Now, I'm not saying we all start airing our dirty laundry for the entire internet to see. Any group of passionate people will have internal conflicts.
However, there has been recent activity, primarily related to the planning of DrupalCamp Chicago, that has been occurring in IRC and Basecamp. While both tools are valuable, they severely limit participation of the Chicago Drupal community as a whole.
My general feeling is that this sort of closed-door planning and decision making goes against the spirit of open source and a self-governing community, and places too much of a burden/expectation on a limited number of people.
I know that we all want what is best for the Drupal community in Chicago, and we all have different ideas of how to accomplish that. I just want to make sure everybody has a voice.
Comments
Anna, I could not agree more!
Anna, I could not agree more! It's persistent, visible to everyone and that's just how the Drupal community functions. And that's how the Chicago Drupal Community should function.
I looked around for some other local groups that are really active and put together and http://groups.drupal.org/nyc stands out to me a lot. I really think we should strive toward being more like they are.
Yes.
I'm all for this. GDO should be Chicago's outlet for open communication.
Here's a good example of Camp planning
From the Drupal LA group: http://groups.drupal.org/node/196533
Open communication and
Open communication and transparency is absolutely vital to the healthy functioning of a local community, and I agree wholeheartedly that we need to do a better job of this in Chicago.
When it comes to camp planning, however, I think it is important to have a place where the folks who are most directly involved in planning the event can coordinate and converse; in my experience, g.d.o. is not the ideal location for that.
I think the 2009 and 2010 Chicago DrupalCamps, as well as the 2012 Midwest Drupal Developer Summit were pretty good examples of ones that balanced both transparency and the need for centralized planning; we mixed both in-person meetings with asynchronous communication (e-mail, Google Docs, Basecamp/ActiveCollab), while still involving the larger community, keeping them in the loop, and soliciting their participation on a regular basis.
What I've seen happen particularly in Chicago is that some folks have taken on too much responsibility, which creates bottlenecks. When too much responsibility is concentrated in one person or a small group of people, things inevitably slip through the cracks, which has resulted in some unfortunate incidents at past events.
This does not mean that every decision needs to be put up to public vote, but what we need to do is a better job of distributing responsibility and authority among those individuals who have stepped up and proven themselves in the past. Otherwise, those people will get frustrated and go away. This is about empowering the community and building a solid foundation for sustainable growth.