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→SLOBs position statement
== SLOBs position statement ==
== SLOBs position statement ==
''I don't particularly have a position statement, but here are some materials you may find helpful in figuring out what I'm likely to bring to the table.''
=== Goal ===
I want to be a SLOB so that I'll never have to be a SLOB again. The work I ''really'' want to do its capacity building within the Sugar Labs community, bringing new volunteers in and up to speed. In order to do that, Sugar Labs has to be at a point where more new volunteers ''can'' come in and get up to speed - right now it's a struggle for even experienced contributors to simultaneously keep up with what's going on, contribute in the way they want to help, ''and'' have a life outside of Sugar Labs (it was barely manageable when I was volunteering more-than-full-time at the start of 2009).
Ultimately, I want to run merrily through the jungle with troops of new recruits, showing them trees and vines and berries, introducing them to people who can teach them about birds and fish and hut-building. But the paths aren't clear for running yet; someone's got to take a machete and get the underbrush out of the way. I'm willing to serve a year or two in the SLOBs Machete-Wielding Corps, hacking slowly through thorns, aching to run all the while, because I know it's what will eventually give me and many others clear routes to sprint full-tilt-ahead at where we want to go.
=== Deciding to run ===
After a lot of internal debate, a few long conversations, and a hard look at the calendar/project-list clearing I'd have to do, I've decided to run for SLOBs, because I think that's where my limited time for SL (and it ''is'' limited) can best be spent. (I was previously in "mehhh, I'll put my name here as a placeholder and decide later" mode, but now I'm just going to go for it full-tilt.)
I'll have to give up my dream of dabbling in various bits of Sugar code for fun (it's slowly becoming apparent to me that I may never be primarily a coder again), and I'll have to apply a serious amount of discipline towards staying in the loop consistently, which has been tough as my schedule's fluctuated and I've started to travel for work (YAY!). But I think that's a fair tradeoff if it makes me more able to blast blockers out of the way of other people - including my future self, who'll be a lot more effective at SL recruiting once a framework to capacity-build atop has been put more solidly in place.
Someone's got to do the non-shiny gruntwork, and the project management and capacity-building-fu I've been learning in Fedora for the past few months seem like skills SL could use at this stage in its growth.
Challenges I can foresee:
* consistently clearing the time to make SL stuff happen. I know that if it isn't on my schedule, I will probably not do it, so I'll need to schedule SL in and stick to it.
* having the discipline to make sure the SLOBs todo list stays up to date and on track, if needed... ;)
* bias - my history with OLPC and current ties with Fedora mean that I will have to be very conscious of the ways this might affect my positions on some topics, and excuse myself when needed.
* restraining my tendency to want to make everything transparent Right Away, without squelching or diminishing that tendency - defaulting to open is a great setting to have, but "default" does not mean "the only option," and I still struggle to balance this desire with prudence and practicality.
* not getting distracted by shiny stuff. I'm pretty sure SLOBs will take up most of my "SL time," so making sure SLOBs stuff gets done first will take more of that "discipline" stuff I've been practicing...
=== On consensus ===
No matter what happens, we'll be able to improvise and get through it okay; SL people are good people and smart people and stuff is going to work eventually. The question is, what values of $work and $eventually are we willing to accept?
It's like having a fire drill in school. It's not that everyone wouldn't be able to get out on their own, given sufficient time. I mean, everyone is generally pretty smart, and tries to get away from fire. But because in a fire, time is precious, and people get panicked, and you can't just "get out eventually," you need to get out NOW, you have a fire drill, so everyone goes "okay, this is how it would work," and it turns into more of a known factor; you know how all the pieces would coordinate ahead of time.
So I think SL could use more "fire drill" procedures, since... at some point, we may need to make a decision that we can't wait for a 5-week, 300-email thread consensus on. I think such decisions will be exceedingly rare. I'd like to have insurance that we know what we will do with them. I'd like to guide SL through the process of thinking some of these scenarios through ahead of time so that if they ever happen, we'll already have frontloaded the community consensus process, and can just proceed.
== Interests ==
== Interests ==