Hi Castaways/Squeaders (whatever!),

This is good news. The community needs a little leadership.

Thanks for all your efforts, keep up the good work.

Barry

goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:

>Hi fellow Squeakers!
>
>Pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab hold of your keyboard and read the
>rest of this posting - even if it *is* long. Ok? :)
>
>	"Are we rising again?" "No. On the contrary." "Are we descending?"
>"Worse than that, captain!
>	we are falling!" "For Heaven's sake heave out the ballast!" "There! the
>last sack is empty!"
>	"Does the balloon rise?" "No!" "I hear a noise like the dashing of
>waves. The sea is below the
>	car! It cannot be more than 500 feet from us!" "Overboard with every
>weight! . . .
>	everything!"
>
>Thus starts chapter 1, "Dropped from the clouds", of the book "The
>Mysterious Island" by Jules Verne. The Mysterious Island follows the
>adventures of a group of five castaways who use their survivalist savvy
>to build a functional community on an uncharted, faraway, fantastic
>island of bewildering goings-on.
>
>Our sacred balloon is also in trouble. We need to loose weight because
>we are drowning in endless debates and non functional processes. We need
>to get a good lightweight leadership in place. This island, the future,
>is also full of wonders but still largely uncharted. Can we succeed in
>building a functional community? Yes, we can. So, "dropped from the
>clouds", we will try:
>
>The Castaways
>-----------------
>
>The last six days there has been some off list activity in forming a new
>leadership for Squeak. Yes, you read it right - the Guides are now
>*officially retired*. From this point and forward there is a new
>*temporary* group consisting of five castawa... eh people, that now
>leads Squeak:
>
>	- Göran Krampe
>	- Doug Way
>	- Cees de Groot
>	- Marcus Denker
>	- Michael Rueger
>
>This group reads squeak-dev of course, but is also reachable at:
>
>	mysterious-island at discuss.squeakfoundation.org
>
>We are *leading* the Squeak community, not guiding. Well, that was the
>summary, you have questions? That's odd. :) Read on.
>
>
>Questions and Answers
>--------------------------
>
>Q: How on earth did this happen? :)
>
>Well, very sudden. I (Göran) got a sudden urge/jolt/whatever six days
>ago and just ran with the ball. This is NOT a reaction against the
>current ongoing SqF formation (see below) - in fact - it is rather the
>opposite.
>
>Q: How does this relate to the Squeakfoundation formation going on?
>
>First of all, only some of you know (not publicly announced yet, so I am
>spilling the beans here) that there is a SqueakFoundation formation
>process recently started. It aims to put a real foundation in place with
>capacity of real funding etc and this work continues. A lot of people
>are involved in that process and we have high hopes for it.
>
>Us five castaways are not leading that process, Stephane Ducasse and
>Michael Rueger are (Michael is in our group too, but whatever). The idea
>is that the castaways is temporarily in charge, *until* and *if* SqF
>delivers a scheme for forming a new leadership. When and how that will
>happen, we do not know.
>
>Also note that everyone in this group is actively participating in the
>SqF formation. Finally, we think forming this leadership will help the
>SqF formation a lot - because now there is a group leading that can take
>decisions and implement suggestions, and pave the way forward.
>
>Q: Who gave you permission to do this "coup" you sneaky bastards!?
>
>Noone did, because before today there was no decisional body or forum
>that could grant it to us! This is the first step - an interim group
>that stands up, takes charge and leads. One important thing though - the
>former Guides and Stephane Ducasse (leading the SqF formation process)
>stands behind this new group and support us.
>
>We are also all dedicated to the community - and you who know who we are
>can attest to that. This is NOT some "hostile takeover" of any kind. We
>are doing this hoping for ALL your support and we expect to not let you
>down. We are putting ourselves on the line here. We are taking on the
>responsibility and hope we can deliver.
>
>Q: Why aren't the other three guides in the group?
>
>This is a group specifically focused on community decision-making,
>building consensus etc. Ned, Craig and Tim (the former guides not in
>this new group) are all top notch Squeak developers but they are quite
>busy doing what they do best - cranking out cool code. And this group
>both needs to be rejuvenated and to be small. Ned, Craig and Tim or
>anyone else will get their chance of being in this group in the future,
>since we are only grabbing a temporary "mandate".
>
>Q: What does temporary mean exactly?
>
>We don't know. 6 months, a year? We will see. But it IS temporary in any
>case, if SqF hasn't formed a replacement scheme - then we will solve it
>some other way, like for example by putting a new group in place.
>
>Q: What is this group called? Mysterious Island is a bit long...
>
>Yeah. :) Castaways? Settlers? Silly-sods-taking-all-the-crap? Hehe, you
>decide.
>
>Q: What happens now?
>
>In day-to-day practice not much revolutionary will happen immediately.
>Things continue mostly like before - but there are a few big differences
>in how the community will operate:
>
>	- Decisions that needs to be made for Squeak will in the end be made by
>us. Of course, the discussions are as open as always right here on
>squeak-dev, and we are not claiming to know everything - people with the
>knowledge still affect the process just like always. In fact, this is
>more of a responsibility than anything else. We take the responsibility
>to make the decisions instead of just having discussions turning into
>endless debate.
>
>	- You can always ask us. Since we now make the decisions and thus,
>consequentially, form the direction forward for Squeak - we should be
>able to answer any questions with authority. This helps the community a
>lot.
>
>	- Any and all Squeak issues should be discussed just like before, on
>squeak-dev. Yes, we do have the private list mentioned above - but it
>will not contain any discussion except for when we think it is needed to
>do it privately. The Guides did everything openly. We do not and we
>require at least a small private forum in order to operate well.
>
>Other than that, the plans haven't been made yet. We have promised to
>take a good look at the roadmap Stephane has presented and will probably
>do that as one of our first tasks. And all the other things going on at
>this moment continues as before, like the restarted partitioning of the
>image etc.
>
>How we will organize within our group, with roles and how decisions are
>tracked etc, well, we haven't decided yet. But from now on you can use
>mysterious-island at discuss.squeakfoundation.org to reach all of us. More
>on that later.
>
>So if you want to alert us and make sure your issue isn't drowning in
>squeak-dev, use the above. We are of course all reading squeak-dev, but
>sometimes the traffic can be intense and CCing to the above will make
>sure we can filter it out.
>
>If anyone has additional questions - feel free to just reply to this
>posting (on squeak-dev) and we will try hard to answer. :)
>
>regards, Göran Krampe on behalf of the castaways
>
>
>
>
>  
>


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