JoomStew Radio Show Notes – Jono Bacon and The Art of Community

Quote of the Week by Amy Stephen

"So, I wake up to find Matt Lipscomb, newest CLT member posting on ATAAW about Cultivating a Community and Hils Cheyne, ATAAW admin, posting at joomla.org about the latest ATAAW Initiative."

“Joomla! Rocks!” - things are getting better.

Joomla! News

1. Sign up for JAB 11 Newsletter
2. Congrats to Sandra Warren and Matt Lipscomb for joining the Community Leadership Team.
3. JUG Submission Backlog post by Sandra - please reapply and Sandra will take care of you!
4. JoomlaBlogger interview with Anthony Olsen - JoomlaBambo; while you are there, check out Kristoffer’s Top 10 Joomla! 1.6 Infograph
5. Jentla plans to offer Software Development Accreditation program for their extensions and Joomla Development, and word is they have hired Andrew Eddie to help with that http://bit.ly/cA6kkv
5. Happy Birthday to Joomla! Movie with Hils Cheyne
6. Turtleapps Joom-la-la “It’s a geek thing.” Drupal’s mortendk admitted it was very good and promised to throw down with a metal response. I will be holding Morten to that.
7. Happy Birthday to Steve Burge and Kyle Ledbetter, both of whom might think they are old but they are not.
8. David Deutsch opened discussion on simplifying the JED rules with ideas for change.
9. Herman Peeren and Nelleke Verhoeff from Yepr.nl joined the Joomla Community Magazine as illustrators.
10. Joomla 1.5.19 and 1.5.20 were released this week, the 2nd due to a packaging issue. Plugin for MT 1.2 switch.
11. In September, we have JoomlaDay events coming up in SF, Washington DC, and Brazil.
12. Nice piece on Jen Kramer on Community by Steve.
13. Marco Barbosa is looking for feedback on Minima, a new GPL’ed Administrator Template for 1.6 he will share with the community.
14. Although I feel for the WordPress community, I just want to say THANK GOODNESS IT’S NOT JOOMLA!.

Interview

Welcome! Jono Bacon Ubuntu Community Manager and Author of The Art of Community

In the Beginning, there was Hair...

Read a nice piece on your blog where you responded to a delightful letter from a 14-year old fan.

Part 1. What was it about his letter that motivated you to respond to him and provide such an interesting and detailed account of your early travels with Linux, through Linux UK, KDE, LUG Radio, Open Advantage, then on to Ubuntu and Canonical?

Part 2. In that same piece, you describe your parents as supportive and also somewhat unconventional, in a sense, as they invested in you helping fund a business for you at such a young age. How do you see their influence in your work as a community manager?

BELONGING

In that piece you described your early involvement with Linux and the Linux community...

Despite my best efforts, I was still captivated at the sheer prospect of this worldwide group of people making this Linux thing better every day. ... These people inspired me, and I wanted to have the same kind of impact, despite having the technical ability of a rubber hammer.
I find it very interesting that it wasn’t necessarily the technology, but rather the people who drew you in. Is that “social desire” important to have if you are a community manager? And, is that attraction you had that “sense of belonging” you indicate in the book is so important for a community? If so, how do you make certain the climate is right to develop a sense of belonging?

DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS

To build on that, Jono, we are moving from a core team set of developers to a community of developers. How can we further develop a sense of belong amongst developer and increase collaboration outside of our more traditional “core developer” ranks and support our core developers as they move into more of a coaching and consulting role?

PLANNING
Joomla! doesn’t have a Benevolent Dictator for Life so no single person has the “final say.” It can be difficult building a roadmap for our future, or plans that folks can rally around. What advise might you have for how a community can collaborate and develop common vision?

CORE DEVELOPMENT AND EXTENSIONS

Building on that common vision question, how do you support the broader ecosystem of extension developers and not discourage involvement and collaboration in the central project? How does Ubuntu engage those folks, get a common vision and direction, and harness all that development power towards common goals.

COMMUNITY PRESSURE

"There is a current discussion on rules and community pressure in the Joomlasphere. My stance is that you should try to have as few rules as possible and encourage the community to govern itself through open discussions and resulting community pressure in case something bad happens (like somebody taking advantage of others for his own gain). Could you share some of your insight on this topic? Are there any tips that you can give for developing a set of rules that enables the community to help itself?"

END OF PART ONE

The last section of your book was entitled “End of Part One” - what do you mean about that?

SEVERED FIFTH

What is that all about? What is your goal? Is it just about music? Or, a bigger cause?

Contributors of the Week

Steve Burge for his work on OSM
Joomla! UX Group for Designing in the Open

Contributor of the Year

Amy Stephen for her work on The Art of Community JoomStew radio series and relentless community spirit.

Bad Boys of the Week

Brian Teeman, Robert Vining, Fotis Evangelou, Cory Webb, and Arlen Walker, the first one to recommend himself as an appropriate Bad Boy candidate due to frustration he felt mounting listening to the WordPress GPL talks

Get involved

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