Find-a-task 2.0

[Ian Weisser]

Some great issues raised.

We discussed some of these issues back at UOS Nov 2015.

I have no data, nor even any anecdotes, that *any* current Ubuntu
volunteer has found their place (or any pace) in the community using
Find-a-Task. If you know of any, I'd love to know about it.

I also have no data on how many page hits F-a-T gets each month, though
that should be easy for Canonical IS to tell us. I have recorded only a
few instances of a guru or mentor recommending a new user to try F-a-T.

I have heard anecdotes of a couple teams updating their information
with F-a-T, but when I look at the roles and (especially) at the team
landing pages, I see little change over the past year. Seems to me that
teams are uninterested in using F-a-T.

My analysis: Gurus aren't referring to F-a-T, and teams aren't ready to
receive new members from F-a-T. 

So I see two possibilities: F-a-T is the wrong solution to the
underlying problem (declining active volunteers), or F-a-T is an
ineffective solution to that problem.

The solution of adding more structure to F-a-T leans toward the latter,
that F-a-T can be improved and become useful. I'll happily help improve
F-a-T; it makes people in our community happy to build software and to
bring structure to chaos...even though I still don't think it will
help.

You see, I lean the other direction. I have for a long time. The
problem we had in late 2014 (and still seem to have) was declining
number of active volunteers. That's not a technical problem. That's a
leadership problem.

I think we can grow the number of active volunteers, without F-a-T,
without another new tool to write, without yet another mentoring
program. It's not difficult.

Cheers,

Ian