[maemo-community] Discussion about Maemo community management...

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi Tim,

Good to see this moving to the list!

Tim wrote:
<snip>
> Maemo Community Manager responsibilities include:
> 
> * Engaging and communicating with the Maemo community within groups,
> forums, and via blogging to communicate news, help solve problems, and help
> ensure that every member has the experience they want.
> * Developing and hosting programs and opportunities for Maemo members to
> meet and collaborate online and in the real world.
> * Working with the [Customer Care] team to navigate the occasional
> interpersonal conflict.

For my money, all of these tasks (except right now helping people to
meet in real life) are already part of the remit of the Maemo team - I
certainly feel that they're part of the role I should be playing.

The one thing which you don't list, which might justify an additional
role, is someone to work with the Maemo SW team in Nokia to increase
community interaction on their part. I know several people who work in
Maemo SW who are very community oriented - maybe half a dozen or more
names come easily to mind - but I am sure that there are others who
quite simply have not engaged the community - either because they don't
feel it's part of their job (and thus they don't have the time for it at
work), because they're not particularly inclined to "expose" themselves
in public, or because they don't yet see a reason to do so.

There is a role for someone, I think, to be an advocate for the Maemo
project withing the Maemo SW development team.

> concerning the points I outlined above, there is no single paid person
> whose job it is to oversee the community and facilitate the community's
> needs to and from Nokia. My concern is that while there are a lot of
> people who are willing to volunteer time to the community, there are a
> lot of things that either become someone's _extra_ responsibility, or
> get neglected and/or forgotten. (I.e., Did you know that most of us --
> even Nokia and maemo.org employees -- volunteer our time completely out
> of the scope of our regular day jobs?)

I'm not sure that the community needs more management (read: enablement)
at this stage. I think that we need to encourage a collaborative spirit,
where that is feasible, where people working for Nokia on Maemo think of
themselves as Maemo community members.

A few years back, I was interviewing for a job (which finally fell
through) to work as a developer on GNOME. The interviewer asked me
whether, if hired, I'd consider myself to be a GNOME developer who
happened to be paid by (company X), or a (company X) developer who
happened to be paid to work on GNOME.

I'd be interested to hear the feelings of the various people paid to
work on Maemo if we asked them that question - and I'd be interested in
changing a few people to be more the former than the latter.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
maemo.org docsmaster
Email: dneary at maemo.org
Jabber: bolsh at jabber.org