31 August, 2011

strategy!

A few weeks ago the results of the voting for the openSUSE Strategy came in. 90% agreement, nice!

And another number - I've talked about the openSUSE strategy in no less than 8 posts already. Sjeeminee. Re-reading, I noticed this one where I mentioned that Fedora was also 'doing strategy'. I see that the Fedora Board has created a Vision statement.

Obviously Fedora is quite different from openSUSE (see their Leadership system) and they worked quite differently compared to what we did. Other communities are also having 'strategic discussions'. Looks like we set a trend ;-)

It was quite a learning experience. Doing this in such a large community, with so many ways to let people provide input - wow. I think we did very well. Thanks in part to tools like co-ment and of course the input of many people. I think it's impressive that we did it so open and bottom-up!

In any case, I'm happy with the outcome and I'd like to echo the statement in the article: we're still looking for feedback and further refinement and the strategy mailinglist will stay open! And you're always welcome to provide input in-person at the openSUSE conference.

2 comments:

  1. One comment about co-ment: For me it didn't work out that well. It basically was the point where I stopped commenting. The tool is nice in some ways, but it also limits how you can comment, and it had some browser issues like comments appearing far away from the corresponding text.

    Tools can help, but we should be well aware that they are only a means to an end, and they can't replace communication.

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  2. Well, besides co-ment we still discussed the strategy docs on the mailinglists and forums. So that shouldn't have stopped you from commenting...

    Co-ment limits how you can comment intentionally. Often people have broad statements which add little to the conversation and clutter up mailinglist threads. Bikeshedding, if you will. Co-ment makes sure people comment on something *specific* like a sentence or paragraph or respond to another comment. This makes for a more structured discussion with less bikeshedding. But yes, it's always a means to an end :D

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