Discussion and comments from the community

[Simeon Bateman]

Good Morning,

I posted about our group on my blog yesterday, and as such have had
some comments. I have received feedback through twitter, IM, and on
my blog. And while most of the feedback has been positive and folks
are glad someone volunteering to try to organize the community
efforts, so do not believe in our altruistic intentions.

The general feedback that is poor revolves around 2 topics. The first
is the self appointed nature of the group, the second is around the
close communication in this forum.

I think that the first item is one that is the hardest to deal with.
I personally believe that everyone on this list (maybe with the
exception of me ) has demonstrated a clear commitment to the
empowerment of the community through blogging, speaking at conferences
and contributing code to the community. There is no one on this list
who I feel does not deserve a chance to be a leader on this
committee. But there is some truth the concerns that this is some
kind of "good old boys" club. As everyone on the list was nominated
by someone already here. I would like to propose a sort of open
election to resolve the the self appointed stigma. I propose that we
allow people to nominate themselves or someone else on the uservoice
page, including ourselves. From there we can either set a time
deadline and look for the top 20 people with votes. We can also do
something more democratic where we take anyone with at least 20 votes
and put them on a general ballot. The the general ballot can be put
on something like survey monkey or something and we get the community
at large to vote for its leadership. I think that in order to lead
the community we need buy in from the community, and they need a
choice in who goes on the committee to get that. If the community
voting picked the list and I didn't get enough votes, i feel like that
would be the right path. Doesn't mean I wouldn't participate, just
means I would not be on the committee.

The second topic is around how the community can communicate with us.
We need to decide if this group is going to stay closed or if we are
going to open up the discussion here. I see this forum as a meeting
notes of sort, with the uservoice site allowing us to have a forum for
topic discussion. But at the same time I really do think that the
community needs to have direct input here. So I propose again (don't
remember whose suggestion it was) that we elevate the committee to
owners and open up the list to the community. I think the topic we
are trying to cover is small enough that we would not get flooded, but
it would allow us true transparency. And I think that is really
important.

Anyway, since these topics were brought to me, I thought as a
committee memeber it's my job to present them here. Lets talk about
it.

sim

http://blog.simb.net/2009/02/10/introducing-the-flex-sdk-community-committee/#comments
http://sebastien-arbogast.com/2009/02/11/flex-guys-are-going-too-far/

[Doug McCune]

The "Flex SDK Community Committee" name has actually always rubbed me the wrong way for this reason. I think I'd actually be most inclined to rename the group to something like "A group of about 20 Flex devs who we hope you respect" and leave it at that. It's not a community committee, it's a group of friends/peers who all sort of know each other in one way or another who all decided to get together and hash out issues in a more organized way. I've probably gotten drunk with the majority of you, and that's why we're on this list together.

The exclusion of the rest of the community is important for the purposes of more agile, thoughtful discussion, otherwise we'd just argue on flexcoders. So we need to cut the number of voices down to both a) keep the chatter under control and b) remove the voices that we don't think we'd respect. Part b is elitist, sure, but it has to be. We all know what would happen if we tried to discuss important topics on flexcoders, we'd end up with a thread 150 messages long with about half of them being completely obnoxious or simply wrong.

So I guess I support Sim's alternative of actually creating a "real" communitee community by community appointment, or I'd say just rename the group to not try to make it sound like we represent the community. We represent our own individual interests, which happen to represent a decent subsection of the Flex community, but certainly not all of it. As it is the group is a self-selected group of people who think they're smart. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You get the negative feedback when people think you're trying to represent them without their vote to elect you. So either let people elect their representatives if it's going to be a community committe, or don't define the group as being community representatives at all, just define it as what it is.

Doug

[Ben Stucki]

Hey Sim,

I'm going to disagree with you some and agree with Doug a lot but with more words. I think you're right on these being the two issues that stir trouble and was actually hoping to give Fx full attention before creating noise around this (good one Sim :-). So, one key thing first off is that these conversations aren't really taking place in private. These threads are readable by the public and that was a conscious decision to lend transparency to what we're doing. People should be able to read the thoughts behind what we're doing and if they have input they can blog or twitter or email. In fact I would guess that if they do and their feedback is continually valuable they'll probably be recommended into the group or however we set it up.

We also considered just opening membership to everyone, but feel pretty certain that would put an end to the group creating any consolidated decisions or actions. There are only 20 of us as is and this is the noisiest group I follow besides flexcoders which I can no longer keep up with! Sure the topics should be pretty specific, but they'll be things people care about and have strong opinions on. I want the 20 or so people who are here now to be able to continue reading this group, and if some random guy comes along to spam about bug #555 which most of us feel doesn't have much long term impact to the sdk we've lost something. So, to avoid that I think we have to remain a "snob list", but it'll still have a little of the open feel that the Flex community always does. We could have just kept it all private and secret after all.

As far as being self appointed representation, I have to say some of that sentiment never sat right with me either. We represent ourselves, we present opinions that matter to the whole community hopefully, but some of the language that leans towards us being representatives of other people isn't going to fly. If you noticed my original mission statement shied away from that, but then I got overruled. :-) I'm not sure if we have to rename the group either though. Basically this group is just a lot of community members brought together based on mutual respect who want to improve the SDK. What's wrong with that?

So, that just leaves how people get in or out of this group which I don't know. I think even getting another 20 in is too much. Even 5 or 10 more (Adobians not included) may border on too much. So it's open for ideas, but I don't think we can just open it up.

- Ben Stucki

[Brian Holmes]

> So I propose again (don't
> remember whose suggestion it was) that we elevate the committee to
> owners and open up the list to the community.

I think it was originally my idea. Although since, I've wavered on it.

> Basically this group is just a lot of community members brought together based on mutual respect who want to improve the SDK. What's wrong with that?

I think we should leave things as they are for the time being. Part of
being a leader is acting like one. Community members should be invited
to email/blog/twitter their issues to current members. We can have
semi annual review dates of who's on the list where everyone is
subjected to having to be nominated and voted by the community to be
on the list with a max of 20, through uservoice or some other service.
Say Jan 1st, July 1st. But for the first go around we'll just keep the
list as it is in the interest of getting things done. If the community
doesn't like the names on the list or feels misrepresented, they can
get them changed come July 1st.

On the Adobean note, I think debating ideas amongst peers is an
exhilarating way to sharpen the mind and shape thinking. I don't think
we need any Adobeans save Matt on the list for more input. Ultimately
he's the voice of the sdk team. I think keeping Matt on the list would
be beneficial as long as he understands we're going to hash out ideas
from our perspective to influence Adobe and then work with Adobe (
regardless of outcome ) to bring community acceptance to their
decisions. He might have to bite his lip from time to time but he also
may get a chuckle at watching us wail through debates Adobe already
had. And if he doesn't have the time to monitor the list that's fine
too as once we've come to consensus we should be using the Adobe
forums and bug site to garner attention.

[Ben Clinkinbeard]

I suppose the language in our mission statement (that I helped push for) says otherwise, but I personally don't have much desire to try being an "official" representative of the general community. I think the logistics and effort involved to accurately and fairly make that claim are well beyond the commitment I am willing or able to make. Besides that I don't think Adobe really sees the benefit or point of a community committee so I am definitely gonna pass on that.

I think Doug is pretty right on when he says the group is more just a group of friends/colleagues that all respect each other. The problem is that there is an implied "The " in front of "Flex SDK Community Committee" when "A " is more appropriate. When I created the group I invited people I knew and respected and for whom I had an email address. I didn't intend for it to be a fully exhaustive, coronated group of "leaders". Like Brian said I think talking through issues with a group of smart people can be beneficial to knowledge and understanding. If we can make some noise in the process and help influence the product along the way even better.

I think if we intend to keep the group as it is we should rename it. If the decision is to formalize the group I will gladly and respectfully give up my spot.

Ben

[Simeon Bateman]

Well if the intention of the group is to be "a" community committee
then I think we were a bit premature in deciding to announce our
little group to the community.

That being said since this is a closed forum, I wanted to make sure I
presented the concerns that were brought up on my blog. I will ensure
that those who had concerns over the meaning and intentions of the
group see this thread.

Further more I think we need a way cooler name if we are not going to
be "the" community commitee :) I always wanted to be in a cool club. I
could be a Hells Angel. Now's my chance if we can name it right :)

Laters,
sim

[Tom Chiverton]

2009/2/12 Simeon Bateman <simba...@gmail.com>:

> Well if the intention of the group is to be "a" community committee
> then I think we were a bit premature in deciding to announce our
> little group to the community.

Unfortunately, there was a perceived time pressure.

> That being said since this is a closed forum, I wanted to make sure I
> presented the concerns that were brought up on my blog.  I will ensure
> that those who had concerns over the meaning and intentions of the
> group see this thread.

I think we're probably 'stuck' with who we have for the moment. Maybe
every X months we open up for nominations, but I'd like to keep the
size of the group now.
Being part of this group means, I think, that you are willing to be
contacted by people who aren't in order to have your question,
suggestion etc. heard.

> Further more I think we need a way cooler name if we are not going to
> be "the" community commitee :) I always wanted to be in a cool club. I
> could be a Hells Angel.  Now's my chance if we can name it right :)

Oh yeah. Much much cooler name needed.
"SDK Pixies" or "Adobe's Little Helpers" :-)

--
Tom