latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M07 5, Wed 12:17:10 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Tuesday, 4 July 2017 22:28:24 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On 2017 M07 2, Sun 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> > > something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're falling
> > > very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our
> > > efforts
> > > to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years
> > > massive
> > > efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable
> > > but
> > > it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so
> > > far, we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The
> > > community will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose interest
> > > and less new blood gets in.
> > 
> > Are you saying somewhere in those documents we should say what we actually
> > want to accomplish ?
> > Maybe not only on a community level, but on a software level  ?
> > If so, I agree.
> 
> Somewhat yes (see my other probably more detailed answer to sebas). As long
> as it's not used as a mean for exclusion.
> 
> For instance, I'd totally be fine with us saying "OK, open data is our
> strong focus for the next five years, as such we'll try to push further
> projects in that category like WikiToLearn". Probably wouldn't be my
> personal agenda (I'm proud we got WikiToLearn in our midst and I got no
> personal motivation to work on it). Assuming I'd be a Plasma contributor, I
> would still be able to work on Plasma anyway which would be more to my
> liking. But, knowing our focus for the next five years, having it on the
> back of my mind, I would likely be more proactive in talking about
> WikiToLearn when staffing a booth taking the time to look at it, I would
> likely keep an eye open for cross-pollination between Plasma and
> WikiToLearn.

Except that I don't think "Open Data" should really be THE focus of KDE (but I 
guess you just used that as a random example ?), I fully agree.

I fully support the idea to figure out some one or a few "main focus" areas and 
push them.
I never meant, never even hinted to exclude projects which are not in this 
main focus. But OTOH I think we don't need to attract them. Also my impression 
is that this argument is currently used the other way round: we are so 
diverse, e.g. Wiki2Lean, so it is impossible to define what our main focus is 
(implying that everything which is not mentioned in such a statement would 
have to be excluded).

> IOW, knowing the organization as a whole decided on some sort of direction
> at least for a while would prompt me into looking beyond my usual comfort
> zone. By doing that with the two examples above we might see a stronger
> influx of contributors in the current focus zone ('cause promo) who are
> more likely to then also look at the other stuff we do ('cause
> cross-pollination).

+1

Alex