Open Stack

On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Colette Alexander <
colettealexander at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> 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]
>
>
ETA the elusive etherpad link:
[0] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/Leadershiptraining
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