Open Stack

Excerpts from Colette Alexander's message of 2016-03-08 14:34:19 -0800:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 1:37 PM, Doug Hellmann <doug at doughellmann.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > 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?
> >
> 
> it only evolved into much of the TC going because more people than I
> initially expected to based on previous conversations expressed interest in
> being able to attend. The general cost of a single custom-session for a
> group makes it possible to accommodate that larger group (so, having 10-20
> people in an exclusive, not-public session, is within the bounds of
> expected attendance).  No one from the board so far has said they'd be able
> to attend, fwiw, and I've checked with a few of them privately to gauge
> interest, which seems minimal there. I don't think the expectation that
> this is an 'official' or 'required' training is suddenly there, though -
> this will still be intended to be an evaluative session, just one that was
> more conducive, timing-wise, to the schedules of people who expressed
> interest in attending it.

My interest in attending is based solely on the number of other TC
members going. If a majority go, I feel I need to attend to have a good
common frame of reference for future discussions. If only one or two
folks go and prepare some sort of evaluation, I can skip the trip and
only attend a future course if the evaluators recommend it.

> > 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?
> >
> 
> So I laid out some of the questions I think the community could benefit
> from alignment on in the etherpad I started already[0], but one of the
> things that really struck me when talking to various members of the TC and
> the community at large about leadership was how vastly different everyone's
> experience, opinions, and approaches were to the questions I asked (which
> were variations of: "As an elected leader in OpenStack, what do you wish
> you would've had as resources to help you adjust to a leadership position?"
> and "What do you think leaders in OpenStack could benefit from, in terms of
> skillsets that could be strengthened or added via any kind of training?")
> At some points, I had people suggesting to me completely opposite
> definitions for the 'problem' of leadership in OpenStack, suggesting that
> certain skillsets that others wanted training for didn't matter at all, and
> generally realized that maybe we all don't have a great shared definition
> of what leadership skills matter here in the community. Having been
> interacting with the community for a few years  now, I wasn't surprised by
> the diversity of opinions, but I think it does mean that some alignment on
> defining the problem would be worthwhile.
> 
> Hence, the idea that perhaps a small group of existing leadership should
> get together in a room and talk about how to define/agree on the problem
> appropriately, first, before even beginning to think about having the
> conversation to come up with solutions for it. So in many ways, the goals
> or outcomes of this training would be to get more than a few people in
> leadership positions within the community to gather around a shared
> language and understanding of leadership in order to define problems
> collectively and move forward with discussing solutions more broadly. That
> could take so many possible forms, and be so many things, it's almost
> impossible to sort through.

I agree we need to have the conversation and come to some common
understanding. It's not clear that a pre-defined seminar like this
is the best forum for that sort of discussion. Our values should
drive the discussion, rather than those of someone from outside of
our community.

> If you ask me what the 'big goal' of talking about leadership in this
> community is about, I'd say it's about infusing a culture of leadership and
> support for leadership skills and practices in the community that serve its
> members and ultimately provide a more sustainable and humane experience for
> any of the community members who wish to take on leadership positions here.
> To just blatantly copy/paste my case from the etherpad:
> *"As the OpenStack community matures, so too must its support and
> development of its leaders. Many open source movements are not as
> thoroughly democratized as OpenStack, and rely on a Benevolent Dictator for
> Life (BDFL) who is largely responsible for shaping the vision and strategy
> and making ‘product’ decisions for the whole of the project. Without a
> BDFL, many have argued OpenStack will be unable to navigate to product
> maturity. But when one looks back at the last 5 years of growth, it’s very
> apparent that the strength of OpenStack lies in its democracy and community
> diversity - that a reliance on many strong and capable leaders in the
> community is a crucial part of its character and intrinsic to its success.
> Bolstering leadership skills even more through available training and
> resources, and infusing OpenStack’s culture with an emphasis on leadership
> as a core value will only work towards strengthening its democracy."*[0]

I agree with most or all of that. My only issue is with the implicit
assumption that this particular course is the solution.  The questions
you've outlined in the etherpad are all good starting points.
However, I'm not making the connection between the questions, the
answers, and the ZingTrain course.

> > 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 knew about the OSCON leadership summit before drawing up options on the
> etherpad, and I think that attending it would undoubtedly be a great
> addition to the leadership arsenal for any open source contributor.  A
> general summit with non-specific tracks for folks in leadership positions
> in the OpenStack community doesn't seem entirely geared towards solving the
> problem of defining the problem for this community, though. But I *do*
> think that talks there, or even a track there, could be part of something
> that helps grow leadership skills in the community more generally and
> should absolutely be considered.

How does ZingTrain help us solve the problem of defining the problem?

> > 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.
> 
> 
> And I value the feedback here - this was absolutely meant to be a
> discussion including whether anyone cared/wanted to do this/thought it was
> a terrible idea - my counter is that there currently is no cart, and the
> horse is still gestating in a womb, somewhere. It's that
> small/initial/early of a stage. But that is also based on my assessment,
> which I was asked to provide after a few very animated conversations about
> leadership and the community with members of the TC over the last year or
> so.

I'm concerned that we set you off on a course without sufficient prior
thought about what it was we actually wanted to accomplish. ZingTrain
may turn out to be a useful option. Right now sending a bunch of folks
feels like a "well, we have to do *something*" answer to a poorly formed
question, and I think a discussion of our goals should come first.

Doug