Fedora Board Recap 2009-01-20

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then start by answering your own question.  Fedora's goals, it's mission,
> and it's plan are driven by it's community[1].  Not by the Board, and with all
> respect to our excellent leader, not by the FPL.
>
> So, what do you want that plan to be?
>
> josh
>
> [1] And by community, I mean everyone that contributes to it regardless of
> employer.


A suggestion..... straight from my interactions in a local brick and
mortar non-profit group over the past couple of months.  Run a set of
organized mission, vision, values, belief exercises with a core group
of 20 to 30 project leaders and empower those people to come to a
consensus on messaging and to frame a vision for the project 3 years
out.

The specific exercises  we are did in my brick and mortar non-profit
will not directly apply  (of course). We committed a solid 20 hours on
a single weekend to do most of the activities based around a fast
networking format as described here:
http://www.squarewheels.com/scottswriting/mission.html

I went in extremely skyptical because it was obvious going in that
there were a lot of differences of opinions as to what direction the
org is going in.  And came out of the process I was actually pretty
amazed that it went as smoothly as it did and that leaders were
individually willing to let go of their own ideas as to what the org's
priorities are and were willing to invest into what the obvious
repeated themes where in the fast networking exercises.

Part of that success was the skill of the outside facilitator. There
were moments when people expressed their ownership of an idea somewhat
emotionally, and having a skilled outside facilitator there helped
work through those moments.  Part of the success was that the
attendees were pre-identified as community leadership in the org who
were willing to give up their entire weekend to craft direction (and
committed to susequently meet for follow up meetings of normal length
as well).

Now of course, my local org doesn't scale to Fedora in terms of
logistics. Fedora can't get the right 30 leaders into a face-to-face
room at a conference center across town and have them break up into
table teams of 5 or 6 people. At least not without significant
expense. So this sort of approach would have to be adapted.   But I
think its a good approach for the type of problem Mike is struggling
with.  I wish I thought I had the skills to facilitate this sort of
thing, but I know I do not.

-jef