jwboyer: The Board

jwboyer (

jwboyer) wrote,
@ 2008-01-31 06:59:00

Entry tags:

fedora

The Board
Karsten, it's not so much that I don't understand the purpose of the Board. I do. What I don't understand is what they actually do, or maybe just how they function.

As you quoted, if the Board were to say "Fedora on Cell phones!", it would be a high level direction setting objective for Fedora (an absurd example, but you see what I mean). Lately, I haven't seen anything that I would consider as a set of goals or objectives for the Fedora project as a whole. And that may be just fine, because personally I think Fedora is quite busy enough as it is.

So don't take my mini-rant as discontent or confusion of purpose. Like I said, I'm fairly happy with the Board. Rather look at it as a question on whether there are things the Board is doing that people just don't hear about. Some would call it "transparency". Reading various board member's thoughts on issues as they pop up is good, but not everyone has time to follow all the lists and it's often difficult to decipher from it whether it's a topic the Board is interested in, or just that member.

I'm not entirely sure I could explain what I'm really looking for, but I think it would be akin to a forward looking State of the Union from the Board or something. And if that boils down to "keep doing what you're doing", that's cool too.

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(Anonymous)
2008-01-31 06:47 pm UTC (link)

Didn't all the people who were elected state their personal goals for their term? I know I did.

I'm really not sure what we gain by having monolithic goals for the entire board. Do you really want one person to refrain from pursuing their ideas because the majority of the board didn't see their value at the time the whole board voted on what the goal for the entire board would be in a forward looking statement?

"Sorry Karsten, that's a great idea, but you know we voted 3 months ago that this other thing would be our priority..so your very timely and very important idea will have to wait until the next time we hold an election and reset our priorities."

That's moronic.

The board is made up of individuals, smart proactive individuals and those individuals have strong interests in different areas of the project. If Seth ever actually came up with a good idea, I sort of want to hear it and see if I can help refine it and move it forward.

You want my personal state of the union.... here it is...its the same one I've been saying for years.

We need to do a better job of managing volunteer manpower
We need to find a way to recruit
(upstream as well as off the street)
We need to find a way to train
(group training supplemented by one-on-one)
We need to find a way to prevent burn out
(encourage moving between roles and gaining new skills)
And we need to find a way to allow people to let go of items, and feel
okay about handing it off to another person.
(we need clear and honorable exit paths, that don't involve lighting a
bridge on fire)

Luckily it seems Paul enjoyed the Kool-aid I've given him and he very well may make this sort of stuff an important priority for himself. Even if he doesn't I'm still going to be grinding away at it...regardless of what "the board" as a group deems is the "priority" for the upcoming 6 months. This is my personal priority, and I'm not going to be shaken from it.

And if other board members want to take the easy way out and just +1 my ideas great! But it would be no less great if each one of them was championing their own projects.

-jef"I dare you to vote for me next time.. i double dog dare you"spaleta

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jwboyer
2008-02-01 07:48 pm UTC (link)

Ah Jeff. I hear what you're saying. And indeed you've been saying it the whole time. That's the crux of the issue for me.

I know that you, as a person, want to do all those things. I happen to agree that they are actually pretty damn important if this whole Fedora thing is going to last. So have you talked about it in Board meetings at all? Have you expressed what you'd like the Board to help with and gotten feedback from your fellow Board members?

If so, where the _hell_ is that documented? The Board minutes are total crap. It would go a long way to just add some rationale behind the discussions and decisions that are held.

Do I want to see a monolithic set of goals the Board as a whole has for their tenure? You bet your ass I do. I want to see what's important enough to the collective group as a whole to take action on. If that is nothing, fine. But It's not moronic to want to see something like that, particularly when it doesn't prevent individuals from doing other things.

I'm not asking for a hurd mentality from the Board. That would indeed be very stupid. But I do want to see what the Board is taking interest in and _why_. Look, I consider you and Karsten to actually be the exceptions to what I've seen so far. You're both quite vocal even when it comes to Board issues. Particularly when you are pressed.

So am I going to vote for you in the next election? Hell yes. Twice if I could. But that also isn't going to prevent me from running myself. So expect some company or competition, however you'd like to look at it. Personally, I see it as the former.

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jspaleta
2008-02-01 09:37 pm UTC (link)

Here's how this works... the people with ideas are already out there explaining them in the public forums. Not all the board people are 'big idea' people some of them actually implementors at a technical level. They chime in in the public discussions as they see fit when it comes to resource constrains.

Karsten is a human process builder.. and that involves a lot of talky-talk.
I'm just an oracle of doom who likes to tell everyone the sky is falling.
The sky is falling by the way.

Bill and Seth and Matt, get shit taken care of in terms of actual community facing bits. These are the people that actually deal with the crap like reviewing spin kickstart files for technical correctness when they show up for board approval. I'm sure as hell not going to step in and countermand their technical assessments.

Bob is on the board as an appointee primarily to groom him for better JBoss community interaction. He's a sleeper agent of destiny.

Paul just like wearing sexy black turtlenecks and being in front of a camera. Being a figurehead is hard important work.

Chris has been indisposed overseas and we've haven't been able to communicate with him consistently. It's a shame really, he's got an elected position and we probably aren't making adequate use of him.

Steve, Steve I'm not sure what he really does, but he is named Steve and as a result I believe he inherits the powers of the "Tao of Steve" automatically.

If you want to challenge a specific board member to take up some sort of new initiative... go right ahead. Call them out. You want the board to take up a new initiative as a group... go right ahead. Call us out. Just be prepared for us to turn around and vest you with the authority to lead that new initiative.

And that's sort of the crux of the matter isn't it. You want the Board to take a lead as a group. Not me, I want the Board to enable individuals to step up and lead in new areas. If we as individuals aren't passionate about an area, we aren't going to be effective leaders in that area. it doesn't matter if we say its importanr or not, if we don't personally make it a priority it won't be. So for every very compelling idea, there must be a champion and that champion need not be on the Board.

Because anything we can do... you can do better.

Very very very... very very very... little of what is publicly discussible is actually discussed in the board calls. We actually shut down our own discussion if we wander into that territory and move it to fab.

-jef

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