Open Stack

> On Sep 4, 2019, at 3:35 PM, Kendall Nelson <kennelson11 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> - Talking to each other. I really honestly think just talking to one another could help too. When you find yourself in a conversation with someone about how unmotivated they are because they have a ton of work to do. You might offer to take something off their plate. Or help them see maybe they need to not take on anything new till some other work gets wrapped up. We are a community that succeeds together, so if you see someone burning themselves out do what you can to help lighten their load (helping directly is great, but there are plenty of other people in our community that you could call on to help too). Hopefully goes without saying, but don't burn yourself out trying to help someone else either. 

I would take this a step further, and remind everyone in leadership positions that your job is not to do things *for* anyone, but to enable others to do things *for themselves*. Open source is based on collaboration, and ensuring there is a healthy space for that collaboration is your responsibility. You are neither a free workforce nor a charity. By all means, you should help people to achieve their goals in a reasonable way by reducing barriers, simplifying processes, and making tools reusable. But do not for a minute believe that you have to do it all for them, even if you think they have a great idea. Make sure you say “yes, you should do that” more often than “yes, I will do that."

Doug