The Silent Summit
by Christian Scholz on February 10, 2008
The Plone Strategic Planning Summit is now going into it’s 3rd day and many wonder what actually is happening there. They don’t know because nearly nothing yet has been communicated in any way. There is a #psps IRC channel where nothing is happening, there is the Plone Planet where nothing is posted. The only activity towards the outside world was once on the PSPS mailing list (which though is more meant for the participants) in the form of Elevator pitch like Plone descriptions.
I think this is not good, not good for the summit and not good for community and consensus building around it. If people have the feeling they are left out then it’s very unlikely that they will understand much of what the summit decided upon and why they did it (even if it’s not decisions but thoughts/visions). There was lots of conversation before the actual summit but now it totally stopped. This maybe natural because all the participants now have lots of other people around them to discuss these things but it’s also a bit sad because they seem to forget the rest of the world. Some people seemed to have annoyed by this fact already.
I am sure there will be at least some (probably also extensive) reports after the meeting but in general with any event it is very important (and with the summit which wants to “speak” for the community) to communicate also during the meeting. Thus my point in my wishlist about setting time aside just for communicating with the rest of the world.
So for me this is one point which should definitely be improved next time. And if you are at the summit please blog/post/twitter/ustream/talk about it! (some few tweets at least here).
Technorati Tags: psps, plone, summit, community
9 comments
I don't disagree with you at all. I'm confident that the silence isn't really intentional, but considering that the decisions made have the potential to affect so many people who couldn't be there, and the need to achieve buy-in from the broader community, it probably would have been wise to go overboard in providing real-time transparency. I wish somebody (or several people) had live-blogged the summit. That said, I'm quite excited to find out what the group talked about.
It does seem the first significant report has been posted by Seth Gottleib at http://contenthere.blogspot.com/2008/02/plone-str…
by Scott Paley on 10.2.2008 at 17:06. #
I also don't think it's intentional but I think it was to be expected. Thus I think there should have been more encouragement to blog about it and some timeslot reserved for it.
Of course I am also looking forward to what thoughts they collected. Thanks for the link, just commented there :-)
by Christian Scholz on 10.2.2008 at 17:44. #
One major reason for the silence is that the facilitators wanted everyone to stay away from their computers so that they could focus their attention at participating. The room we were in has no tables and chairs and no real place to set up a laptop. After the sessions (which were all very busy) people went out to eat and drink together. The only reason why I had an opportunity to post was that there was little else to do 5,000 feet in the air on my way back home :)
by Seth Gottlieb on 11.2.2008 at 01:17. #
That's why I proposed to set a timeslot for communicating. That way you can have sessions without distraction but still can tell those who cannot be part of it what actually is going on (and maybe get feedback).
by Christian Scholz on 11.2.2008 at 01:43. #
There are three reasons why you haven't heard much:
1) Almost no-one has had a chance to open their laptop since Friday (that's right, there were virtually no laptops used at the summit, we worked more or less all waking hours and socialised in the evening)
2) We're totally exhausted :-)
3) Much of what we did was to frame problems and brainstorm solutions, and the tangible outputs only really materialised this morning (Sunday)
There is a very clear communication strategy and we have promised to spank people who don't actually follow up with their responsibilities to communicate. I think you'll see the dev list swamped with proposals, thoughts, discussion points and much more in the next few days. We have a large number of people who are being held accountable for reporting on specific aspects, generate excitement and gather the community's input and opinions. You may come to regret asking for more information. ;-)
Martin
by Martin Aspeli on 11.2.2008 at 06:52. #
I am definitely looking forward to that and also hope that it's not only on the dev-list happening (e.g. planet.plone.org would also be a good place and I hope everybody has their comments enabled by now ;-) ).
by Christian Scholz on 11.2.2008 at 17:08. #
Personally, I consider a huge sign of success that people came together and spent the entire time engaged in face-to-face interaction, conversation and discussion, rather than plugged into their laptops, typing on IRC.
We documented everything, and will be publishing it over the next few days. The conversations we started in Mountain View will now continue online and around the world.
by Jon Stahl on 11.2.2008 at 21:22. #
I also see this as success but as said before I also would like to have at least some sign of life here and there (like in predefined timeslots for communicating with the rest of the world like an afternoon hour. I wasn't talking about being constantly online).
Anyway, looking forward to what see what you have been discussing!
by Christian Scholz on 11.2.2008 at 21:27. #
[...] heard not so much about it during the summit [...]
by Plone Update #1 — mrtopf.de on 16.2.2008 at 16:37. #