KDE should rather act then just "strike" (Re: Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?)

[cahfofpai at tuta.io]

Dear Thomas, dear KDE community,

>From my point of view, the course of events was:sunday, the 15th of september, evening: I recieved an email from the Fight for the Future (https://https://www.fightforthefuture.org/ <https://www.fightforthefuture.org/>) newsletter containing a call to join the Digital Climate Strike and a link to https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/ <https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/>
monday, the 16th of september: I read the email a day later and I thought: Great campaign, bringing the climate strike to the internet could really make an impact, I really should support this!
wednesday, the 18th of september, 3:06 pm: I created the phabricator task "Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?" (https://phabricator.kde.org/T11717 <https://phabricator.kde.org/T11717>) 
wednesday, the 18th of september, 5:10 pm: I pointed to the phabricator task in the KDE promo group on Matrix
skadinna suggested me to share the idea on the community mailing list and so I did (thanks for this, skadinna, this was a crucial point to get the suggestion to the community and make the idea become reality!)
so the discussion on this mailing list started: some spoke out against it, the board voted for it and there was much positive feedback about KDE participating in the digital climate strike
thursday, the 19th of september, late evening: Members of the Promo group took action and implemented the banner on the website and pushed a social media post out (thanks to everybody who helped bringing this to reality!)
friday, the 20th of september, a while after midnight: Kon reached out to Fight for the Future informing them that KDE supports the digital climate strike (finally, KDE got included in the section of "important" participants at https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/#participants <https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/#participants> (right at the end of the logos))
I suggested participating in the digital climate strike that late, because I did not know of the digital climate strike until I read about it in the newsletter email on monday. I proposed it that late on wednesday two days before the climate strike (rather late than never), because I did not really had time to do it earlier and it did not come to my mind much earlier that KDE could join the digital climate strike.
Of course I submit that such things should be proposed much earlier before the final date to have enough time to discuss and decide on it.

I'm proud that KDE supported this very important cause, because such a great community as KDE should not ignore the world outside their bubble and should also take responsibility for the world it exists in.

Thanks to everybody who supported this and made the participation of KDE in the global climate strike possible, even in this short amount of time!
I hope that discussion how KDE could be more environment-friendly goes on and leads to engagement and concrete actions into the right direction!

Your's truly
cahfofpai
22. Sep. 2019, 17:45 von t.pfeiffer.ux at gmail.com:

> Hi Christoph,
>
> On 20.09.19 22:35, Christoph Cullmann wrote:
>
>> I must confess I missed that we decided to participate, too, but digging
>> in the mails of this thread it seems the board of e.V. did so. (if I
>> don't misread
>> Aleix mail)
>>
>
> From my perspective, the course of events was:
> - On Wednesday evening, Sept 18th, cahfofpai opened a Phabricator ticket
> "Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?" [1]
> and around the same time started a thread on this list
> - The promo team wasn't sure whether it would be okay for them to do
> this because there weren't many reactions on the list and they didn't
> want to go against the community
> - At 1am of the 19th, Aleix asked me for my opinion on the idea, since
> he knew I was active in the climate movement. I told him that it made a
> lot of sense to me, and that we'd need to get it going on Thursday in
> order for it to have any effect in getting more people to join the
> strike on the streets
> - Aleix told me that the board had a call the next morning and he would
> propose a vote on it there
> - After the meeting, Aleix replied in this thread that the board
> approves of the action
> - At that point, the promo team started to get into "action mode", and I
> pushed them to get the word out still on Thursday because I believed
> that it would be far more likely for people to decide to join a protest
> "tomorrow" than "today"
>
>> This is OK for me, as for that the board got elected, to do some decision
>> when we can't wait for weeks to vote on something.
>>
>> Thought I would have appreciated if at least a 5 lines post of the
>> announcement
>> that "KDE joins this" would have been done on the planet or here to make
>> clear what happens. I am not sure that communicating this over twitter only
>> is the best way to do that, given we have the lists/planet/dot.
>>
>> (not that twitter is bad to advertise it to the world)
>>
>> I think this would have been be possible to discuss more properly if one
>> didn't bring this up
>> a few days before it needs to happens.
>>
>> Some people in the thread said they had this strike marked since months
>> thought it seems
>> nobody thought about communicating it to our community here a bit
>> earlier that "let's do this
>> this week".
>>
>
> I can't say why cahfofpai proposed to join the digital strike on Wednesday.
> What I can say is that when I first learned about the digital strike a
> few weeks ago (not sure when the idea for the digital strike was born,
> the "marked on my calendar for months" was referring to the strike on
> the streets), I must admit that I didn't dare proposing for KDE to join
> because I knew that some people would react negatively and I am terribly
> conflict-averse. I simply chickened out.
> It was only when I learned that someone else proposed it that I jumped
> on the bandwagon.
>
> So yes, I could have suggested that KDE should join the digital strike a
> earlier, had I mustered the courage to go against the nay-sayers. My
> bad, will try to be better next time.
>
> Thank you to cahfofpai for being more brave than I was.
>
> Cheers,
> Thomas
>
>> Greetings
>> Christoph
>>
>> P.S.
>>
>> :-) You might not remember, but I did put up the "we oppose software
>> patents" strike banner
>> more than a decade ago on kde.org and got burned a lot for that, even
>> thought we discussed that internally
>> at that time.
>>
>
> People who take action will always be burned. This is probably the way
> any community works, and those who take action sadly have to expect and
> live with that.
>
>
> [1] https://phabricator.kde.org/T11717
>