Becoming Effective

[Jono Bacon]

On 8 February 2012 10:35, Allison Randal <allison at lohutok.net> wrote:
> On 02/08/2012 10:20 AM, Stéphane Graber wrote:
>>
>> Not too want to sound too harsh but it feels like to me, that the 30
>> minutes/1 hour or so people on the ARB could spend helping with the
>> queue has instead be used to read long e-mail discussions lately.

Maybe this is part of the challenge that 30mins/1hr a week is too
little for performing this work and keeping the queue in shape?

>> I definitely don't have any issue with the Community team trying to help
>> the ARB, I just want to state what some people have been telling me in
>> private. Flooding the members with information, wiki pages, e-mails, ...
>> is not the right way to help us.

My apologies if these contributions from my team seem excessive; that
was not the intention. This work has been intended to help get the ARB
process and queue in shape - I don't personally feel that we have been
bureaucratic in that goal; we have focused on important things to do:
reducing bottlenecks and putting together a regular queue review.
While the discussions have resulted in long emails, I don't believe
that the issues have been unimportant issues that are not worth
discussing.

I do agree though that many members of the ARB may have little
interest in the policy issues and just want to focus on the reviews.
Maybe we need to discuss process issues elsewhere or highlight them
differently on the list?

>> At this point, making sure the Software-Center in Ubuntu 11.10 works
>> properly with MyApps, getting our MyApps issues prioritized and fixed
>> sounds to me like our main priorities.
>>
>> Spending hours discussing processes is fine when we have time, like at
>> UDS (and even so, just 1 or 2 sessions please!) but for the rest, you
>> have to realize members are spending some of their limited free time on
>> the ARB and that can either be spent in reading/answering long
>> discussions or on getting stuff done.
>
> I have to agree. The stream of emails lately are not only unhelpful, the
> negativity is actually killing motivation. I really appreciate the
> interest from your Community Team, Jono, but the ARB is not managed by
> your team. If you have a problem with our work, please take it up with
> the TB or CC. Otherwise, please leave us alone so we can focus on
> catching up on the queue.

Apologies if this work is making the board feel negative; the
intention is to help the ARB be successful and enjoy their work. I
agree that the ARB is not managed by my team, but my team's
responsibility is to help our community be successful and help our
governing boards over humps. I believe that the ARB is in a hump: we
are not seeing app dev submissions going through in a timely manner,
so this falls under the purview of how my team can help.

I created and codified the ARB review process with Rick Spencer and
presented this for review at UDS, but since then my team has not been
involved much in evolving and helping the ARB. Since the formation of
the ARB we have seen interest from app devs with plenty of submissions
but few apps getting through. As such, there are clearly issues, and
since we have been participating at Budapest, content has started
going through with a series of very popular lenses. As such, I feel we
are already starting to see the fruits of these long emails. :-)

I am not saying that our participation isn't annoying (we are annoying
at times :-) ), but I do believe we need to ask some uncomfortable
questions and bring some urgency that maybe isn't present within the
team. In terms of "leaving you alone"; I would be more than happy to
step away and work on other things, but we are still seeing extensive
lag time in submissions get through the queue (or be rejected) so I
feel we should be here to help.

In terms of taking this to the TB/CC...I don't want to go to the TB/CC
without first working with the ARB to help resolve the issues; I think
that would be disrespectful to the ARB.

   Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org
www.identi.ca/jonobacon www.twitter.com/jonobacon