The Community Working Group needs you?

Hi folks,

Our Community Working Group has dwindled a bit, and some of our members have work that keeps them away from doing CWG work. So it is time to put out another call for volunteers.

The KDE community is growing, which is wonderful. In spite of that growth, we have less "police" type work to do these days. This leaves us more time to make positive efforts to keep the community healthy, and foster dialog and creativity within our teams.

One thing I've noticed is that listowners, IRC channel operators and forum moderators are doing an excellent job of keeping our communication channels friendly, welcoming and all-around helpful. Each of these leadership roles is crucial to keeping the community healthy.

Also, the effort to create the KDE Manifesto has adjusted KDE infrastructure to be directly and consciously supporting community values. The commitments section is particularly helpful.

Please write us at Community-wg@kde.org if you would like to become a part of our community gardening work.

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.

Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong

Wow, what a book title: Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong, by Zac Bissonnette. I heard the author talk about his book on the Tavis Smiley radio show earlier, and it made me think about Jonathan Haidt's point about how people have wonderful advice for others, even when they themselves seem unable to follow it.

That got me thinking about some recent discussions, arguments and even fights in the KDE community in the past few months. Some arguments are exciting. You hear the deep thinking, the examination and presentation of fresh points of view, and hear people thinking together. This is what we want for every conversation! But sometimes instead, you hear criticism, to which the reaction is defensiveness. This is painful to watch, as both (or all) sides are injured, and their hurt is being ignored.

What makes the difference? It seems to me what is lacking in the second scenario is trust. Haidt advises asking people for their advice and judgement about you, and listening with an open mind and heart.  That is rather hard to do when it is your project that is being measured and criticized. Yet it is critical to success, because we often literally cannot see flaws in our processes and products that others can see quite clearly.

One thing that has bothered me for years in the whole FLOSS movement is the attitude towards users, as "lusers." I know that started out as a pun, but it seems to me that it correctly labels the orientation that developers often have. Good projects have people who use bug reports, critical blog posts and complaints on the lists, forums and IRC as feedback, in order to not just fix crashes, but to make their product better. Projects in trouble make it difficult to file bugs, or simply ignore them, and rather than viewing criticism as feedback, interpret it as a personal attack.

Unfortunately, I am seeing this defensive attitude far too often lately in KDE. This can happen within teams, when someone proposes a new idea, and then others shoot it down. I don't mean they dispute the idea, or propose a different alternative, but rather state the criticism in a take-no-prisoners way. I've also seen this after a release, when an aspect of the new application or feature is criticized by users. Rather than collaborating with the reporters, to make the application or feature better, the discussion is framed as a war by both sides. In other words, "KDE developers are dictators" vs. "KDE users/distributions/packagers hate progress".

Guess what? Wars aren't productive of good software, and are destructive to every combatant and even those within earshot. Fortunately, later I heard Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Pixar and Disney animation, about managing creative people and his new book Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way Of True Inspiration. Catmull gives the credit for the success of Pixar to an open, nurturing work environment. I think we need to focus on this more in our community. It should be safe for anyone to talk to anybody. According to Catmull, at Pixar they assume that any movie is crap when they start out. But somewhere in the idea is some spark that can become great. He says,

I've spent nearly forty years thinking about how to help smart, ambitious people work effectively with one another. The way I see it, my job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it....The thesis of this book is that there are many blocks to creativity, but there are active steps we can take to protect the creative process....identifying these destructive forces isn't merely a philosophical exercise. It is a crucial, central mission.

He used a term I love, candor. He says that creating a safe space where people can fully express their thoughts and feelings is key to keeping creativity flowing. Of course I'm going to read this book! Here is the interview (11 minutes): kuow.org/post/president-pixar-and-disney-animation-fostering-creativity.

We already have the Team Health Check which can be found here: permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.plasma/19755. I'll use Catmull's book to look again at that team tool, and see if it can be improved.

For now, I hope that before any of us speaks or writes, we'll think about our choice of words. Candor is crucial. Remember though, that feedback can be framed as helpful information, or as an attack. You might mean your feedback as helpful, but can it be read as harsh criticism? If so, please edit before publishing. Developers, think about how to invite candor, by asking others for their honest feedback. Welcome reports of problems, bug reports, and respond in a collaborative way. If you need someone to triage bugs to keep sane, ask for that help! Everything you can do to lower the barriers to honest criticism, the better your work products will be.

Catalyst Leadership

I read a list post thread tonight that saddened me. I won't say what community it is part of, or point out the participants, because it is far too common in many of our community meeting places, whether they be lists, IRC or forums. Stereotypes are used rather than names here.

Newperson speaks up, I think for the first time, wondering when a new project result will be put to use, and offering a possible sample.

Longtime Devel speaks up, using rather angry questions about how the old symbol came to be displaced.

Another Oldtimer speaks up defending the symbol, accusing Longtime Devel of being out of touch.

And on. And on. The listowners don't redirect the discussion, and when questions are asked, they are answered angrily.

Newperson probably has departed by this point.

This seems like a small occurrence, but it is bad for every single participant, and each bystander has the power to change the conversation at each point.

This blog is a call for each of us to think about our power to influence the community spaces we inhabit, to exercise leadership, to become a catalyst for dialog, to open up trust. When I was first asked to become an IRC channel operator, I was asked to read the Freenode Philosopy: Catalysts. Whether or not you use IRC, I recommend reading this page to change your thinking about how you interact with others in your free software project. In fact, these ways of thinking about personal interaction would transform business, education and politics if put into wide use.

We know that bullying in schools can be brought to a stop by bystanders who show the courage to immediately speak up on behalf of the victim, and walk away from the confrontation. While I don't want to label those who use abusive language as bullies, we can transform tense situations in similar ways by speaking up in a positive, calm manner, as outlined in the Catalyst page.

Labeling people as trolls doesn't defuse the situation, or create an atmosphere of trust and dialog.

Please folks, if you are in an IRC channel, on a list, or help out on a forum: read the Catalyst page, and remind yourself often to be the change you want to see in the world. You don't need to be an op, a listowner, or a moderator, to be a leader; bloom where you are! Our Codes of Conduct aren't bludgeons to be used against evildoers; rather they are guides to our everyday interaction with one another.

The water we swim in

Healthy relationships. I've been thinking about them not in my personal life, but in terms of teams in free software. When I first began contributing, it was within a team creating an application (Amarok), so rather small. Then I became active in Ubuntu-Women, which is larger, but still not huge. Then Kubuntu, then the larger Ubuntu community, and now KDE, which is truly enormous.

In all of these projects, communication and trust are paramount. Dialog which fosters creativity and progress is only possible when people enlarge their trust in one another. Along the way to the highest trust levels, many barriers will come down, as people allow them. Sometimes these barriers are invisible, until someone points them out.

I thought I'd seen a cartoon illustrating this story, but a web search tells me it's a story by David Foster Wallace:

Two young fish meet an older fish, who asks them “How’s the water?” The younger fish look at each other and say, “What the hell is water?”

I was reminded of this story recently while observing the various reactions to the removal of the Community link on Ubuntu.com, the portal to the Ubuntu project. The link is coming back, so I'm not complaining. However, what I've noticed is that most of the people discussing the issue seem to be talking past the folks they are hoping to connect with. The emotions expressed range from puzzlement, to shock and outrage, with little understanding on the other "side" on the perceptions causing these reactions.

So how is the water? To me, the drama played out completely predictably, because any time you have one company selling a product, and volunteers working in that same project, you will have class issues, and class is like the water fish swim in. People are often not aware of it, and thus have difficulty dealing with their emotions around it, because they have been taught to ignore it, or even that it doesn't exist. So when the designers removed the link, it was felt as a slap to the face of community members, while the designers see it as just a step to a clean, functional design. The conversation about this change at the recent vUDS clearly betrays this lack of understanding of the other on all sides. http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-1305/meeting/21740/community-1305-ubuntu-website-planning/

There is no such thing as a culture without class. There are always power imbalances, and privileges. However, that doesn't mean that class is the death of the Ubuntu project, or that volunteers and companies can't happily co-exist. They can, but the fact of class must be acknowledged, and those with privilege and power must realize what they have, and use them on behalf of the project.

A healthy culture has hierarchy, but not one based on domination. In fact, in FOSS that is part of what we are attempting to dislodge, right? We want our hierarchies to be constructed for function, not to rule over us. For instance, those who demonstrate their skill in packaging or coding are given the right to upload to the repositories. And those who grant them that right are those who already have built their reputations by using their skill and trustworthiness in that domain.

Recently there has been a breakdown -- or an apparent breakdown -- in that hierarchy of function in Ubuntu. And I think that both those inside Canonical and those outside, perceive that the other is the one causing that break. So, some repair is needed.

All of our differences can be overcome as we build (or re-build) trust. However, all sides of the issue will need to think about, process emotion about, and finally discuss openly what has gone on. The replacement of the Community link alone will not mend this breach, nor will brief virtual UDS sessions. In fact, I think the lack of in-person face-to-face interaction is allowing this divide to grow.

Folks, we don't want resentment and suspicion to grow, so we are all going to need to work on this if the Ubuntu project is going to continue to thrive as a free software enterprise. In my opinion, thinking about and discussing class issues are fundamental to that effort.

This blog appears on the Linuxchix, KDE and Ubuntu planets, and these issues of class appear in all teams. Health and progress are the goal, and honest dialog is the means. I propose we look one another in the eye and start a conversation. These are difficult dialogs, but our health is at stake.