Meeting:Board strategic working group 2010-01-25

Roll Call

Attendees: Paul Frields, Mike McGrath, Chris Tyler, Colin Walters, Matt Domsch, John Poelstra

Previous Meeting

• Meeting:Board_strategic_working_group_2010-01-18

Finalized list of resolved and unresolved issues and initiatives

• Unfinished_Board_issues
• Went through each of the specified tasks and assigned an owner to each one
• Agreed on next steps:
  • Each owner will create separate wiki pages for each issue using a common template to include the following primary sections:
    1. Issue
    2. Background
    3. Possible Solutions
    4. Risk/Benefits analysis
  • Add all wiki pages [Category:Strategic working group]

FOR NEXT MEETING:

• We will all set up skeleton wiki pages in [Category:Strategic working group] and attempt to fill in the background section and as much of the rest of the page as possible
• Link all issue pages back to Unfinished_Board_issues

Explaining the Importance of Strategy

• BRAINSTORMING: not to be taken as set policy
• Background: lay out reasons why the Board (and this work group) are pursuing these issues and the benefits that will result to Fedora from doing so
• Colin: The board work doesn't necessarily have to be negative or create restrictions on groups inside Fedora; instead one could think of it as finding commonality and providing a framework.
• Paul: Perception of Fedora carrying the torch of free software needs to strongly match the reality
  • Contributors fully recognized for their work and progress in the free software community
  • We want Fedora to be successful, understood by more people, and we want it to prosper. This happens by:
    • Attracting more contributors
    • Making sure we are putting effort into the right areas--cannot attack everything equally
    • Work hard to collectively/collaboratively solve these problems
    • Making sure support and resources are going to the key areas that help us blaze a trail forward
    • Continuing to implicitly allow and encourage groups and personal initiatives that fall outside of the key areas, provided that they do not impede progress in the key areas
• John: We want to be clear about why we are creating the default spin and who it is for so that we can measure our success or failure
  • This helps to build sustainable, achievable release processes because we have a clear sense of what must work and for whom
• Mike: We need to have current goals for why we exist and what our purpose is so that outside and inside people have a sense where Fedora is going and what its direction is
  • John: this gives them something to grab onto and belong to vs. people showing up to a massive sand box with lot of people doing their own thing where it is unclear where to get involved, what is most important, what the critical mass of people is working on.
• Chris: move these ideas to a separate wiki page

NEXT ACTIONS:

• John will create a wiki page with above bullets
• Continue to work together to craft some tighter statements that the board as a whole can review and agree on

Next Meeting

• February 1, 2010 @ 15:00 EST