[consulting] Drupal Association

Mon Mar 30 03:02:52 UTC 2009

Khaled,

Thanks for the great response to my post. The non-defensive tone of your
response was very welcoming, exactly what I would hope for in a leader of
the Association.

Just to clarify a couple of my concerns. I'm not at all concerned that North
Americans are underrepresented in the leadership of the organization. As you
indeed showed, we are well represented. My concern is simply that the
Belgian NPO structure is really hard to understand for North Americans and
needs to be better translated than it currently is on the
association.drupal.org web site. Actually, your post, somewhat repackaged
would be a big help in that process of explaining how the Association is
governed. I've written in a bit more detail about what I'd like to see in
this regard at Angie's (webchick) web site in the post where she asked for
feedback regarding the redesign of the a.d.o web site:

http://webchick.net/node/58#comment-794

When I wrote about board members rotating I actually meant permanent members
rotating. I understand board members have two year terms. That's great. It
would be nicer if have the board members were voted on each year instead of
all but one in one year and then only one the next. Maybe a special measure
can be passed to get roughly half the board members to accept either 1 or
3-year terms in order to get better balance in the voting process. That
would only need to happen once.

The terms are confusing. The structure is not so.

Part of it is that the board hasn't figured some stuff out yet. For
instance, the "admitted member" thing. In that case it is a combination of
weird terminology *and* the fact that the board hasn't figured out what the
role is. You have to do significant digging and infering from vague language
to figure out that: a. all you need to do to be "admitted" is pay your dues,
and b. the rights and responsibilites of "admitted members" are not worked
out yet.

We realize that we should have better communication. But believe me, this is
> not due to secrecy, it is due to other factors as we grow as an organization
> and as we learn more.
>

I did not fear secrecy. I think it has to do with the normal difficulty the
community is facing as it scales. I'm quite hopeful that the community can
address this problem as it has addressed problems of code.

Thanks for the link to Dries' slides. Even without the talk text I found it
inspiring. I think there are parts of Dries' message regarding Drupal's
culture of open source that need to be broadcast louder, that people need to
be reminded of.

I think the new Drupal.org is going to make a HUGE difference. It will
provide a much better platform on which the Drupal community can colloborate
and create social networks. But the core values that Dries' talking about in
that presentation like, "we are all equal" and "we need not fear chaos," I
think some of those values are difficult, especially for veterans, to
embrace.

Again, thanks for your great response.

Shai Gluskin

2009/3/29 Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com>

>
> The elephant??? Drupal is huge and growing every day. It's struggling to
>> appropriately welcome people in and help them find a place and a leadership
>> position within the community. The Drupal Association, unfortunately under
>> the jurisdiction of Belgium NPO governance rules
>
>
> True. And the reason is simple: Dries is from Belgium and lives in Belgium.
> He founded the project and the is a founding member of the association.
>
>
>> is not as transparent as it should be: it's structure is just plane
>> confusing to many.
>
>
> The terms are confusing. The structure is not so.
>
> There is simply a general assembly (GA) composed of members (called
> "permanent members", PM, I will come to that later. New members are elected
> every year. (I was elected to in the first round of elections in Jan 2008).
> The GA elects the board of directors (BoD) who are the ones that have voting
> power on decision, known as Board Members (BM). There are more details and
> they are all in the statutes which are on the association web site in PDF
> format in Dutch and English.
>
>
>> The board and the permanent members do not have enough new blood, in my
>> opinion.
>
>
> New blood was infused in Jan 2008 and Jan 2009.
>
>
>> The idea of "permanent" members is just plain bad in my opinion.
>
>
> This has been brought up several times within the association, and there is
> talk on changing that. As a matter of fact many aspects of the statutes are
> being proposed for revision. They are not cast in stone and can be changed.
>
> We like to hear your feedback, as well as others on all aspects of the
> association.
>
>
>> The custom more often found in North America of having board members
>> rotate would be much healthier for the organization, in my opinion.
>
>
> The board members have two year terms. ALL BOARD POSITIONS WERE UP FOR
> ELECTION THIS YEAR, including Dries himself. The only exception was the
> position of secretary (Angie Byron).
>
> Anyone could have run for president. No one did, and Dries was voted (I
> like to joke and say I was not sure, but voted for him :-) ).
>
> Just for fun, and because I wanted to blog on it for a long time, but never
> got around to it: Here is a breakup of the GA and BoD by geography:
>
> The bulk of members of the GA and the BoD is North American. Heavy towards
> USians and Canadians.
>
> http://association.drupal.org/about/staff
>
> For the BoD, Gerhard and Dries are in Europe, everyone else is from USA
> except for Angie is in Canada (she is American too), and Jacob is in China
> (also an American).
>
> For the GA, Nedjo, Boris, and me are in Canada, and Kristof and Bert are in
> Europe. The rest are all In the USA. Robert Douglass lives in Germany and is
> also American.
>
> So you can see that the USA is heavy in there, followed by Canada, then
> some Europe sprinkled in.
>
> Though Dries has set a wonderful example of welcoming input, criticism, new
>> ideas... I don't think the members of the General Assembly, with many
>> exceptions, have done as well. And I'm not sure whether Dries recognizes
>> this problem.
>>
>
> We like to hear from you, and others, whether privately via the contact
> form at association.drupal.org or other channels.
>
> We realize that we should have better communication. But believe me, this
> is not due to secrecy, it is due to other factors as we grow as an
> organization and as we learn more.
>
> There are plans in the works on better communication.
>
>
>>
>> How is all this relevant to the current discussion?
>
>
> The Drupal Association's goals are many, and include the following:
>
> - Promoting Drupal in general.
> - Drupal Events (DrupalCon mainly, others in the work).
> - Running the infrastructure for *.drupal.org.
>
> What is NOT in the asscoiation's mandate is
>
> - Dictating what code goes into Drupal's core or contrib
> - Dictate what is supported or not supported.
>
> These are all community driven, and the association stays clear out of
> these.
>
> Look at what Dries himself presented a couple of days ago on building
> communities
>
> http://buytaert.net/files/building-foss-communities-osbc-2009.pdf
>
> Notable by its absence is the association.
>
> Please ask any other questions that you (or others) may have, and me as
> well as others from the DA will try to answer them the best as we can.
> --
> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
> 2bits.com, Inc.
> http://2bits.com
> Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
> Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
> Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
>
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/attachments/20090329/2e22212f/attachment.htm>