On Sun, 2011-12-25 at 17:46 +0100, Kim Leyendecker wrote:
On 25.12.2011 05:55, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Thanks an awful lot for devoting ceaseless effort to openSUSE Weekly News, Sascha.
I have to tell you, list mates, that I was asked by Sascha whether I can take over the role of the chair of the openSUSE Weekly News Team before he posted the mail to this list, but I couldn't take on the entire burden of the role for now, at least under the current, too laborious procedure of publishing OWN.
As you know,*Weekly* News have to be published*every week*. So contributors cannot take days off unless someone else will step into their shoes. Considering the fact that there are only few contributors for OWN, it will be too much burden for them.
I, like everyone else here, want to pick up and hand on the torch of OWN. But that cannot be done only by me.
As some of you may know, I have my own job which is not dedicated to FLOSS activities. I contribute openSUSE project just as a volunteer on an individual basis. I spend over 10 hours every week for collecting articles for OWN, proofreading it and translating it into Japanese. And realistically speaking, this (10 hours +) is all I can do.
I myself have been concerned about the current situation of OWN - which should be the main format, where is the best workspace for collaborating, the relationship between openSUSE community and open-slx, copyright issue, why native English speakers won't help much for editing *English* Weekly News ... all of these should be reconsidered and improved. Yes, they should be, but I couldn't, because I couldn't squeeze a few extra hours out of my day for that.
Maybe we need to make the current procedure of publishing OWN as simple as possible so that anyone can take over the task in case the main contributors are busy, or, break large tasks into smaller ones and decentralize responsibilities, if we want to continue OWN. But for now, I haven't got the best - or, at least, better - way yet.
Of course I WILL bear a part as much as I can do, but if there is no one who will step forward to bear a part as well, OWN will burn out. Whether we can continue OWN or not depends on the willingness of our community...
First I want to thank Sascha for the great job he did. Then I want to reply to your points.
Let´s go. Doing OWN is a big job, so there should be as many as possible people in the boat. Therefore, you might want to ask the boosters for help.
Then, you Saturu, as the new OWN team leader (I guess you will be the one, right?), should create a team around you. That should be your biggest priority since you haven´t got the time to it all on your own.
I guess asking the boosters would be the best choice,
/kdl
-- Kim Leyendecker, openSUSE Wiki Team GPG Key: 664265369547B825 | leyendecker@opensuse.org http://www.opensuse.org - Linux for open minds
There are several aspects to OWN that make it one of the more unique challenges within the Project. The two that I see are 1) Ability to get a group of people to each commit weekly to their duties, and 2) some technical obstacles some people have faced. For example, I pushed for more broader OWN proofreading and Sascha has done a great job of ensuring since then that more people are aware and can contribute to reviewing OWN before it gets formally published. But, the review process itself wasn't that easy for a lot of people. We could not directly edit without knowledge of HTML and having HTML editing software installed and going through a checkout process. For the marketing team this was different than the standard "edit-as-you-see-it" we experienced in such tools as ietherpad. Of course, ietherpad would not have been a useful tool in OWN's case. And to be sure, while we have seen great commitments from the OWN team, the team itself has been rather small. That was a huge burden on those few people, including Sascha and Satoru. I too agree that Satoru would be a great new lead for OWN. He's been committed to the quality of the production and has been there week after week. But I suggest (at the risk of bikeshedding) that we consider the following: 1. Break down the various tasks within OWN production 2. Broadly within the News Team (or even more broadly within Marketing team), assess each task and see if we can make adjustments thus lowering the barrier for contributions. 3. Work in a more open manner (this is something I'm already seeing improvements in the past few weeks.) 4. As popular as it has been to expect a weekly edition, perhaps we should look at ways to adjust the release schedule in order to reduce the time-commitment burden. Bryen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org