looking at the wetware

Looking at thewetware

Understanding stakeholders for succesful communities

Miguel Cornejo Castro fOSSa 2011, Lyon

November 26th 2011 miguel@macuarium.com

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MacuariumLabs community action research

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Evolution: closed communities into conversation spaces

MacuariumLabs community action research

Wetware is what defines OSS

• The code itself is agnostic. The difference is how it gets built, and why. The relationship between the software and the wetware.

• There is a pesky, irreverent, egotistic, creative, rather wonderful thing between the keyboard and the chair. Mostly water. And let's not mention users. Not corporate sponsors. Nor the wider ecosystem.

• Most often, OSS is the result (and the driving cause) of a healthy community. But communities take so many different shapes. And are so fissiparous.

• "I don't expect wetware to work as logically as software". Orson Scott Card, "Speaker for the dead".

• Allogical? Illogical? Really?

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Community and your project• Communities as people and conversations and something else. The channel and tools are

(sort of) irrelevant.

• When the project is just you…

– … “the community” is a friend and some geeky early users.

• When you’ve got a product…

– … “the community” helps you make it useful.

• When you’re established…

– “the community” is the engine and main channel of the value-adding ecosystem.

• When you’re staid (or when you least expect it)…

– “the community” breaks apart and walks out on you.

• When you think the community just takes care of itself...

– "the community" fails and your dream project falters.

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Sponsor. Core.

Power contributors. Ecosystem.

Dev community. User community.

Community?

Owner. Manager. Member.

Conversation space.

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Wetware is a host of stakeholders

• The sponsor. In one way or another.

• The (original or current) vision leader.

• The trusted, involved core.

• The wider, variegated contributors.

• The (hopefully many) ecosystem units that add some value.

• The end users, more or less unlettered.

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Different stakeholders, different reasons• For the individual coder it may be a job, but in the aggregate it's volunteer work.

– Even when paid, most in the community work at it because they want it. Beyond the core, it’s often quite close to volunteer work.

– Logical, driven, (usually) product of many hands and minds: the tool you build because you want to use it… and no two uses are alike.

• For the sponsor, OSS may not be (only and necessarily) a religion…

– It can just be a business strategy to level the technological field or make prevalent your standard (Apple’s work with Konqueror or -sort of- FaceTime)

– It can be just a business estratega to facilitate access to the technology at the lowest cost, so you can build an early user base of future upgraders (Alfresco, OpenBravo…).

– It can be just a business strategy to make your professional services widely known to custom-development prospects (mySQL in Oracle).

– It can just be a business strategy to cheaply build a base of customers you can sell services to (Auttomatic with wordpress.com, and so many others).

• And the ecosystem is another WIIFM planet.

• Any which way, it needs a community. And if it doesn’t, it gets one anyhow. Pesky things, communities..

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Alignment, alignment, alignment

• Just what are we building?

– The goal, and the philosophy. Either share or don’t join. Needs to be clear.

• What are we doing it for?

– The reasons driving us and paying our hours. Need to be compatible.

• How are we doing the work?

– Dev methods, processes, tools. Some are religions. Need to share a core creed.

• Who is in charge, at each level?

– And why? And to what extent? And how well? Remind me about the mission thing.

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Affinity, competence, firepower... Servant leadership for the wetware

• Negotiate, choose, drive competition.

• Shared? My dream?

– Motivation stems from shared decisions. Not just absent leadership. You need your people to reliably do the boring useful tasks too. You need them to share the big idea.

• Your creature, your call?

– Decide what you want to decide upon. And remember that what you set free, you can't control.

• Participation?

– Or delegation. Or implicit trust. No contribution without representation (you can get it, but motivation, innovation and quality will not be the same).

• Changing course?

– Beware the fork. Watch you traction. In short, listen. And be ready to lose excess weight rather than a clear focus.

• Are manners important?

– With brain workers? Every day.

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Affinity, competence, firepower: The alogical wetware

• Are we divided?

– Separate work groups set agendas and see things differently.

• Are we compatible?

– Some people just can’t get along. Even engineers.

• Do we share a vision?

– Whatever our reasons, are we seeking the same creature? With a passion?

• Are the gurus properly packaged?

– The OS worker has a right to be heard. A silenced contributor is halfway a mutineer.

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You work for yourself, yes, but if you want scale...

• Do you know your users and their priorities?

• The creator of Wordpress was a Drupal early user and community member. He left because Drupal gave no priority to ease of use. Now, Drupal is spending so many hours building ease of use back in.

• Are you talking to them?

• The survival of an OS tool (and even of SAP) depends on its being useful to users at every level. That depends on support: the user community.

• Who is keeping an eye on the end users?

• The kind of collaborator who can drive a user community is not the one who can code best. It's the user wrangler. And they're delicate beasts.

• And it' not in one place: it makes up a "conversational space". Not a sigle space.

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Mind the ecosystem... and the sponsor

• They're involved for a sound business reason. And they contribute along their own needs.

• They need the project to be a certain way (from licensing to features), expect to be heard, and measure results.

• They can switch horses... or directly fork (Konqueror to WebKit).

• They're useful: they wield lots of brain hours.

• They are usually needed to make the project useful tp the wider public.

• They (especially the main sponsor) feel entitled.

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Contributor: representation, appreciation,

participation... And vision.

Ecosystem: quality, WIIIFM, business

strategies.

End user: features, support quality.

In short: many types of wetware, different motivations and expectation

Core: mission, vision, power, togetherness.

Sponsor: pragmatic measurable goals

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More on this point of view

http://emekaeme.wordpress.com/publicaciones

and please let me know your experiences:

Miguel Cornejo miguel@macuarium.com

Managing partner

MacuariumLabs is a project of Macuarium Network

http://www.macuarium.com/foro

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