Documentation Team Leader?

I am not talking about a formal role or official title at this time, and
I am not interested in "competing" for such a role or title. I am
interested in helping the group become more productive, specifically
regarding the user guides.

I'd like to point out that I informally filled the role of "user guide
team leader" at OpenOffice.org for 5 or 6 years before I had any sort of
official title. Why should I not do the same here, if others (except for
you) have said they want me to do so?

IMO a formal title is fairly irrelevant within the project, although it
can be useful when talking with outsiders who expect hierarchy even when
there is none. On those occasions in OOo I would call myself "Lead
Editor", which fairly accurately described my role.

--Jean

I am not talking about a formal role or official title at this time, and

I am not interested in "competing" for such a role or title. I am
interested in helping the group become more productive, specifically
regarding the user guides.

I'd like to point out that I informally filled the role of "user guide
team leader" at OpenOffice.org for 5 or 6 years before I had any sort of
official title. Why should I not do the same here, if others (except for
you) have said they want me to do so?

IMO a formal title is fairly irrelevant within the project, although it
can be useful when talking with outsiders who expect hierarchy even when
there is none. On those occasions in OOo I would call myself "Lead
Editor", which fairly accurately described my role.

--Jean

@ ALL:

We of the Brazilian community have just recently "enjoyed" a big fight over
the "who is who" inside the community (culminating with the extinction of
the NGO BrOffice). What I have learned is this:

1) People work in FOSS because of some sort of recognition by their peers
(or by people they think are their peers). This brings out the best and
worst of everybody (ego is a dangerous two sided dagger). So people enjoy
the feeling that *THEY* did something, this is so true that LibO has a
tracking system to show who is the most active in developing patches and in
the Wiki / l10n. And as such people start thinking things as theirs (my
contribution, my translation, my team, my work, my precious ;). But this all
is not ours, we have forfeit our right to call it ours when we registered
with the project and accepted the GNU / CC license.

2) People will try to undermine somebody who tries to take a leading role,
it is instinctive: "someone is trying to be my boss, but wait! ... I got
into this thing so I didn't have to say 'yes sir' anymore". And this is true
and valid, I for one will not tolerate being bossed around even for a
fraction of my free time. But without some sort of accountability, and
without some sort of "master map" we are all going to step on each others
toes (believe me ... we had 3 persons translating the same chapter of the GS
guide ... what a waist of time and resources and what a bummer for the
newcomers).

3) This kind of discussion may seem very tiresome (and I for one agree it is
just that), but organizing the work-flow, and the roles of our member base
is very important ... and must be done FIRST ... even if it takes a few
man-hours away from the actual practical job at hand. I am not putting one
minute of my free time in the documentation effort until I see a work-flow
(I have too little free time to waist on a project I am not convinced that
will be of any value)

4) Voting on the way we think things should get done is THE BEST way for
everybody to get satisfied. We had votes on people who were registered users
of our discussion lists, but voting within the "actual workforce" is best
(get the GS guides and see who did what, those people's votes should be more
important than anyone else's)

5) This thing was supposed to be FUN ... a little useful, but mostly FUN ...
you see, documentation will be for a minority of users, most of them will
work with basic on-hands knowledge of the product. And then there is the
wiki and the users mailing list ... the companies that will make the
transition to our software will do (at least the majority of them) a
in-house training of some sort.
We start out as being EXPENDABLE, our work is futile and is outdated as soon
as we print it ... but am I with all this, still having FUN? Sure, so I
continue ... when it seems to much like work, I'll get out the same day.

This is not to say that any of you are right or wrong, but we need to get
our speech in the same wave length.
But just to make my point perfectly clear: This discussion is happening
because people think the project is THEIRS (or at leas that they are PART of
it) when the actual situation is that we are DONATING time and work to the
project, we are not the project (and that is a good thing, or the hole
project would stop if we weren't here any more).

So ... are YOU still having FUN ?

Rogerio

Hi :slight_smile:

Oops, i wrote an over-long email because i had not seen this one. Please ignore
my long ramble!

People do need to feel ownership over what they create so that they can take
pride in it and in the over-all work of the whole project knowing they own a
corner of it. This is where it is good to have sub-groups or working groups
that take responsibility for specific parts of the project. So far we seem to
have at least 3 groups
Alfresco tech
Alfresco work-flow
Non-alfresco tech & work-flow
People tend to be in more than 1 group at a time but it's fairly clear who is
the leader of each group.

I think we need to work with the structure we have and just formalise it.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Oops, i wrote an over-long email because i had not seen this one. Please ignore
my long ramble!

Too late, I already responded. :wink:

People do need to feel ownership over what they create so that they can take
pride in it and in the over-all work of the whole project knowing they own a
corner of it.

Absolutely agree. But some people want some guidance in their work. Be
clear on this: guidance,not control over that work.

> This is where it is good to have sub-groups or working groups
that take responsibility for specific parts of the project. So far we seem to
have at least 3 groups
Alfresco tech
Alfresco work-flow
Non-alfresco tech & work-flow
People tend to be in more than 1 group at a time but it's fairly clear who is
the leader of each group.

I think we need to work with the structure we have and just formalise it.

One group is "user guide development" and some people in that group are
the ones asking me to lead that group. I don't see any particular need
at this point to formalise anything (in that I agree with David).

What is "Non-alfresco tech & work-flow" in your view? In the earlier
note you had my name by that, but I'm unclear what you're referring to.
If it's the ODFAuthors website, I believe that's largely irrelevant to
the user guide work (in English) because that's taking place on
Alfresco.

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile:

Support != leadership
I guess that guidance could be part of a leaders role but would be better given
by the group, particularly given by people that are currently active at that
moment.  It is the person that has just completed a document and just needs
someone to proof-read it quickly that knows whether that proof-reading can be
done quickly by someone new or needs an in-depth look by someone experienced. 
There might be a nearly complete document that just needs a couple of paragraphs
sorting or something.  I guess i mean that mentorship is not something a leader
should get "bogged down in" and straight tech-support is also not a function of
leadership.

Ok, so are the groups something like;

1. Documentation Team Support/Guides/Welcome-In
2. Alfresco and tech support
3. Alfresco work-flow
4. ODFauthors Liason, work-flow, tech support

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

PS 2 names for 2 functions is smart and helps people focus.  Wearing man hats
within an org can be tricky but assigning a different name to those roles can
help sometimes i guess.  It's not normally an option with co-ops /
community-orgs so i hadn't thought about it before.