jorge's stompbox

Taking a different tack when it comes to growth.

One of the “good problems” I think we have is there’s always things to do. As Charlie Kravetz points out, this can be a bad thing too.

I wanted to post this on Planet to get a better feel for what other people think.

I see my own participation in Xubuntu and Ubuntu development slowing down. Too many events, scheduled on top or close to each other, making it impossible to participate easily.

We are either scheduling too many things, or not checking calendars any more. In past years, it was quite easy to attend all the events held and still participate in development testing.

So for certain things I think we’re doing too much, which is why we’ve streamlined some of the IRC workshops to be shorter. However as I thought of a more detailed answer to Charlie’s concern I came up with the answer (I think).

I don’t think we have too many events, in fact, as we grow the number of events will grow, and our community will need to scale to match that. I am starting to realize that it’s not a bad thing that people can’t find the time to participate in everything.

The real problem isn’t that Charlie doesn’t scale, it’s that someone needs to have his back. So perhaps when events do clash we should look at which teams have what coverage in what events. For example, Charlie clearly needs to do ISO testing, but at the same time Xubuntu should have coverage in developer week because it’s really one of the best places to find new contributors that can …. help Charlie do ISO testing. Catch 22.

So maybe from a team level instead of an individual level we should be focusing on finding people who can jump in when a team is overtaxed for a week. For example, in hindsight maybe we could have done a better job helping Charlie find someone to cover developer week for Xubuntu. A forum thread, a planet post, a tweet, a mention on our Facebook page?

These are all things we could do to help the creaking an overburdened person might face. It’s a bummer that one person can’t scale, but at the same time having different people focusing on different individual things will probably be healthier in the long run.

Discuss!