Ubuntu Council and supporting Phil

Tue Aug 20 18:11:02 UTC 2013

Hi :)  
Ok, i think we get too caught-up in looking for a single leader when other groups and organisations are struggling to reduce their hierarchy to be flatter.  How about aiming to be a co-operative instead?  

One of the problems with having a single leader is if they go off on holiday or leave (lets not tempt fate too much!).  With a co-operative a number of people are in control and can make decisions on-the-spot within pre-determined (or just sensible) limits.  Typically small co-ops have maybe 6 people in control.  Larger co-ops tend to find that about 6 people remain informed enough to take decisions but other people welcome to join in meetings, have their say and vote.  With larger co-ops there also tends to be smaller splinter groups, like departments, such as Finance, Maintenance, Marketing and so on.  

Each working group / splinter group / department might have between 1 to 6 people that can just get on with the work and report back to the main group sometimes in some regular, formalised way but often (at the start) just when they need reassurance that they are doing the right thing.  Again everyone is welcome at their 'meetings'/discussions too so "reporting back" sometimes seems a bit irrelevant as everyone already knows but the act of reporting can help clarify issues and bring focus.  

Higher-level decisions need to be taken by the main group, perhaps voted on (like all the +1s we have been getting).  Traditionally one of the problems of group decisions is speed but that is largely solved already just by having a mailing list like this one.  As the list grows it might be wise to formalise some policies by writing them down.  

The main thing to watch out for is to avoid getting bogged down in discussions and just make voting fairly swift.  While it's nice to get unanimous decisions it's not always worth the effort.  Just getting support from enough +1s should give people confidence that they are doing the right thing but it's also good to see a little disagreement to make sure that people have considered alternatives rather than just being sheeple.   

Regards from 
Tom :)  


>________________________________
> From: Doug Smythies <dsmythies at telus.net>
>To: 'Ubuntu' <ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com> 
>Sent: Monday, 19 August 2013, 1:51
>Subject: RE: Ubuntu Council and supporting Phil
> 
>
>
>On 2013.08.18 11:34 Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph
>> On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Tom Davies <tomdavies04 at yahoo.co.uk>
>wrote:
>>> I think we got too caught-up in the idea of needing a single leader.  At
>the
>>> moment people seem to be doing good work without even having a formal
>>> leader.
>
>> I certainly agree that progress is being made without a single leader.
>> My specific concern at the meeting here is due to the fact that
>> currently the Community Council is the owner of the team in Launchpad.
>> That means the CC gets all bug reports, and all kinds of doc-related
>> things that we don't necessarily want to see because we're a
>> governance body that is just holding the keys to the team until
>> someone else can take them.
>
>> The other option is doing something like creating a doc team owners
>> team in launchpad that for now includes, say, Benjamin and Doug. Then
>> assign this team as owner instead of the CC. Then we don't need a
>> single strong leader to own the team and we reduce the ever-present
>> hit-by-a-bus risk of having a single leader as team owner.
>
>I thought we had a transition plan, that was already partly implemented.
>Benjamin, Kevin, and myself were made administrators of the doc committers
>group. The doc committers group "owns" the doc contributors group, so that
>part is done. And doesn't that mean that us three also have "keys" to
>the team?
>
>Now, we should not confuse "administrator" with "leader".
>
>Will a clear single leader emerge? We can only hope, but myself I doubt
>it. I think the overall doc-team encompasses to much for any one person.
>Just as we are attempting to improve and update the various "how-to"
>pages for doc contributors, we need to improve, update, and create
>various "how-to" pages for doc committers. For example, Peter Matulis
>and I have created and are editing and updating the serverguide
>committer page [1], based on a generic committers page started by
>Matthew East [2], with the objective that everything a serverguide
>specific committer does in a cycle is written down. This goes
>specifically to the "hit-by-a-bus" point, as that is exactly the
>scenario we are attempting to cover.
>
>Elizabeth: In my opinion, if the CC wants, it could remove itself from
>the doc-committer team right now. However, and since your are already
>acting as the liaison, maybe it would make sense for you to stay on as
>a doc-committer admin for as long as you want. It means you would still
>get the tons of e-mails, but at least the entire CC wouldn't.
>
>... Doug
>
>[1]
>https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/SystemDocumentation/Repository/Mem
>bers-Serverguide
>[2]
>https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/SystemDocumentation/Repository/Mem
>bers
>
>
>
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>ubuntu-doc mailing list
>ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
>https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc
>
>
>
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