On 6/13/11 10:50 AM, Greg Knaddison wrote: 
On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Gábor Hojtsy <gabor@hojtsy.hu> wrote:

Well, our current approach is to use g.d.o group posts in the Drupal
Initiatives group that anyone can sign up for. The group is at
http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-initiatives

Yes and no.

I agree with Daniel's concern that too much of this is happening in
closed venues, often with the claim that it's the only way to get
things done. And I think even you, Gabor, share a bit of this concern
based on your tweet from three hours ago -
http://twitter.com/#!/gaborhojtsy/status/80225914683785216

I won't say the mailing list is the right place, but I do think it's
important to consider more perspectives than simply the insider
groups. In my opinion the best way to do that is to have discussions
out in the open.
Can you cite anyone actually claiming that "closed venues is the only way to get things done"? If so, I'd be happy to smack 'em around. :)

My observation has been that this stuff is pretty much *all* happening publicly (or at worst, a public summary of IRC/IRL/e-mail discussions shortly after they take place). The problem, in my experience, is there are way too many freaking channels for this information between g.d.o/mailing lists/issue queues/tags/etc. so it's really easy to miss it until it's too late. Hence my other long e-mail about trying to build a framework around the communication stuff.

We got the CMI report http://groups.drupal.org/node/155559 out as fast as we possibly could (~72 hours). It was *really* fricking hard to write though, because the code was literally changing under our feet as we were writing it up, since we were also actively trying to bring more perspectives into it from other folks in the coder lounge at DCCO to make sure it survived some basic "beta" tests. And I wanted to make sure all of the folks at the sprint agreed with what was in it before it was broadcast broadly; I certainly didn't want to misrepresent their views or get technical details wrong, which delayed it another 24 hours or so.

But it's important that to note that this is a _summary of the configuration management sprint_, *not* a "this is how we're doing it, suckas! Eat it!" The info's out there to comment on, be picked apart, iterated on, whatever. If there's an impression otherwise given, that's certainly not the intent. All of these D8 initiatives are still in the *very* early stages, and not a lick of code has been committed to core yet (or, in most cases, even written). It's the absolute *perfect* time to jump in and chime in with your thoughts!

If you're getting an impression other than that, we need to figure out where that's coming from, and squash it.
> From personal observation I believe Greg Dunlap is spending a
significant effort on seeking and synthesizing feedback and I
encourage everyone to do the same.
Greg is fortunate in that he's subsidized 50% by his employer to work on his initiative. Other initiative owners are not so lucky, so it's harder for them to both manage their initiatives, read and respond to feedback on discussions, write/review code, AND write up thoughtful and useful status reports to the community. I'm trying to help share some of this burden, because I'm subsidized as well, but I'm also one of two people who can commit to D7, for example. :\

So:

- Can you write English?
- Do you have 5 or so hours per week free?
- Do you have an interest in one or more of these initiatives?

If so, *you* could help with announcement writing and other communication tasks, and that would be a *super* important way to help these initiatives.

-Angie