Looking at thewetware
Understanding stakeholders for succesful communities
Miguel Cornejo Castro fOSSa 2011, Lyon
November 26th 2011 [email protected]
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MacuariumLabs community action research
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Evolution: closed communities into conversation spaces
MacuariumLabs community action research
Wetware is what defines OSS
• The code itself is agnostic. The difference is how it gets built, and why. The relationship between the software and the wetware.
• There is a pesky, irreverent, egotistic, creative, rather wonderful thing between the keyboard and the chair. Mostly water. And let's not mention users. Not corporate sponsors. Nor the wider ecosystem.
• Most often, OSS is the result (and the driving cause) of a healthy community. But communities take so many different shapes. And are so fissiparous.
• "I don't expect wetware to work as logically as software". Orson Scott Card, "Speaker for the dead".
• Allogical? Illogical? Really?
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Community and your project• Communities as people and conversations and something else. The channel and tools are
(sort of) irrelevant.
• When the project is just you…
– … “the community” is a friend and some geeky early users.
• When you’ve got a product…
– … “the community” helps you make it useful.
• When you’re established…
– “the community” is the engine and main channel of the value-adding ecosystem.
• When you’re staid (or when you least expect it)…
– “the community” breaks apart and walks out on you.
• When you think the community just takes care of itself...
– "the community" fails and your dream project falters.
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Sponsor. Core.
Power contributors. Ecosystem.
Dev community. User community.
Community?
Owner. Manager. Member.
Conversation space.
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Wetware is a host of stakeholders
• The sponsor. In one way or another.
• The (original or current) vision leader.
• The trusted, involved core.
• The wider, variegated contributors.
• The (hopefully many) ecosystem units that add some value.
• The end users, more or less unlettered.
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Different stakeholders, different reasons• For the individual coder it may be a job, but in the aggregate it's volunteer work.
– Even when paid, most in the community work at it because they want it. Beyond the core, it’s often quite close to volunteer work.
– Logical, driven, (usually) product of many hands and minds: the tool you build because you want to use it… and no two uses are alike.
• For the sponsor, OSS may not be (only and necessarily) a religion…
– It can just be a business strategy to level the technological field or make prevalent your standard (Apple’s work with Konqueror or -sort of- FaceTime)
– It can be just a business estratega to facilitate access to the technology at the lowest cost, so you can build an early user base of future upgraders (Alfresco, OpenBravo…).
– It can be just a business strategy to make your professional services widely known to custom-development prospects (mySQL in Oracle).
– It can just be a business strategy to cheaply build a base of customers you can sell services to (Auttomatic with wordpress.com, and so many others).
• And the ecosystem is another WIIFM planet.
• Any which way, it needs a community. And if it doesn’t, it gets one anyhow. Pesky things, communities..
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Alignment, alignment, alignment
• Just what are we building?
– The goal, and the philosophy. Either share or don’t join. Needs to be clear.
• What are we doing it for?
– The reasons driving us and paying our hours. Need to be compatible.
• How are we doing the work?
– Dev methods, processes, tools. Some are religions. Need to share a core creed.
• Who is in charge, at each level?
– And why? And to what extent? And how well? Remind me about the mission thing.
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Affinity, competence, firepower... Servant leadership for the wetware
• Negotiate, choose, drive competition.
• Shared? My dream?
– Motivation stems from shared decisions. Not just absent leadership. You need your people to reliably do the boring useful tasks too. You need them to share the big idea.
• Your creature, your call?
– Decide what you want to decide upon. And remember that what you set free, you can't control.
• Participation?
– Or delegation. Or implicit trust. No contribution without representation (you can get it, but motivation, innovation and quality will not be the same).
• Changing course?
– Beware the fork. Watch you traction. In short, listen. And be ready to lose excess weight rather than a clear focus.
• Are manners important?
– With brain workers? Every day.
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Affinity, competence, firepower: The alogical wetware
• Are we divided?
– Separate work groups set agendas and see things differently.
• Are we compatible?
– Some people just can’t get along. Even engineers.
• Do we share a vision?
– Whatever our reasons, are we seeking the same creature? With a passion?
• Are the gurus properly packaged?
– The OS worker has a right to be heard. A silenced contributor is halfway a mutineer.
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You work for yourself, yes, but if you want scale...
• Do you know your users and their priorities?
• The creator of Wordpress was a Drupal early user and community member. He left because Drupal gave no priority to ease of use. Now, Drupal is spending so many hours building ease of use back in.
• Are you talking to them?
• The survival of an OS tool (and even of SAP) depends on its being useful to users at every level. That depends on support: the user community.
• Who is keeping an eye on the end users?
• The kind of collaborator who can drive a user community is not the one who can code best. It's the user wrangler. And they're delicate beasts.
• And it' not in one place: it makes up a "conversational space". Not a sigle space.
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Mind the ecosystem... and the sponsor
• They're involved for a sound business reason. And they contribute along their own needs.
• They need the project to be a certain way (from licensing to features), expect to be heard, and measure results.
• They can switch horses... or directly fork (Konqueror to WebKit).
• They're useful: they wield lots of brain hours.
• They are usually needed to make the project useful tp the wider public.
• They (especially the main sponsor) feel entitled.
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Contributor: representation, appreciation,
participation... And vision.
Ecosystem: quality, WIIIFM, business
strategies.
End user: features, support quality.
In short: many types of wetware, different motivations and expectation
Core: mission, vision, power, togetherness.
Sponsor: pragmatic measurable goals
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More on this point of view
http://emekaeme.wordpress.com/publicaciones
and please let me know your experiences:
Miguel Cornejo [email protected]
Managing partner
MacuariumLabs is a project of Macuarium Network
http://www.macuarium.com/foro
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