Emotional Maturity and Free / Open Source communities

12 Signs of emotional maturity has an excellent list of the characteristics we look for in FOSS team members -- and traits I want to strengthen in my Self.

1. Flexibility - So necessary. The only constant is change, so survival dictates flexibility.

 2. Responsibility - Carthage Buckley, the author of 12 Signs of emotional maturity says:

You take responsibility for your own life. You understand that your current circumstances are a result of the decisions you have taken up to now. When something goes wrong, you do not rush to blame others. You identify what you can do differently the next time and develop a plan to implement these changes.

The world is a mirror. Sometimes when things go wrong, I mistake what I see as caused by some malevolent force, or even someone being stupid. The human brain is designed to keep us from recognizing our own errors and mistakes, unfortunately. So I need to remember to take responsibility, and seek out evidence of personal shortcomings, in order to improve.

I want my team members to do the same! When someone has caused a mess, I want them to take responsibility, and clean up. I want to learn to more often do the same.

 3. Vision trumps knowledge - If I have a dream and desire, I can get the knowledge I need. Whereas a body of knowledge, by itself, doesn't make anything happen.

Good marketing sells the sizzle, not the steak. In other words, make people hungry, and they will buy your steak. Tell them how great it is, and they'll go somewhere they can smell steak! When working in my team, I need to remember this.

4. Personal growth - A priority every day. Who wants to be around stagnant people?

5. Seek alternative views - This one is so difficult, and so important. The hugely expanded media choices available to people now leads to many of us never interacting with people who disagree with us, or have a different perspective. This leads to groupthink, and even disaster. One way to prevent this in teams is to value diversity, and recruit with diversity as a goal. 

 6. Non-judgmental - Another hard one. Those who seek out alternative views, will more easily recognize how different we all can be, while all being of worth. And when we focus on shared goals rather than positions, we can continue to make shared progress towards those goals.

 7. Resilience - Stuff happens. When it does, we all can learn to pick up, dust off, and get going again. This doesn't mean denying that stuff happens; rather it means accepting that and continuing on anyway.

8. A calm demeanor - I think this results from resilience. Freaking out just wastes time and energy, and gets me further off-balance. Better to breathe a bit, and continue on my way.

 9. Realistic optimism - I love this word pair. Seeing that a glass is half-full, rather than half-empty is a habit, and habits can be created. Bad habits can be changed. Buckley says that success requires effort and patience. Your goals are worth effort and patience, creativity, and perseverance.

10. Approachable - Again, a choice. If I'm open to others, they will feel free to offer their help, encouragement or even warnings. If seeking alternative views is a value, then being approachable is one way to get those views.

11. Self-belief - I think this can be carried too far, but if we've looked for alternative views and perspectives, and created a plan with those views in mind, then criticism will not stop progress. When our goals are deeply desired, we can be flexible in details, and yet continue progress towards the ultimate destination.

12. Humor - Laughter and joy are signs that you are healthy and on your right path. The teams I want to work with are those full of humor, laughter and joy.

PS: I was unable to work the wonderful new word bafulates into this blog post, to my regret. Please accept my apologies.

Intentional community

This blog is generally seen in the planets for Ubuntu, KDE, and Linuxchix. These are all FOSS intentional communities, by which I mean that the founders and members form a community to in which they can create. I found Linuxchix first (thanks, Megan!), and I loved how welcomed I was, although I was still at the time using Windows. How many linux channels welcome an mIRC user? The longer I hung out there, the more I learned, and the more I was impressed by all the different work the community members were doing out in the greater FOSS world. I also loved that it was women and men working together to make FOSS a better place for women.

When I ended up using Kubuntu (after trying Mandrake and then Gentoo, and GNOME/Ubuntu), some of the Ubuntu Women members welcomed me onto Freenode. When I found that that freenode was where the Amarok team hung out as well, I added the server to my Konversation server list. Members of both of those teams made me welcome, taught me some of the Freenode quirks, and I learned a bit more about how Linux is made. Lots of teams, loads of projects, each with their own culture and ways of working. Because Ubuntu and KDE both have a Code of Conduct, I felt somewhat safe, although I had heard lots of horror stories about linux channels on freenode and elsewhere. After experiencing some quite frightening attacks in the Linuxchix channels, I learned how resilient a community can be, and how creative security can be -- even fun.

So, codes of conduct. In the wake of the recent controversy following PyCon, one of my friends said that they imply that all men are assholes. This surprised me. Linuxchix has two rules: Be polite. Be helpful. All people are expected to follow them; I see the rules as intentional community. We want polite and helpful resources, so those are the rules for everyone. The Ubuntu CoC has grown a bit through the years, but is still phrased positively: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/conduct. I prefer the old shorter one, but both are focused on creating a helpful, respectful community.

I like the KDE CoC a lot. Once I found it, I felt much better about becoming involved. It reminded me very much of the simple Linuxchix rules.

This Code of Conduct presents a summary of the shared values and “common sense” thinking in our community. The basic social ingredients that hold our project together include:

• Be considerate 

• Be respectful 

• Be collaborative 

• Be pragmatic 

• Support others in the community 

• Get support from others in the community -- quoted from http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/ 

In my opinion, there is nothing in any of these codes or rules that blames men, or is negative. They paint a picture of a place where we want to work, and hang out with friends afterwards. I'm an older woman as the name of this blog implies, and I don't want to pretend to be a guy to collaborate without hassle. I want to be myself, and be welcomed for the skills and passion I bring. I also want more women and other minorities to feel welcome. A boy's club is not welcoming, and linux has that reputation. Too often well deserved.

So I ask each of my readers, what do you want? Is your behavior creating what you want? This is not aimed at men, by the way. All of us create our culture together, intentionally or not. I hope we will more consciously make our community the most pleasant, welcoming and creative in all of FOSS.

[Note on PyCon: The entire controversy has left me feeling sick. Congratulations are in order to the conference staff and leadership, who conducted themselves well. Yet they now have this mess connected to their fine conference, rather than good memories. There are no winners here, from what I can see. Since I didn't attend, and am not part of that community, no comments on PyCon itself or the controversy will be published here.]

LoCo Teams in the Natty Cycle

Still trying to organize my thoughts after the UDS in Orlando. While the election results are distracting, I think it's important to analyze what lies ahead, and get moving before the holidays hit.

Washington Team
1. We need to hold leadership elections, and transfer power over the Launchpad team to the leadership.

2. We need to begin scheduling and hold regular meetings, even if they are only in IRC.

3. We need to get the official logbot in our #ubuntu-us-wa channel on Freenode. Linda is requesting that, so I hope it will happen soon.

4. We need to look at the calendar and plan some Team events, so advance planning can take place.

5. We need to figure out how to get monthly reports done monthly, so that we can get approval!

In the discussion about increasing diversity in the Ubuntu Community, Pici posted a great link, which might be helpful in how we conduct our LoCo team: http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml


Ubuntu Community Local Teams
There are some exciting plans ahead. Some of them (from Ubuntu LoCo Council Items for the Natty Cycle):

* Community leaders to sign the Leadership Code of Conduct in Launchpad

* Team Re-approvals from the LoCo Directory instead of wiki pages

* Move content from the wiki to the LoCo Directory

* Standard Team Re-approval form

* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoGettingApproved

* Standards for teams, a set of guidelines: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Standards

* Update the standard Application to include Team reports and give more details

* Enforce the team naming standards [this can't happen soon enough, IMO]

PS: May 9-13 UDS-O, Budapest! Lay your plans now. :-)