Street Team Community Middle Ground
Recently I have been taking my new talk around various conferences. Entitled *Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants: The Coming Of The Linux Desktop*, it discusses the different elements involved in desktop success and us achieving the so called *year of the Linux desktop*. At one point in the presentation I talk about how it is tempting to consider the Open Source community as a great example of community in action. Although we are without a shadow of a doubt a successful, impactive community, we are by no means *typical*.
Most community is *consumer* orientated – it is a collection of people united by an interest, a band, a book, a movie or something else. Take Trekkies (Star Trek fans) for example – they are a group of people who feel like they belong in an environment that has a primary unifying connection. This connection is clearly Star Trek, and possibly putting brown Play-Doh on your forehead and wearing over-sized shoulder pads. The Open Source community is different. We are not consumers, but *creators*. Our community actually builds things that the rest of the community uses, and this brings in a whole raft of complex interactions that would keep boffins at MIT amused for years. This kind of community is a web of modelling elements – just take each volunteer and their set of needs, requirements, concerns and opportunities, and then put hundreds of thousands of them in the same communication medium and all of the group interaction theory that applies, and then factor in project management issues of getting people on the same page to achieve a consistent outcome – it is a huge bag of variables, interactions and nuances in not just how people work together but how they achieve things. It is temping to be seduced into thinking that our hugely successful community, which is changing the shape of IT is typical; it is successful, but by no means *typical*.
A few months back I started my new [Severed Fifth](https://www.severedfifth.com/) free culture project, and one of the core aims of the project is to build a Street Team community around the project that can go out and help communicate the ideals, values and aims of the project and free culture. At first I thought it was going to be a relatively cut-and-shut community building task – get people excited about the project, document what needs to be done, provide some materials and direction, and build some buzz. Interestingly though, this community is architecturally unusual. Here we are blurring the lines further between the Trekkies and the Open Source brigade. In this particular community the volunteers are not so much primary creators (they are not producing the music), but they are not purely consumers. The Severed Fifth Street Team is instead an unusual blend of the two – people in the project are creating materials that are designed for the purpose of the Street Team – to go out and make it easier to communicate the project. Take James Tait as an example – he wanted to produce a flyer that could be used t o put up in his local music shops, skate parks etc, and thus Cory K contributed and made a flyer which we now have on the [Street Team Materials Page](https://www.severedfifth.com/streetteam/materials.php). This is a new and different kind of community for me – it is a different blend.
But, this is all part and parcel of why Severed Fifth excites me. It is not just about recording some music and trying to see how far I can take it with the free culture approach, it is also about learning all of these different nuances in how an artist needs to build buzz, awareness and growth around his or her project. I would love to hear your thoughts on how to build the best possible Street Team community.
Severed Fifth Licensing
You know what? I hate licensing. Sure, it is a necessary evil, but I prefer to spend my time on doing things as opposed to licensing things.
Despite this, licensing is a key element of [Severed Fifth](https://www.severedfifth.com/) and I went through quite a mental journey to finalise the choice of the [Creative Commons Sampling Plus](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/) license. I wrote up a short essay on this which you can read [here](https://www.severedfifth.com/blog/2008/07/licensing-severed-fifth-101/).
Also, a few other Severed Fifth tidbits:
* The [second sneak peek](https://www.severedfifth.com/news/2008/07/second-sneak-peek-availble/) of the album is available. 🙂
* Thanks to Brad Nelson who is going to be getting the [Severed Fifth Facebook Group](https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60451700536) in shape.
* The first official Severed Fifth t-shirt is ready and I will be opening the store soon.
Lots more is going on on…more details soon.
LugRadio Live UK 2009 Confirmed
For those of you who were not at LugRadio Live UK 2008, I am pleased to announce that after a last-minute change of heart, there will be a LugRadio Live in the UK in 2009.
Now, some of you may be claiming this was all a big PR stunt, but I am afraid you credit us with too much intelligence. 🙂 Basically Aq and I had a conversation on the Friday before LRL about whether we should do another year, largely fuelled by the excitement that was building. Then we went to the pre-LRL party and got inundated with requests for another year.
So, the following day, on the first day of LRL, the four presenters went to a Starbucks and we had a quick meeting to discuss it and decided that we thought it would be doable to do another show next year. Much of the reason for agreeing to organise another show is that LRL really is a unique atmosphere – there is simply nothing that matches it, and the idea of never having that atmosphere again was a sad prospect. We also had a huge amount of support and help – with nearly 30 crew and a core team of 5 or so organisers, it all came together nicely.
Oh, and to clarify, we are still final in our decision to stop doing the podcast – there won’t be any more normal LugRadio shows, but there will be a live recording at next year’s LugRadio Live UK 2009.
So…bring on LugRadio Live UK 2009!
Resource Fetishism
Its funny how the same approximate process seems to happen for many communities, and sub-communities in projects. It happens a little like this:
* A new team forms from a small group of enthusiasts.
* They create a raft of resources – version control, repositories, mailing lists, IRC channels, bug trackers, councils, forums etc.
* A discussion happens on the new mailing list about which website CMS to use.
* The discussion lasts approximately a month. There are many opinions. Bickering ensues. It turns into a Drupal vs. WordPress war.
* Two months pass, little has been achieved other than yet more CMS arguments archived to the Internet.
The problem here is a lack of focus on what is important – building a team.
Every community that forms needs resources. It needs facilities and tools that people can use to achieve the goals they set for the project. But when starting a new project, there is so much excitement and anticipation, and this combined with the freedom to create resources easily, means that a lot of unnecessary tools and facilities get set up. In these cases, the focus is taken away from the intended goals of the project, and is instead dialed into debates about these tools and implementations. The problem is that too many tools and resources can actually be detrimental to a project.
Lets look at mailing lists as an example. Pretty much every project needs a mailing list. It is typically the primary medium for communication. But even with just mailing lists there is a strong temptation to not just create a single list such as *myproject-devel* but to also create *myproject-discuss*, *myproject-announce*, *myproject-users*, *myproject-commits* etc. Hey, if you set up a mailman server, you may as well make use of it and create a bunch of lists, right?
The same temptation can occur with forums. So many projects go out and set up a phpBB forum on a server somewhere and instead of creating a single forum, they produce 10 different forums – *General Discussion*, *Feature Ideas*, *Technical Problems*, *Announcements*, *Offtopic* etc. Hey, if you go to the time and effort of setting up a phpBB server, why not have a large array of forums – other sites do, why not yours?
And herein lies the problem, my trigger-happy friends. Just because you have the ability to create more than one mailing list, more than one forum, more than one VCS, more than one bug tracker or more than one anything else, does not mean it makes sense for your project to do so.
The reason why it is a problem is that it *fragments your community*.
The hardest element in building a community is gaining critical mass. The first order of business with new communities is to get them up and running, with a regular flow of traffic and development. You want your community to feel busy, thriving and productive. The reason why such tool-fetishism seems to happen is because it is assumed that to achieve the *regular flow of development* part of your community, you need a strong set of tools available. Wrong. You need the *appropriate* tools and some strong guidance, focus and direction. This direction can only be achieved when you have all the eyes in your project looking in the same place – and when you have 5 mailing lists, 10 forums and a bunch of other distractions, your project loses focus, and problems set in. As such, I recommend that you have one primary medium of discussion (such as one mailing list), one primary web-page, and only the required resources for getting your project under-way (e.g. bug tracking and a (D)VCS).
Of course, this is not to say that multiple lists and forums are not useful – they are. But every project has a life-cycle, and the time for these additional lists and forums are when the project is mature, running and productive. The primary focus in the critical opening few weeks should be on growing a team, not growing a mailing list archive.
Earlier in this post I referenced another element of tool fetishism – debates over CMSs. I see this time and time again with communities, and in the Ubuntu LoCo team world I recommend all teams to simply create pages on wiki.ubuntu.com and get started there. CMSs are nothing more than a distraction when teams get started. The focus and discussion in the first two weeks should not be about arguing about which CMS to use – it merely distracts away from the core purpose of building a team. Sure, people need to jot things down somewhere online, and people need to be pointed at a page about the team, but a wiki is perfectly suitable for this. A wiki may not be as sexy as a CMS, but an inactive team is the pure definition of “not sexy”.
So, the rule of thumb in this post is – when starting a new Open Source project, keep your eyes on the prize and your efforts focused on building a team, and don’t be tempted by these distractions. I can assure you it will put your team in better stead.
On Governance
One of the primary functions of a community manager is to put governance in place where it is appropriate to help your community run effectively. *Governance* is a funny ‘ol word though, and everyone has their interpretation of what exactly it means, to what extent it should be used and how required it is. Like any kind of community work though, there is no hard and fast rulebook about how things work – good judgement is the best method of determining exactly how your community should be governed.
The problem is that that *bad governance* can really bugger up a community. The concept of governance itself is to put in place processes and rules that are universally understood and accepted by the community in an effort to establish a semblance of control and guidance of the community and its growth. Get it right and your community feels well run, not restricted by bottlenecks and effective to growth. Get it wrong and it feels like a bleedin’ great ship that is impossible to turn around.
The problem is that governance can very quickly turn into bureaucracy if you are not carefull. Bureaucracy is simply *governance that refuses to change, despite a better method of governance becoming available*. If you put rules in place and refuse to change them because *they are the rules*, your community gets bound in red tape and will heartily suck for all involved.
Again, it all really comes down to common sense and a measured approach. A few things to bear in mind when considering the formation of constitutions, councils, mandates and other governance hop-scotch:
* Not every community needs a council.
* Setting up a council for the sake of having a council is a bad idea. Having a council does not make your community look any better, more mature or better equipped to do its work.
* Before setting up a council, justify its existence. Justify what problems it will solve and what it seeks to achieve.
* *Always* regularly re-assess the processes and effectiveness of your governance. Things change, community change, people change…and so will the effectiveness of your governance.
Also, one final note. One of the most wonderful elements of Open Source is the diversity of people it brings along. However, Open Source also has its fair share of Civil Servants who get a kick out of councils, constitutions, boards, elections and what-not. While these people can be useful, and many have the right intentions and balance, beware those who believe that governance is important just for the sake of having governance – invariably this can result in Civil Servant death-matches where there is a fight for power, and the real people who actually care about doing interesting work in the community just get to sit there and watch a pointless power struggle. The best governance is invisible – it just exists and helps cool people to do cool things.
Just my 0.2c.
LugRadio Live This Weekend!
This weekend is [LugRadio Live UK 2008](https://www.lugradio.org/live) at The Lighthouse Media Center in Wolverhampton. The weekend looks a little like this:
* Friday – 8pm – LugRadio Party @ The Hogs Head, Stafford St
* Saturday – 10.30am – LugRadio Live UK Day 1 doors open @ The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer Street, Wovlerhampton
* Saturday – 5pm – Recording of the last ever LugRadio show!
* Saturday – 8pm – LugRadio Party @ The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton
* Sunday – 10.30am – LugRadio Live UK Day 2 doors open @ The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton
25+ speakers. 20+ exhibitors. LAN gaming. Free swag. Great community atmosphere. £5.
Bring it on. 🙂
Severed Fifth Updates
Just wanted to give a quick update on [Severed Fifth](https://www.severedfifth.com/) and some of the work going on in the project:
* Recording is going well. The vast majority of the music is tracked, I just need to finish up vocals. Go and see studio reports [1](https://www.severedfifth.com/blog/2008/06/studio-report-1/) [2](https://www.severedfifth.com/blog/2008/06/studio-report-2-shredding-time/) and [3](https://www.severedfifth.com/blog/2008/07/studio-report-3/) for more details. I think things are sounding pretty damn meaty right now. I can’t wait to get it out there.
* I am about to start a travelling spree for a five weeks, in which I will not be able to record vocals. As such, I plan on releasing a bunch of sneak peaks of the songs each week to show you how things are sounding.
* The [Severed Fifth Street Team](https://www.severedfifth.com/streetteam/) has [kicked off](https://mail.severedfifth.com/pipermail/severedfifth-streetteam/2008-June/000000.html), and it is great to see some representation across the world. I am excited to see how we can take the Open Source methodology and apply it to music. We have some great people on board, and I can’t wait to see what is possible. Come and join up the street team help make the new music economy happen. 🙂
* After a significant amount of time thinking about licensing, I have decided on a [Creative Commons Sampling Plus](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/) license for my music. This license satisfies a bunch of the things that are important to me. I am happy for people to share the music, remix it and play with it as much as they like both commercially and non-commercially, but I felt uncomfortable with people selling the music as-is, even with attribution. The reason for this is that Severed Fifth is there to explore different methods of generating revenue, and I feel it is reasonable for an artist to have sole rights to sell their music commercially. However, I did not want to prohibit other artists taking my music, mashing it up and selling their work. This license strikes that balance perfectly.
* Speaking of licensing, I have written up the [Severed Fifth Licensing Page](https://www.severedfifth.com/licensing/). With the page I did not just want to make it a boring page full of legal terms – I wanted it to be a page that gives useful information about what people can actually do with the content. I would love any feedback from you about how to make the page not only useful for explaining rights and restrictions, but also inspiring people to use the content in interesting ways.
Finally, I had my first piece of Severed Fifth Merchandise come through. I ordered some high quality gloss stickers which I plan on selling on the store, but will also bring along to conferences to give some out. If you are at [LugRadio Live UK 2008](https://www.lugradio.org/live), GUADEC, OSCON or DebConf come and ask for one. They look like this:
Rock and roll. 🙂
UDS In December and MOTU Vid
A few bits of Ubuntu news for you all.
Firstly, I am pleased to announce the next Ubuntu Developer Summit which will take place from **Monday 8th – Friday 12th December 2008** at Google in Mountain View in California. We wanted to get the dates up ASAP so you can begin booking time in your calendar. We were at Google a few years ago for a UDS and it was excellent, and we expecting this to be a busy and productive UDS. Oh, and the food is incredible, but that is documented well enough already. Seriously though, reserve those dates in your diary. We will have more details about registering your attendance soon. 🙂
See the [Ubuntu Developer Summit Wiki Page](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS) for more details.
Secondly, I uploaded another video to the [Ubuntu Developer Channel](https://www.youtube.com/ubuntudevelopers). In this video Daniel shows you how to patch a package; a common skill used in Ubuntu packaging.
*Can’t see the video? [Click Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAxFpKBG-bU).*
We have one more video left in this collection of Learning MOTU videos which I will put online in a week or so.
Thanks
*Wow*. That is the only way of describing how we all feel in the LugRadio team regarding the response to Monday’s news that we are [wrapping up LugRadio](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?p=1208). I have been, in a word, *stunned* at the incredibly generous and kind comments that we have been receiving. It was incredible to see so many comments on that blog entry, as well as [Aq’s](https://www.kryogenix.org/days/2008/06/30/the-end-of-lugradio) write-up, the LugRadio [forums thread](https://forums.lugradio.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4216) that announced the news, and the mountain of email to the show email address.
I have read every one of those comments, posts and emails and I am stunned at the incredibly kind things people have been saying. Some of the things that people have said have really made us all feel incredibly proud of the show. I love the fact that many of you said that LugRadio helped you get enthused about free software and the community, and many of you said that you feel part of something with LugRadio. A long time ago, Bruno, a LugRadio community regular said “*LugRadio is my LUG*”; it seems he is not alone in that sentiment based on many of the messages we have received.
So with all the thanks we have received and well-wishes for the future, I want to use this as an opportunity to say thanks to every one of you too. As some of you will know, I am rather fond of communities, and I am incredibly proud of the LugRadio community. It has demonstrated all the traits of a good community; it is a friendly, welcoming environment, and one that has never been short of people enthusiastic about getting involved. Heck, the foundation of LugRadio is a testament to this, with every single show being mirrored by a large number of contributors – this was a conscious decision that we made from day one to help make the show possible, and low-and-behold the community once again stood up and helped. Not only that, but had community contributions with sys-admin work, the planet, the facts database, the clan, the forums, the IRC channel, at LugRadio Live, with ideas for the show, emails and more.
There is though one little story though which I would like to share with you that really demonstrated to me what the LugRadio community is capable of. Back when we were organising LugRadio Live 2006, we spent months preparing for the event. It was twice the size of 2005, two days instead of one, three stages instead of two with more talk slots, had far more activities and events going on and involved a lot more coordination, sponsorship and more. We worked our respective arses off to get everything in shape, and the community was psyched up about it. People had booked flights from all over the world to attend, hotels were reserved and we were a few weeks away from the big weekend. Then, one evening while doing some recording, I logged onto the LugRadio Forums from my studio computer and noticed a comment that a rail strike was scheduled for the weekend of LugRadio Live. Crap. I can safely say that in 28 years of being on this planet, I have never been so angry as I was in that moment, and was fuming at not only the incompetence of the people who run the rail network but also the union deciding to throw their toys out the proverbial pram. Who the hell did they think they were? Did they not consider other people who rely on the rail network? Were they aware of how disruptive this was going to be? I stood there and envisaged all of our hard work slowly going down the drain as people could not get to LugRadio Live.
In all the commotion, the LugRadio community…unasked…and unprompted, jumped right into action and started organising car sharing, investigating alternatives and getting a plan in place. Discussions happened, wiki pages were created, capacity was developed. We even had someone volunteer to pay or a nationwide coach service out of his own pocket. When I went to work at OpenAdvantage the following day with a black cloud hovering over my head, I was touched by just how much the community had pulled together. In my mind, this is the definition of what this is all about – we are all coming together to not only do incredibly cool things with technology, culture and new perspectives, but there is a noticeable atmosphere of people looking out for each other. The greatest communities in the world are not just places where you feel empowered, they are places in which other people empower you.
…oh and for the curious, the conclusion of this tale was that when I got into OpenAdvantage that day I called the rail network officials and the union and gave them equal doses of my derision. Fortunately, said strike was called off and everyone lived happily ever after. I even shaved off that insane beard at that LugRadio Live. Retrospectively, that was a deeply wise move. 🙂
So in conclusion, thanks everyone for everything you have been saying to us, we really do appreciate it. 🙂
## Come to LugRadio Live UK 2008 for one last shindig
So everyone, with the show wrapping up, you absolutely, utterly have to come along to [LugRadio Live UK 2008](https://www.lugradio.org/live) on the 19th and 20th July 2008 for our farewell LugRadio Live. Of course, its not just our last recording of a show – there will be three stages of speakers, a full exhibition, parties and other fun for the weekend. Its only a few weeks away, so get booked into a hotel and come and join us. 🙂
Mum and Dad
My Dad has had something of an interesting life. When he was very young, he was part of a large family that didn’t have a lot. He struggled at school and suffered some health problems as a kid, but his determination and enterprising nature lead him through a maze of interesting little adventures. When he was younger, despite becoming the scathe of the small Northern local town’s officials due to trying to resolve some dangerous safety problems at a local factory, he went on to prove himself as a local councillor and subsequently became mayor of the town. He went on to run a nightclub, car retail businesses, become an executive running a collection of car retail outlets in Lancashire, became a hypnotherapist, lead a multimedia project to produce interactive motor-trade kiosks as well as one of the UK’s first motor-trade websites, then retired and bought and run a country pub, campaigned and succeeded to change the law regarding women’s rights in working mens clubs, and he now has a seat as a local magistrate and runs an antiques company with my mum who trained as a master restorer and has been rated as one of the top restorers in England. Most recently he was accepted for admission into Cambridge University to pursue his lifelong love of Criminology and Law, and yesterday he received his first grade on his course and was in the top 15% of the course. His sense of grounding and background made him a touch antsy about how he would fare in his first assessment (remembering he has not been to University before, and he is at *Cambridge* of all places), and he stormed it.
It is common for a dad to be proud of his kids, but I am hugely proud of my dad. Part of me is proud of his patchwork of achievements and his diversity in life over the years, particularly from such humble beginnings, but I am mainly proud of who he is as a human being. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, deeply committed to his family, has told my mum he loves her every day for 28 years, and has a strong belief in working hard but also playing hard. He strikes the perfect balance in terms of being motivated and career minded, maintaining a strong and loving relationship with his wife and kids, and always retaining a grounded sense of reality. Both of my parents are funny, engaging, wise and inspiring.
He and my mum have been incredibly supportive at every point in my life – both in terms of my career and my personal life. They have always been supportive of every element of what makes me who I am – my work, my music, my viewpoints and my choices. They are my template for the perfect relationship, and they are a significant inspiration in the values that I hold important in the world. Mum, Dad, I love you both and I am incredibly proud of you. 🙂