PlanetGNOME on Stormy Peters

In order to grow your volunteer community, you must work in the open

Wed, 14 May 2025 14:38:02 -0700

Doing research for my Grow an Organization by Planting Volunteers at SCALE, I ran across Dirk Riehle’s article on the Five Stages of Open Source Volunteering. The whole article is worth a read but I thought I’d call out the open communication piece. He says to support a distributed community and to engage new volunteers, open communication is key.

Public communication ensures that all members of the community have the opportunity to participate, which creates buy-in and trust.

Mimi Geier, a great math teacher

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 05:01:19 -0700

The world lost a great math teacher this week. Mimi Geier not only loved math, she loved teaching math and delighted in watching kids discoverÂ solutions. If I had a picture to share here, it would be of Ms. Geier with a grin on her face, holding out a piece of chalk so that a student could teach.

My first day at BFIS, Ms. Geier asked me if I was in first or seventh period math. I wanted to ask which one was the advanced math class, but I didn’t. Instead I said I didn’t know. She told me to come to both and we’d figure it out.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of why I don't always work in the open

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:00:28 -0700

I was writing a post about why you must work in the open to get more volunteers and I ended up writing this post about why I don’t work in the open.

The Good

So I think there are some very valid reasons for not working in the open:

Personal. Not all projects are open source projects, especially personal ones. Where I’m going for Valentine’s Day or how to get my son to do better in school are not “open” projects. They could be, but they’re not.
Not mine to share. There’s a lot of things I think should be shared with the world but they aren’t my stories or plans to share. I’d be violating someone else’s sense of privacy in order to share. I think your 2015 project goals are good enough to share with the world - and more people would join if you did - but you may not feel the same way.
It’s not an open source project. Lots of projects in this world are not run in an open source way. If you are not looking to build a community, and you are not an open source software project nor a nonprofit nor a public entity, I think this is a totally valid way of working.

The Bad

And then I think there are some reasonable reasons (maybe right, maybe not) for not working in the open:

7 reasons asynchronous communication is better than synchronous communication in open source

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:45:32 -0700

Traditionally, open source software has relied primarily on asynchronous communication. While there are probably quite a few synchronous conversations on irc, most project discussions and decisions will happen on asynchronous channels like mailing lists, bug tracking tools and blogs.

I think there’s another reason for this.Â Synchronous communication is difficult for an open source project. For any project where people are distributed. Synchronous conversations are:

Inconvenient. It’s hard to schedule synchronous meetings across time zones. Just try to pick a good time for Australia, Europe and California.
Logistically difficult. It’s hard to schedule a meeting for people that are working on a project at odd hours that might vary every day depending on when they can fit in their hobby or volunteer job.
Slower. If you have more than 2-3 people you need to get together every time you make a decision, things will move slower. I currently have a project right now that we are kicking off and the team wants to do everything in meetings. We had a meeting last week and one this week. Asynchronously we could have had several rounds of discussion by now.
Expensive for many people. When I first started at GNOME, it was hard to get some of our board members on a phone call. They couldn’t call international numbers, or couldn’t afford an international call and they didn’t have enough bandwidth for an internet voice call. We ended up using a conference call line from one of our sponsor companies. Now it’s video.
Logistically difficult. Mozilla does most of our meetings as video meetings. Video is still really hard for many people. Even with my pretty expensive, supposedly high end internet in a developed country, I often have bandwidth problems when participating in video calls. Now imagine I’m a volunteer from Nigeria. My electricity might not work all the time, much less my high speed internet.
Language. Open source software projects work primarily in English and most of the world does not speak English as their first language. Asynchronous communication gives them a chance to compose their messages, look up words and communicate more effectively.
Confusing. Discussions and decisions are often made by a subset of the project and unless the team members are veryÂ diligent the decisions and rationale are often not communicated out broadly or effectively. You lose the history behind decisions that way too.

There are some major benefits toÂ synchronous conversation:

Use your vacation to do good in exotic locations

Sat, 22 Feb 2014 12:54:07 -0700

Kids on Computers is planning a trip to the Huajuapan de Leon, Mexico area in June. If you can, please join us! If you can’t, please consider donating to help the labs we’ll be working on.

Most of us will be going down for a week or so. There are travel stipends available for those willing to spend a month helping in the area.

**What could I possibly do to help? **I ask myself this every time I go. Especially since I usually drag my kids along. Here are the things you can help with.

Your competition helps explain who you are

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:47:00 -0700

“Where there is no competition, there is no market. This is why start-ups who “have no competition” have trouble engaging partners and making sales.” - Geoffrey Moore, Escape Velocity

Open source projects often shy away from competition. They value collaboration and leveraging existing solutions. But competition is good for more than making you run faster. Competition helps define who you are.

This is why the Nike iPod sensor had such a hard time when it came out. There was nothing to compare it to except pedometers. In contrast, Fitbit and Jawbone’s Up have met with a lot more initial success. And just about every article about them compares them to each other. (Interestingly, Nike has a new, similar product called Fuel Band that is mentioned in very few of the articles.)

How to have hallway conversations when you can't see the hallway

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:20:51 -0700

I recently listened to a talk by Michael Lopp about how to be a great manager.

During his talk, he stressed the importance of hallway conversations. Hallway conversations are informal conversations about projects, goals and status. As Shez says, they are great for bouncing ideas off people you might not normally interact with and just letting them know what you are up to.

Here’s how I do “hallway conversations” while working thousands of miles from my colleagues:

How to hire an Executive Director

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:04:19 -0700

When I told the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors that I was leaving my job as executive director, I told them my number one priority was to hire my replacement. Before I was hired, the GNOME Foundation went through a long period without an executive director and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.Â At the Boston Summit, there was actually some discussion about whether they wanted another executive director or whether they could hire more specialized individuals for particular tasks. For numerous reasons, they opted to hire another executive director. (I was relieved - speaking as a current GNOME Foundation board member, it would be a lot of work for a volunteer board to manage more staff without an executive director.)

Does open source exclude high context cultures?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:50:14 -0700

High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.

Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.

The secret to my success in a field of men? All my friends. My guy friends.

Wed, 04 May 2011 21:09:34 -0700

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks talking about why we have so few women in open source and web development and how to encourage more women to join. (I even got to spend an awesome afternoon with a bunch of girls. I was supposed to be mentoring them but they were already Python game developers and small business owners - at the ages of 10 and 15!)

Learning to write JavaScript

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:09:16 -0700

So now that I work at Mozilla, I figured it was time to develop a “web app” just to make sure I understood it all. And since my team is working on educational resources for web developers, I wanted to see what it was like to learn how to use some of them using resources online.

So I decided to use the resources I could find online and write some JavaScript to do a pet project of mine.

Kids on Computers sets up more labs in schools

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:41:31 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_1686” align=“alignleft” width=“300” caption=“Sewing at girls’ school in Santo Domingo, Oaxaca. Photo by Thomas Peters.”][/caption]

Kids on Computers folks have been busy, especially Hermes and Thomas and others in Oaxaca. In the past few months we’ve set up labs in a school for kids with disabilities and a boarding school for girls - both in small towns in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The lab for the kids with disabilities will also help their parents who will now be able to do research on the web both on their kids’ health and also on government resources that might be available.

Forking an open source project: regaining internal motivation

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:02:56 -0700

Can forking a free software project enable you to regain your internal motivation to work on a project? My current theory is that if you work on free software, then you get paid to work on it and then you get laid off, that you would work on a different project. Because the first one is no longer good enough to get paid, then it must not be good enough to work on for free.

How do I raise enough money to work on my project full time?

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:52:48 -0700

“How do I raise enough money to be able to spend all my time working on my favorite free software project?” is a question I hear often.

I have a few ideas and I’m very interested in hearing others as I think the world would be a better place if we all could afford to do work we loved and thought useful.

Focus on the difference you’d make. First off, I wouldn’t approach it as “I need to raise money to pay myself.” Unless you are raising moneyÂ solelyÂ from people that love you, whether or not you get paid is probably not going to sway them one way or the other. You need to tell them what $100,000 a year would do. How would your project be great then? Who would it help? How would it make the world a better place? How would it help this particular type of sponsor?
Believe it. You need toÂ trulyÂ believe your project would benefit from the money and your work. If you aren’t convinced, you won’t convince anyone else.
Figure out how much you need. It helps to have a goal. Would you quit your day job if you had $20,000 in funding? $100,000? $200,000? (Don’t forget costs like health care, vacation time, etc.)
Identify different types of sponsors. Are you going to raise money from developers? Or software companies? Or philanthropic grant givers? Also think about how much money that type of sponsor is likely to give. Be realistic. Maybe they gave a project $100,000 once but they gave five other projects $10,000. You are probably going to get $10,000 if you get anything. Then figure out how many sponsors you’ll need. Figure out where those people are and how you are going to get introduced to them.
Create a pitch. You need a really good web page, a good email, an elevator pitch and unfortunately, you probably need a slide deck too.
Tell the world. Don’t ask everyone for money. But tell everyone about your project and what your goals are. (Hint: your goal is not to raise money but to make your project better. The money is a means to an end.) Use your elevator pitch. Listen carefully to their questions, their skepticism, their ideas. Evolve. Make your pitch better. Figure out how to pitch it to different types of people.
Sell your project. Don’t forget to talk about your project. You aren’t just asking for money, you are selling the potential of your project.
Collect stories. Studies have proven that people are willing to give more money to save one child identified by name and ailment than they are to save 100 kids. Personal stories are moving. Find a couple of stories of how your project has made a difference.
Learn about them. You are not going to get any money from someone whom you don’t understand. Know them, know their business, know what they care about, know how they view you.
Work with an organization that can help. For example, maybe you want money to work on your favorite project and you found companies that are willing to sponsor it but they don’t want to manage it. Would they be willing to funnel the money to you through a nonprofit organization that also supports your type of project?
Ask. Talk to lots of potential sponsors, ask them for money, apply for grants, look for opportunities. If you don’t ask for the money, you will never get it.

What else would you recommend?

Putting all the Hackfest pieces together

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:54:50 -0700

Planning a hackfest is not an easy process. You need an:

organizer - someone willing to put some time into making the whole thing happen
topic - what are you going to be hacking on, what do you hope to accomplish
attendees - this is usually a particular group of people that work on a specific project or team
date - have you ever tried to schedule a multi-day meeting with multiple people? Agreeing on a week can be really hard.
place - a place with affordable lodging and food with a comfortable place to hack with great internet. Preferably some place easy and cheap to travel to.
sponsors - flying a group of people to the same place often costs quite a bit of money

Luckily we’ve had people and companies willing to invest the time and resources to make this happen. During the past year we’ve had a record number of very productive hackfests and we have even more coming up!

Books to read if you liked How to Train Your Dragon

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:13:39 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_1579” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] [/caption]

I watched How to Train Your Dragon yesterday and I really enjoyed it. I plan on reading the How to Train Your Dragon book series. I started thinking of all the dragon books I’ve read … and realized that while I know a few really good series, I know fewer than I thought. (I must be forgetting some …)

Fiction writing tip #1: Do not make things too easy for your protagonist

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:05:50 -0700

Here’s a writing tip from a reader: do not make things too easy for your protagonist.

I’ve been reading fiction books by new authors. They often make the protagonist struggle throughout the whole book and then suddenly give them super powers. Or sometimes they sporadically give them superpowers throughout the book. Or have magical creatures come to their aid just in the nick of time.

For example, in the book I read yesterday, the main character struggled with demons (the mythical creatures) her entire life. They killed people, they raped her, they chased her, they beat her up. And then suddenly, after several hundred pages of this, she realizes she needs other people and yells “I’m a soul catcher! Demons be gone!” and they all explode. Huh? Why didn’t she just tell them to all be gone 200 pages ago? The author could have saved us all a lot of agony.

Words are important - just not always the way you think

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:39:45 -0700

Recently I met someone who insisted on describing every department in his organization, all the acronyms and what they stood for. By the time he got around to describing how this whole thing related to me, he had lost my interest. (And I tried hard to hang in there!) He had given me too many irrelevant terms that didn’t relate to me.

We focus a lot in the free software community about what words we use: free software, open source software, free and open source software, …

How does a free software project do marketing?

Sun, 16 May 2010 09:09:59 -0700

Typically free software projects have lots of very smart developers. Large projects like GNOME might also be lucky enough to have lots of great translators, designers, artists and writers working on the project.

However, marketing is not typically an area free software projects have worked much on. GNOME is changing that. Over the past couple of years we have really increased our marketing activity from fundraising to spreading the word about GNOME. One way we’ve done that is through the marketing mailing list. Another is by getting together at GUADEC and having marketing hackfests.

10 skills to master to get things done online

Fri, 14 May 2010 10:14:20 -0700

I’ve recently watched a few people struggle to get things done in online projects. I’ve written and spoken on 12 tips for getting things done in the open source community but now I see that people also need to learn how to work with mailing lists and virtual teams.

Skills you should master if you plan on working in a virtual environment. I’m interested in any other skills you’d add to the list.

10 free apps I wish were open source

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:28:01 -0700

When it comes to web applications, I think free and open source software fans are settling for “free” instead of looking for the freedom they would get from open source.

Here are some free applications that I wish had open source software equivalents.Â I am not unhappy with these applications. I just wish I had open source software alternatives that were as good!

Here are 10 of the good web applications that I use daily that don’t have good enough open source software equivalents.

How does Malaysia encourage so many women in software?

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:28:37 -0700

In 2003 I gave a talk in Malaysia. What I noticed immediately is that my audience was well over half women. This was really noticeable because they were all wearing brightly colored hijabs. Usually I scan the room and count how many women I can find - usually on my fingers even in a room of hundreds. Yet here were hundreds of women attending a talk about the economics of open source software!