Re: [OT - Possibly] Goals and Objectives

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 05:12, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> it might sound ludicrous and come across as highly misleading, but
> here's something that has been bothering me for sometime now. as a
> point of fact, when gnome-india list was being discussed, i'd raised
> this one.
> 
> the regional marketing lists have as their primary agenda - marketing
> and/or promotion of GNOME. i'm aware of the sea of difference in the
> 2 terms, yet i club them together. i'll come to the reason somewhat
> later. the entire concept of these lists is ensuring that GNOME is
> properly 'publicised' so to speak. in this connection, is it a better
> idea to have a consolidated aims and objective sheet from the GNOME
> Foundation/Board ? a sort of policy statement elaboration of the
> GNOME Roadmap...

Hmm .. funny you should mention this. Three board members have the job
this week of writing some broader outlines into the roadmap (which is
currently a bunch of very specific goals). One part of that is a
"mission statement" section, which may go part of the way towards what
you are after.

We are meant to get this out to other board members by next Monday (Feb
2nd) and then move a draft onto foundation-list (and possibly here)
shortly after that.

> the immediate advantage is that the regional groups/lists have a
> yardstick handy to measure (and i fancy beat themselves with !) as
> well contribute immediate feedback. a participatory model also
> increases stakeholder voices (sometimes it leads to chaos - but GNOME
> has ample firefighters). thus we have a consolidated objective along
> with the annualised theme in place.

Agreed.

> 
> coupling this with the annual GNOME events and event reports help
> create a consolidated experience repository. collaboration does
> really go a long way towards synchronised ballet.

Why do people keep bringing up modern dance when talking about GNOME?
Did I miss a memo somewhere? :-)

> apologies in advance if this sounds ridiculous

I think it is very relevant. If any group feels they don't have a grasp
on the overall plan / roadmap, then it just becomes mindless activism,
which is not very productive or rewarding for the participants.

Cheers,
Malcolm