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Archive for the ‘Article’ Category


Posted on October 19, 2009 - by jono

Failure as a Springboard to Success

Those lovely people at ZDNet have let me write a guest post about community, and I have contributed an article called Failure as a springboard to success.

The article talks about how if we embrace our failures in our communities, it can help us become better community members, and provides a model for doing so. This is particularly important for leaders. In a nutshell (from the article):

Failure should [also] be embraced in your communities. We admire leaders who are humble, honest and frank, and we grumble about leaders who are defensive and abrasive. Be the former, and your community will love you for it.

If you are involved in a community, I recommend you give it a read. :-)


Posted on September 22, 2009 - by jono

Announcing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: The Lucid Lynx

With Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 now out the door and momentum building towards a rocking Karmic Koala release, it is time to name and share the direction and focus for the next step in the Ubuntu evolution that follows Karmic.

To do this I want to pass on some words from Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu project:

Announcing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: The Lucid Lynx

Two years ago we announced the second LTS release, and what we hoped would become a standard practice of making LTS releases on a predictable two-year schedule, overlayed on our existing six-month schedule of desktop and server releases.

We are now giving a name to the next Ubuntu LTS: The Lucid Lynx.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will ship in April 2010 and is the culmination of significant work in Ubuntu, in Debian and across the free software ecosystem. LTS releases are maintained for five years on the server and three years on the desktop, so they are designed for those who are making larger deployments or who otherwise prefer to have a common platform for an extended period.

Lucid will continue our tradition of focusing an LTS on a quality, stable and consistent experience and will require a number of adjustments to the usual plan. Those are documented at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynxSchedule, the Lucid Lynx release schedule. In summary, we will be more conservative in the new code we bring into Ubuntu during the development cycle, and we will run a longer test period. Our focus will be stabilisation and bug-fixing across the platform with additional refinements in quality in key areas such as user interface improvements, boot experience, browsing and installing the incredible catalogue of software available for Ubuntu, and continuing our tradition of best-of-breed hardware support. We will maintain the health and security of our lynx with point releases.

The Lynx is a predator that depends on very considered tactical positioning for success. It’s a small cat, which fits nicely with the lean nature of Ubuntu on both the desktop and the server. It’s stylish and sleek, the bow-tie-adorned James Bond of the feline set, so you can bet we’ll make sure it’s dressed for the occasion. The lynx likes to keep things in perspective, sticking to high ground. So do we. And it’s the national animal of Macedonia, a country that has deployed tens of thousands of Ubuntu desktops in schools.

Speed is an essential ingredient in the attack of a lynx, and speed remains our goal. We have improved the boot time in each of the releases during this era of Ubuntu, and expect to complete some of the major improvements required for 10 second booting with Lucid. Fully harnessing Upstart, in collaboration with Debian, will get us even closer to the goal.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will be a round dozen Ubuntu releases. 12 great cycles, from a great community that continues to devote itself to the goal of bringing the best stable free software to an audience of people who don’t think of themselves as computer specialists – and shouldn’t have to, either. It’s a wonderful privilege to be part of making it happen. That should put a tuft on your ears.

Mark

Start your engines, friends.

Image is by Tambako the Jaguar available here


Posted on August 12, 2009 - by jono

Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems

Recently I have been thinking a lot about how we can refine and improve how we report problems and issues in the Ubuntu community. I shared some thoughts about this a little while back and I have been talking with many people inside the Ubuntu community, at the Community Leadership Summit, and with our Community Council and Technical Board about how to flesh out a better, more effective, and more visible process. Today I want to share the fruits of these efforts.

Before we continue I want to be clear: this is a work in progress. This is not final, it is not decided and it is not perfect. The process I am about to illustrate is a first shot that we can put into place, and at UDS I am going to schedule some sessions in which we can review and improve on the process.

The idea is simple: we want to have a place in which our community can report a problem with a community processes or infrastructure and ensure the relevant group or governance body can be assigned to tend to the issue, discuss it as part of their regular meetings and otherwise have it on their radar. The way this will work is that problems are reported as bugs in the ubuntu-community project and preferably assigned directly to the right group, otherwise, other people can assign the bug to the right group. What is important here is that we clearly define what kind of problems should be assigned where.

We will then work with our governance bodies to ensure that as part of their work they review these bugs and help to resolve them. I would like to encourage our governance bodies to build these bugs into their work.

The process looks like this:

Step 1: Chose the right place to report the problem

We first need to ensure the right team in the Ubuntu project know about your problem:

  • If your problem relates to general community governance or the Community Council then note down communitycouncil
  • If your problem relates to technical policies or the Technical Board then note down techboard
  • For all other issues you don’t need to note anything down.

Make a note of the team name, we will use in just a moment.

Step 2: Report the problem

You can now provide us with some details of the problem. This involves three simple steps:

  1. Middle click (or press both mouse buttons together) on this link.
  2. You will be first asked for a Summary. Here type in a short and descriptive single-line summary of the problem.
  3. You are next asked if your problem already exists in the system and a list of possible existing problems will be shown. You can click the arrows to show more details about each problem.
    • If one of the problems describes your problem, click the Yes this is the bug I’m trying to report button.
    • If the problem you are reporting is not in the system click the No, I need to report a new bug button.
  4. On next page do the following:
    • Type in some details about the problem in the Further Information box. Try to be as detailed in your description as possible.
    • Click the Extra Options link and in the Assign to box write in the team name you wrote down above. If you didn’t write down a team, or you don’t know it, don’t worry, just leave this box blank.
    • Finally click the Submit bug report button.

When your problem has been filed, you will receive an email with a link to the problem in Launchpad, and you can view that link to see the latest details about the problem.

I have documented this process here and also created two other documents which will help us improve it:

  • Best Practice – much of what I am hoping we can achieve is building best practice around how we handle reported community problems. As an example, in some cases we will want to develop a spec or solution out of problems to help move it forward. Note down areas of best practice on this page.
  • Feedback – opinions and ideas on the process and what does and does not work can be added on this page.

As I said earlier, I am keen that we review this process at UDS and see how well it works.


Posted on August 1, 2009 - by jono

Change For Change

Today I have a little story followed by an idea that I want to share with you all.

A few weeks back I stepped out to go and grab a coffee. I headed over to my local independent coffee shop where I get on well with the owners. Like many small businesses, they have been struggling in the economy and I like to show my support for them, so I am usually in there buying coffee a few times a week. Although they are always chirpy and friendly, they are regularly sharing how they wish things were a little busier. I finished nattering to them and then wandered back home, latte firmly in hand.

Like many towns, mine has a few homeless folks who are kicking around. There are three guys in particular who are always chirpy, respectful and pretty passive to passer-bys and each of which sells those newspapers designed to help homeless people earn some money. On that day I walked passed one of these guys and although he didn’t ask whether I wanted to buy his newspaper, I felt like I wanted to give him something. I grabbed $5 from my wallet and offered it to him. He was absolutely overjoyed. His eyes literally lit up when I handed it to him and he told me he had only earned a few bucks in the last few days and he was so excited. He tried to give me a newspaper, but I wanted him to keep it as I was unlikely to read it. I walked off feeling pretty pokey about making that guy’s day and musing on the fact that such a small contribution in my world could be so huge to his.

Later that day I was getting some laundry together and was emptying out the pockets in my jeans and shorts. In each there was a pocket full of random loose change, not amounting to much –just some pennies, dimes and quarters– and I put them on the dresser table…with the existing pile of loose change. I now had a pile of loose change combined from three smaller piles and I didn’t particularly want to carry it around with me. Then the dots connected. On that day I had experienced (a) a business who wants more people in there (b) local homeless folks who could use some support (c) a big pile of loose change.

This got me thinking of an idea which I have nicknamed Change For Change. It runs a little like this:

  • A local business will choose to be a Change Collector. Up front in there premises and near their till they will have a big plastic jar and some signs that encourage local residents and passer-bys to throw their loose change into to contribute to a local charity or good cause.
  • Said passer-bys and residents will soon know that they can get rid of their lose change there. Some may walk into the business to deposit their change and happen to pick up a product (such as a coffee in my local independent coffee shop).
  • When the change jar is nearly full, the local business will take it to the bank to change it into notes and then donate the money to a local organized charity that helps local people. This charity could be a soup kitchen, support group, library, hospital or whatever else.
  • The final step which I would love to see but I think is essential, would be that they Twitter (or maybe SMS) the gathered amount from the jar and a website will aggregate the total from all the tweets/messages to show a rolling total of all the money going to good local causes as part of the Change For Change scheme.

So that’s the plan. I think it could be incredible to have a scheme such as this in place, and it would be awesome to have a Change Collector in every neighbourhood. Just imagine the opportunities this could bring for local communities. Although I doubt most Change Collectors would be gathering oodles and oodles of cash, I think that the contributions that they do gather for charity could be enough to (a) justify their time and effort in helping a local good cause and (b) have a marked difference to the local community. Just imagine what only $100 gathered in change could mean for a soup kitchen: that could feed quite a few people. Imagine what the change could mean for a local kids charity: that $100 could buy Christmas presents for disadvantaged kids and really put a smile on their faces.

The good news is that I don’t think it would require a huge amount of work to put a plan such as this in place. It would need a website, plenty of positive advocacy to encourage people to set up as Change Collectors, and lots of awareness for people to deposit their change.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time right now to kick off another project, but if someone is excited by the idea and would like to get it into motion, I would be more than happy to weigh in and offer my input and assistance where I could. Whaddya think, Internet friends?


Posted on July 30, 2009 - by jono

On Validation

Today I just wanted to share a few thoughts on a much under-used and sometimes overlooked component in growing great communities: validation.

Every community is an organically grouped bundle of people, many of which spend their free time choosing to be part of that community. With the majority of communities being associative volunteer-based groups, our contributors basically make a decision to sacrifice time with other things in their life to be around our communities. They spend their time away from their families and friends and compelling distractions in the form of video games, movies, restaurants, sports and more to help make our community that little bit more awesome than it was yesterday. In a nutshell, we should never forget the incredible contributions our volunteers make.

Often when we want to improve how our communities work we focus in on the workflow, processeses, governance and other nuts and bolts of how we collaborate together. While important, I think it is important that we don’t lose sight over one of the most fundamental elements in building great community: validate great work.

Every day in each of our communities we see incredible people doing incredible things. These contributions shape the very world in which we live in. They shape the things we click on, the things we listen to, the things we read and the emotions we develop from all of this and other stimulus. With such incredible people doing such incredible things, it is tempting to take a somewhat engineering focused approach to things: to identify areas of improvement, to draft actions and strategy, and to constantly focus on highlighting the to-be-improved as opposed to the to-be-celebrated. While this is important, it is equally important to simply tell people when they are doing a great job. They love it, you feel great for making them feel great and we all get to feel those little hairs on the back of our necks stand on end for a little while.

There are two important things to remember though when validating people. Firstly, there doesn’t need to be a reason. If your brain just randomly notices or remembers that something is great or that someone is doing a great job, go ahead and validate it. We all love validation, and a random piece of validation right out of the blue is often a welcome surprise. In fact, there has been times when I have validated someone’s work and they have responded with “I was having a really shitty day and that was exactly what I needed to pick me up“. We all have shitty days and we all value these pick-me-ups. Secondly, you don’t have to be well known, prominent or a leader to offer validation. Everyone and anyone can validate others: this is not a status thing, it is a human thing. And importantly, those who do lead and guide us need validating too. Irrespective of what we do or what we say, we are all big bags of skin and bones, we all have good and bad times, and we all feel warm and fuzzy and someone says “you know what, I just wanted to tell you I appreciate what you do and keep up the good work“.

So, that is all really. Lets see if each of us can ramp up how much we validate each other. There is so much awesome community work going on, there is certainly plenty to validate. :-)


Posted on June 15, 2009 - by jono

Art Of Community Reviews

Recently I have been sending the completed Art Of Community manuscript out to a number of people who are well respected in various communities to get there feedback on the completed book. Some of these quotes are here. Wow.


Posted on May 8, 2009 - by jono

Art Of Community Update and Pre-Order Available

As some of you will know, I have been writing a book in recent months called The Art Of Community to be published by O’Reilly. The book covers a wide range of topics around building communities including the social science behind community, planning your community growth, communicating clearly, building effective processes, setting up infrastructure, governance, conflict resolution, organising events, how to hire a community manager and more.

Well, its been a while since I provided an update on the project, so here are some nuggets of goodness you.

I started writing the book back in November and I am now nearly complete. Right now I am knee deep in edits and I have merged in all the changes from my editors Andy Oram and Simon St. Laurent. We are also currently in the reviewers phase where The Art Of Community is gently slid under the noses of a diverse set of readers where they can offer comments on grammatical issues, typos, which content works well and not-so-well and other feedback. This merry band of heroes includes Amber Graner, Stephen Walli and Stuart Langridge. Their comments and attention to detail has been superb, and I want to say a huge thankyou for their efforts. I am looking forward to wrapping these final changes before I head off to the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona soon.

I am also pleased to announce that the book is now available for pre-order. Before we finalised the book specs to go out to the retailers, O’Reilly and I had a conversation about the pricing. Originally the book was going to be priced at $39.99 but I felt the price could make the book less accessible to communities with limited funds available who wanted a printed copy. O’Reilly agreed and I am pleased that the book is now available for the more affordable recommended retail price of $29.99. Also, don’t forget that the book will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike Non-Commercial license too. This means that anyone download and read it, but the print edition complete with the expected O’Reilly quality in materials, print and binding will be affordable too. O’Reilly have been stunning over the coarse of these discussions; thanks folks!

So, where can you pre-order it from? Ultimately most good book shops will carry the book but I know that each of the Amazon sites now provides the ablity to pre-order. So, head over to one of the following sites, lay down some wonga and pre-order a solid chunk of community building expertise distilled into an eye-ball friendly fun-fest:

Buying a copy of the book will show your support for the project and send a great message to O’Reilly about (a) publishing books about community and (b) publishing books under a CC license. It will also provide you with chunk of text that requires no batteries, no Kindle, and can be scribbled on with a pencil for easy note-taking! Sounds like a good deal to me. :-)

In addition to this, if you do pre-order it do show off your support for the Art Of Community project and put the following button on your website/blog:

Available in these sizes:

So, there we go. But before I wrap up, I am also looking for some feedback regarding the www.artofcommunityonline.org website and how I can continue to build out its facilities for the needs of readers and those enthuses at building community. Do come along and join in the discussion! :)


Posted on March 26, 2009 - by jono

Painting The Community Manager

Recently the tubes have been ablaze with chatter of where the somewhat popular topic of community management should fit into an organisation. When the coin is flipped, said chatterers have been debating whether to place their bets on either Marketing and Engineering as an apt destination for the reporting line. Do we expect our community managers and representatives to report to the Director Of Marketing or the Chief Technical Officer? More specifically, when you bring a community manager into your organisation, which of these two teams do you feel can most effectively support and enable a community builder to actually build a great community?

In recent months the word community has become quite the buzzword in the Open Source business world. Its presence is felt more and more at conferences, in papers, on blogs and across the current global Twitter sensation. Irrespective of the medium, this explosion of interest in community has happened for three closely interlinked reasons.

  • Firstly, community is implicitly a positive word. It speaks of openness, participation, awareness, and an agreeable intention to engage in an environment driven by merit. For Open Source companies, this is powerful inferred meaning that speaks well to their audience. As such it makes entire sense for a company to light up their website like a Christmas tree with references to “community“.
  • Secondly, community has become synonymous with “engagement in the Open Source space”. Open Source companies are fully aware that if they don’t have an answer for their community relations strategy, they simply won’t be taken seriously by a significant demographic of people. Whereas five years ago this demographic of people was often seen as strange hygienically-challenged bespectacled nerds who lived in their mother’s basement adorned with Buffy The Vampire Slayer posters, it is now well known that those with buying capacity and/or influence are placing importance in the community attributes of Open Source . These are real customers who have developed this value expectation due to the constantly re-enforced Open Source mantra of participation, community and technical quality. When the industry cradles Open Source and its associated values, the big cats in the ecosystem need to adjust to reflect that.
  • Finally, irksome economic times have resulted in very real consequences for small businesses. Executives have been forced to re-assess how they can achieve their goals and ambitions with a more painful awareness of the bottom line. Multiple Marketing and Engineering people can be expensive, a lot more expensive than a Community Manager.

The amalgamation of these attributes has presented a strong commercial justification of community and those who can build it, and a set of expectations around what these community builders can deliver. And here folks, lies the problem.

In every industry certain words that once had reasonably obvious illustrative attributes and consequences have subsequently become colloquial references. We have seen this extensively with trademarks: Aspirin, the Hoover, Cellophane, Thermos and even Heroin were all once trademarked to specific companies (Bayer, Hoover Company, DuPoint, Thermos GmbH and Friedrich Bayer & Co respectively). Using Hoover as an example, in England many people will refer to any brand of vacuum cleaner as a “hoover”. At one point in time a “hoover” though would point to a very specific representation of focus, quality and expectation in a vacuum cleaner that was driven by the Hoover Company. Since then the trademark has been somewhat genericized in different parts of the world and what some refer to as a “hoover” will often bear no actual resemblance to the focus, quality and expectation of a product that would come from the Hoover Company.

Similar risks around mis-guided expectations are arguably facing community managers. We need to be careful that with all of the buzz, focus and excitement around community management that we don’t step over, hide or downplay the very real day to day focus of this work in favour of academically pleasing social science. If we unseat this balance, we face the risk of genericizing community management as “the theory of working with groups of similar interests” as opposed to connecting the term firmly with hands-on best practise in building real communities that do real measurable work.

Recently much of the rhetoric around community has been presented in a generic and somewhat ethereal way. Many people have stood on many stages and many blog entries have been written by even more people that speak to the theoretical, buzz-word entrenched social architecture of community, but unfortunately fall short of the details of how they actually build a community. Of course, this theory and social science is hugely important and I would never wish to demote it’s piece of the picture, but it does represent a piece as opposed to the picture as a whole. The rest of the picture (in the Open Source space) is filled with the nuts and bolts of collaboration.

The essence of great Open Source community is in great collaborative processes, infrastructure and opportunities that help drive a united team of contributors in a shared direction. When your community can get their hands on freely available and powerful tools, simple and non-bureaucratic processes, have a world of great opportunities to contribute to in different, diverse and exiting ways, and have their contributions recognised, a powerful and productive community flourishes.

Getting back to the puzzle that we set out to explore at the start of this post, community management is a tale with both Marketing and Engineering story lines flowing through it. If one is missing, community can feel unbalanced, misrepresented and ineffective. We should always seek to celebrate and market the opportunities and importance of community, but that means nothing if you are not willing to roll up your sleeves and build and re-enforce the collaborative groundwork in your community.

My recommendation for the Open Source businesses uncertain of how to move forward: ensure your community manager is well versed in the mechanics and technical/social foundations of collaboration in Open Source communities and ensure he or she is able to strategically structure and execute on objectives that enable your community on the ground to do great work. Ensure your community manager has a close connection to your technical leaders, but also have a close connection with your marketing department to help them articulate and express your community story.

Tiny Plug: Keep an eye out for my up and coming book on effective community management – the Art Of Community to be published by O’Reilly in Summer.


Posted on January 21, 2009 - by jono

Chill Pill

Many of you will know my general policy for not getting involved in flame-wars and I was not going to comment on this story, but I just wanted to share a few words.

Of course, the story is saddening: a woman bought a computer to do her classwork, it contained Ubuntu, and her expectations were not matched. Thus developed frustration and annoyance with the things that she wanted to do that she couldn’t do. That is both frustrating for her and for us. Fortunately, as we continue to work hard to improve Ubuntu, these problems will be resolved in time, but you know what…life happens…and Ubuntu doesn’t always work for everyone. We just need to learn, move on and improve in that area in the future. Problems are merely opportunities to do better next time: our OS is young, and there is plenty of time for us to rub off the rough edges. These may not be rough technical edges: in this story the problem seems to have been in the hands of setting expectations around the technology, be it in Ubuntu or with the hardware provider.

What saddens me more is the attitude of some members of our community. Some were rude, derogatory and in some cases offensive to the woman in question. Unfortunately, in some cases vitriol replaced reason in some commentators.

Our community is one built on communication. It is how we share ideas and problems and their respective implementations and solution. Communication is the river that flows inside our own community and out to our users. When we compromise our communication, we compromise our community.

There is simply no excuse to be rude and offensive, and when someone paints Ubuntu in a bad light, it doesn’t justify it This is not about “unbelievers” or “freedom haters”, it is about basic respect. Sure, it is annoying when people rag on Ubuntu, and in some cases even inaccurate. What is worse is to insult our users: irrespective of their actions. Not everyone is well versed in Ubuntu, its capabilities and what it can provide. Not everyone knows how to navigate our desktop, and people are going to make mistakes that many of us would be embarrassed to make. Irrespective of the criticism or carping, we are made of strong stuff. Lets take the criticism and instead use our efforts to fix problems and make Ubuntu better for everyone.

I am so proud of everything we are doing in our community, but these kinds of situations let the side down. We all get frustrated, but lets keep the positive energy flowing, and continue to kick arse and take names at every possible opportunity. :)


Posted on January 14, 2009 - by jono

The Art Of Community

Today I am proud as punch to announce the Art Of Community.

A while back I was approached by Andy Oram, a senior editor at O’Reilly to write a definitive book about how to grow, build and energise a community. This book will be called the Art Of Community.

The book covers a wide range of topics designed to build strong community. This includes the structure and social economy behind community, building effective and easy to use infrastructure, setting up community processes, creating buzz and excitement, governance, conflict resolution, scalability and more.

This book is much more than merely a textbook on building a compelling community. I believe that we learn how to build strong community through the exchange of stories and experiences. We all have great insight into community. These stories are illustrative vessels for important lessons and subtleties in how great communities work. The Art Of Community is a compendium of stories, anecdotes and experiences inside and outside the Open Source world. These stories illustrate the many concepts scattered throughout the book, and many of these stories will include some of you reading this and your projects.

I am currently part-way through the writing process, and we have an expected release date this summer.

The release of Art Of Community is actually rather exciting. The book will be available in two forms.

  • Firstly, there will be a normal printed copy available to buy. This will be available from the usual places you can buy O’Reilly books.
  • Secondly, The book will also be available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. This provides everyone with the opportunity to share, modify and re-use the content.

O’Reilly has my utmost respect for embracing the Creative Commons. This is a great opportunity for O’Reilly, Creative Commons content and community building.

In addition to the announcement, I am also pleased to announce a website devoted to the book over at www.artofcommunityonline.org.

The website will feature updates, sneak peeks of the content, profiles of the topics and stories in the book, profiles of the editors and proof readers and more. I am really keen to hear your stories and experiences, and there will be plenty of opportunities to get involved in the discussion. Also, when we release the book, the top ten posters with the most number of comments on the articles there will get a free signed printed copy of the book.

So, exciting times. Lots of work, but exciting times nonetheless. Lets get rolling…

DIGG