vision, venu, budget, etc), for a _very_ long period.
The flamewars as well as the lengthy indecisions put off several local
volunteers that had a lot of energy to invest.
Now, years after the fact, I think that what we had was a broken
consensus-finding process, with a lot of frustration induced for all
parties: the globals moved towards DC13 vision; the DC13 locals moved
towards globals' visions; a middle-ground was found. And I think the
end-result was great. But the process was broken.
Cheers,
OdyX
[0] DC13 was a special snowflake, but it was still a DC$n.
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