[consulting] Drupal Association

Mon Mar 30 12:26:04 UTC 2009

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Shai Gluskin <shai at content2zero.com>wrote:

> 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.

Again, I don't think the structure is confusing. The terms are the ones that
are confusing.

I agree about the translation part, and I have a strong guess that many of
the terms used were not conveyed fully when translated from Dutch to
English. But then again I am only guessing since I can't read Dutch/Flemish
to verify this.

But, in reality the lingua franca of the association is English: this is the
only language that everyone speaks, this is how meetings are conducted. The
only time I see Dutch in action is when stuff comes in from an accountant or
a bank or something like that. And given we have 3 people who understand
Dutch on the association, I trust them fully to take care of that part.

There has been a push by some to establish an official legal entity in the
USA. Many people requested it so it would have 501 (3c) [or whatever the
exact number is]. It would also help with organizing DrupalCons in the USA,
...etc.

When/if it is done, there will be an announcement of course.

Actually, your post, somewhat repackaged would be a big help in that process
> of explaining how the Association is governed.

Addison Berry (add1sun) did just that in her post earlier this year, more
eloquently than me:

http://rocktreesky.com/drupal-association-inside

Does that help?

Remember: all of us "permanent" members are community ambassadors. We are
here to liaise, listen, clarify, ...etc. So you (and anyone else) can
contact us by any means you wish and ask questions.

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
>

Good points.

Take my word for it. We want to be more transparent. We have been extra
cautious
for many reasons, e.g. liability, and litigiousness of today's society,
specially in the USA.

It is our job to be cautious. I have seen non profits derailed by lack of
caution on seemingly
minor issues that result in paralyzing law suits (e.g. LOPSA, ...etc.)

I am not saying what we are doing is the best course of action, but just
giving you an explanation rather than an excuse.

So, we are getting there, slowly. Keep us honest by feedback, and please
bear with us.

>
> 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.

We have discussed much of that internally, but have not gotten to changing
the statutes and then voting on them to have them changed.

> 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.

Yes, the challenge we have is to balance the need not to have people in
positions for too long vs. continuty of the organization's work with the
least disruption.

In 2009 EVERYONE on the board was up for relection except Angie (secretary).
Many were reelected for their past position (Dries, Gerhard, Kieran, ..etc)
and we also got new members who were elected an hour prior to be board
members (Cary, Tiffany).

> 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.
>

The "admitted members" is something in the statutes but was never put in
action. Apart from the "admitted" part, which is probably translation (Dutch
strickes again!).

It was not even discussed in meetings or on the regular channels (mailing
list, IRC) in all of the last year. It is a low priority item given
everything else we do (budget, infrastructure, redesign, membership,
DrupalCons, ...etc.)

The way I understand it (remember this is theoretical since we don't have
any admitted members at present), is that admitted members observe, listen
and comment, but do not vote. So, it is a way for businesses to give the
association money and provide feedback, but NOT a way to influence decisions
to the highest bidder.

The Drupal Association is not an industry association established by
business for business. Rather, it is by the community for the community.

>
> 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.

Good and valid point.

Scaling Drupal's code is often easier than scaling the community. I can
patch the code (yeah, even if I hack core and kittens die!), but not the
community. Humans are harder to navigate than computers.

We have been trying to be more open. For example, the exact accounting for
DrupalCon was published by Development Seed (kudos to them!), and we did a
d.o front page for that as well here

http://drupal.org/node/414526

This "shedding caution for the sake of more openness" is what encouraged me
to respond to the entire consulting list rather than writing to you alone,
and I love it.

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.
>

We all observe and learn. Some take longer to jump in, some jump in earlier.
We all catch on at some point.

>
> Again, thanks for your great response.
>

And thanks for triggering it, and being so constructive responding.

>
> 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.
>>
>
>
Here is an important thing too: You don't have to be in the association to
do association work. I did work for the association without being a member
for about a year before I got elected. This can be anything you feel
passionate about that helps the association: writing code that runs on the
association, administering CiviCRM, organizing events, helping with the d.o
redesign, or anything else that you can do and is consistent with the
association's goals.

So, if you want to volunteer a few hours a month on something, contact us
via the association's contact form or association at drupal.org.
-- 
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
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