"CommOps 2.0" is an emerging, potential Community Initiative focused on rebooting the Community Operations (CommOps) team.
Community Ops was born in Fedora eight years ago. A lot has changed in Fedora since then, and so has Community Ops. The goal of this conversation is to think out loud about what a successful and healthy Community Ops team looks like in 2023. I’m looking for ideas, thoughts, and opinions on what Community Ops should be, should not be, and whether you want to be a part of building the new Community Ops team.
Expression of Interest (EoI)
Do you want to be a part a rebooted Community Operations team? Edit this wiki page and add your name and details to the table below. As we get closer to rebooting the team, this list will serve as the starting place for getting a group of motivated Fedora contributors together.
| Name (nickname) | FAS username | Current participation in Fedora | Community Ops topics I am interested in | Other notes |
| Justin W. Flory (JWF) | jflory7 | Council, Mindshare, DEI, some Websites & Apps | Data science, product operations, storytelling | I can help act as the team lead/chair, modernize our ticket tracker, and run regular meetings. |
| Hanku Lee (hank) | hankuoffroad | Documentation writer, Join SIG, Magazine writer | Data science, storytelling | I can help with data definition and analysis of metrics requirements |
| Robert Wright (rwright) | rwright | New | Product operations, Data Science | I can help bring Service Design strategies to product operations, and building data models / SQL. |
What should Community Ops be?
If Community Ops could only do three things, what should those things be?
- Data science: In the simplest terms, looking at our large pool of data and making insightful and actionable observations about Fedora, our community, and our software. This includes programmers (to use and build tools for data analysis), designers (to devise a publishing format and outreach strategy), writers (to document and write summaries and articles about the data), or anyone with a mix of these skills.
- “Product operations”: A team to handle unique requests that involve coordinating and working together with two or more community teams. Basically, a role for contributors who work in several different groups; Community Ops is a place where a wide network in the community becomes a superpower. A new Community Ops better enables cross-sectional collaboration. “Product operations” in quotes here because this may not be the best name for this kind of work.
- Storytelling: Making sure the important messages and stories about the Fedora community are being captured and told. This is a “culture” type of role that helps create a type of documentation that describes what it means to be in Fedora and who are the people behind it. There are some examples of how Community Ops did this in the past, here and here.
2023 June questions for consideration
- Could Data Science be another part of Storytelling? What makes the two activities different?
- Should "Product Operations" instead focus on creating a "Changes" process unique to non-engineering teams of Fedora? What would this kind of work look like and who would do it?
- Could Community Ops exist as an innovation incubator for emerging community ideas? This way, Community Ops is always helping projects move forward, but never fully owning them. We work with partners who will own the work, but who seek guidance and mentoring of Community Ops team members on how to shepherd changes in the Fedora community.
--Jflory7 (talk) 22:12, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
What should Community Ops NOT be?
If Community Ops could stop or not do three things, what should those things be?
- Community Blog (CommBlog): The CommBlog editors should be an independent team from Community Ops. Looking back, I think our team’s purpose was washed out by the success of the CommBlog. People only knew Community Ops as the team of people who reviewed CommBlog posts. The blog grew and others took ownership of it, but Community Ops was still tied to it. Instead of Community Ops owning the CommBlog, Community Ops would help build a small team to help out with editing.
- App development: This is a better fit for the Websites & Apps Team. Community Ops should avoid any app development and limit coding/software development only to explorational data science work. This ensures the Websites & App Team remains the best place in the project to go for working on websites and apps in Fedora, and Community Ops keeps “tech” contributions narrowed to data science work only.
- Fedora Ambassador “owner”: Community Ops should not be the team responsible for Fedora Ambassadors. Community Ops may have a role to play in the administration of the Ambassadors program, but decision-making authority should rest with the Mindshare Committee. Since the 2020 Ambassador revamp, Community Ops is the supervisory team for the Fedora Ambassador and Advocate programs.
Why now?
Community Ops is special to me because I helped launch the team in 2015 with then-FCA Remy DeCausemaker and several others. When the team began, it had a specific vision on helping us work more effectively as a community and make sure that important areas of the contributor experience did not go unaddressed. In many ways, Community Ops was a working group for community issues in Fedora. However, people came and went and processes were forgotten. Over time, Community Ops began to mean something different to different people.
Community Ops was important and unique in its beginnings, because it was a team where both the Fedora Community Architect did many essential tasks and responsibilities in the public, but also together with a team. It was a unique team because anyone could help and contribute on community issues and make high-profile contributions in Fedora. (Heck, that is something I attribute to why I am in the role I am now.) I want a new Community Ops team because Fedora needs it now more than ever. We need to help each other collaborate and work together effectively and efficiently as a community of communities. This ties to our Four Foundations, which were the backbones of Community Ops from the beginning: Freedom, Friends, Features, First.
So, I have been in my role for just over six months. A lot of my time was spent listening, watching, and observing (in addition to hidden admin work required in the job). Now, I feel confident that we need a new Community Ops more than ever. But the question I have is, how do we do it? What does the community already know about Community Ops? Are there common needs across the community that a new Community Ops could serve? The first step in this process is to have this public conversation.
— Jflory7 (talk) 16:48, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
References & external URLs
- Fedora Discussion topics: