Open Stack

Excerpts from Colette Alexander's message of 2016-03-01 14:41:01 -0800:
> Hello Stackers,
> 
> This is the continuation of an ongoing conversation within the TC about
> encouraging the growth of leadership skills within the community that began
> just after the Mitaka summit last year[1]. After being asked by lifeless to
> do a bit of research and discussing needs/wants re: leadership directly
> with TC members, I made some suggestions on an etherpad[2], and was then
> asked to go find out about funding possibilities.
> 
> tl;dr - If you're a member of the TC or the Board and would like to attend
> Leadership Training at ZingTrain in Ann Arbor, please get back to me ASAP
> with your contact info and preferred timing/dates for this two-day training
> - also, please let me know whether April 20/21 (or April 21/22) would
> specifically work for you or not.

As I understood it when this course was originally proposed, the
idea was to have a few folks already in leadership positions go
take the training and evaluate it. Then, assuming the evaluation
was good, we would offer it to (or at least suggest it to) other
members of the community like PTLs or folks interested in running
for leadership positions of some sort (not that folks who aren't
elected can't be leaders, but one step at a time).

How did that evolve into most of the TC (and Board?) going? Did
someone do that evaluation already?

I've already expressed my skepticism of the idea of a business
leadership class, and this specific class, being useful to us. I
did so privately because I am willing to listen to the feedback
from folks that do attend and I haven't really been involved in the
planning aside from being asked to be part of the small group doing
an initial evaluation.  But now if we're gearing up to send a large
group to I feel it's necessary to say something publicly.

Do we have a set of goals for the outcome of having folks take a
"leadership" course? Do we have specific issues we would like to
address through changes in leadership style? Does this course cover
them?

The etherpad [1] doesn't discuss any other alternatives that were
evaluated and rejected. Were any other options considered? In
particular, how does this course compare to an event such as the
Community Leadership Summit[2], for which all of the participants
are other open source contributors, rather than small business
owners/managers?

I appreciate the effort you've gone into so far, and the Foundation
for offering to cover some of the costs, but I think we're putting
the cart before the horse.

Doug

[1] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/Leadershiptraining
[2] http://www.communityleadershipsummit.com


> 
> 
> Longer version:
> Mark Collier and the Foundation have graciously offered to cover the costs
> of training for a two-day session at ZingTrain in Ann Arbor  - this
> includes the cost of breakfast/lunch for two days as well as two full
> working-days of seminars. Attendees would be responsible for their own
> travel, lodging, and incidental expenses beyond that (hopefully picked up
> by your employer who sees this as an amazing opportunity for your career
> growth). Currently, I've heard the week before the Austin Summit suggested
> by more than one person coming in from out of the country as preferred
> dates, but we've not committed to anything yet, so here might be a great
> time and place to hash that out among interested parties. ZingTrain has
> suggested a cap of ~20 people on the course, but that's not totally firm,
> so it's possible to add more if more are interested, or we could hold two
> separate two-day sessions to accommodate overflow. My ideal mix of people
> include those who are really excited by the idea of training, and those who
> are are seriously skeptical of any leadership training at all. In fact, if
> you've been to leadership training before and have found it to be terrible
> and awful, I think your input would be most valuable on this one. My
> summary of reasoning behind the 'why' of ZingTrain can be found on the
> etherpad I already mentioned[2]. Also, did I mention, the food will be
> amazing? It will be[3].
> 
> Some complications: the week before the Newton Summit there will be a set
> of incoming TC members (elected in early April) and likely some TC members
> who will be outgoing. Some possible solutions: we can certainly push back
> training til post-Summit when we can have a set of the 'new' TC, or we can
> sign up anyone interested currently, and allow a limited number of newly
> elected folks who are interested sign on as the election is finished. I
> certainly welcome any thoughts on that.
> 
> A note about starting out with the TC/Board for training: this initiative
> began as a set of conversations about leadership as a whole in the entire
> OpenStack community, so the intent with limiting to TC/Board here is not
> exclusion, merely finding the right place to start. My proposal with the TC
> begins with them, because the leadership conversation within OpenStack
> began with them, and the goals of training are really to help them talk
> about defining the issue/problem collectively, within a space designed to
> help people do that.
> 
> If you have any questions at all, please feel free to ping me on IRC
> (gothicmindfood) or ask them here.
> 
> Thanks everyone!
> 
> -colette
> 
> 
> [1]
> http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/tc/2015/tc.2015-11-03-20.07.log.html
> [2] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/Leadershiptraining
> [3] http://www.zingermansdeli.com/