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Announcing my candidacy for the presidency

Allison on 2006-03-30T06:41:27

Hey, why not? All the cool kids are doing it! :)

I would like to announce my candidacy for the presidency of The Perl Foundation. My platform is as follows:

  1. I will work long hours without pay or thanks.
  2. I will spend my personal income and vacation time to attend Perl conferences around the world.
  3. I will always be enthusiastic about new volunteers, no matter how many times I hear:
    "Hi, I'd like to volunteer."
    "Great! What would you like to do?"
    "I don't know."
    "How about X?"
    "I don't want to do *that*."

    Or:

    "Hi, I'd like to volunteer to do Y."
    "Great!"     1 month later: "Hey, how's Y going?"
    <silence>
  4. I will consistently have faith that I can determine the answer to the problems at hand, because that's my job. When one solution fails, I will try another, and another, and another. When a solution succeeds, I will not be disappointed that no one notices.
  5. I will always be aware that the title is just a title and holds no real value.
  6. I will face criticism kindly, and not take it personally. I will honestly assess my actions and the actions of other volunteers to look for ways we can improve. I will also accept that some improvements take time, and appreciate short-term progress towards larger improvements.
  7. I will always look for good ideas, but also remember that not all ideas are good ideas.
  8. I will hold on to my sense of humor and understand when a joke contains a serious truth and when a serious statement is a joke.

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to your support in the 2002 elections! ;)

Oh dear&#8230;

Aristotle on 2006-03-30T09:19:30

“Hi, I’d like to volunteer to do Y.”
“Great!” 1 month later: “Hey, how’s Y going?”
<silence>

*hangs head in shame*

(Not that I have forgotten about it…)

2002 elections?

prakash on 2006-03-30T13:52:00

I look forward to your support in the 2002 elections!

typo?

/prakash

Re:2002 elections?

sigzero on 2006-03-30T14:09:35

No...you missed the wink at the end of that sentence. ;)

All right!

sigzero on 2006-03-30T14:09:57

Now there is someone I can support!

Good to see _someone_ can read between the lines

Alias on 2006-03-30T14:19:32

> 4. I will always be enthusiastic about new volunteers, no
> matter howmany times I hear:
>
> "Hi, I'd like to volunteer."
> "Great! What would you like to do?"
> "I don't know."
> "How about X?"
> "I don't want to do *that*."
>
> Or:
>
> "Hi, I'd like to volunteer to do Y."
> "Great!" 1 month later: "Hey, how's Y going?"
>

Indeed. If I had a volunteer for every time I'd heard that...

Unfortunately, it seems a lot of the time that volunteers, when asking to help out and being presented with a Yak to shave, vanish into thin air.

Reducing barriers to entry seems to help. Audrey's approach of giving people commit bits by way of an answer has been very instructive (if somewhat chaotic) :)

And jobs for which people can gain both notariety and beer seem to be particularly attractive to volunteers.

And I thank you for the time you put in, especially from all of over here that will mostly never get the chance to meet you in person and say it.

Re:Good to see _someone_ can read between the line

KM on 2006-03-30T17:48:26

> Reducing barriers to entry seems to help.

What's seen as barriers? I'm not personally aware of, in the past 5ish years I've been working with TPF, that anyone volunteering to help has been turned away.

> And jobs for which people can gain both notariety and beer seem to be particularly attractive to volunteers.

There is no notariety. Not even inter-TPF White Camels! And, for all TPF-related things I've done and people and I have helped with, I have yet to get a beer for it (I did get traditional gift for organizing/hosting a YAPC). Doing things for TPF is a thankless task, where you have to just be happy you're doing what you can for Perl and the community. If you expect more, you're setting yourself up for failure. I think what everyone has done within TPF has been completely altruistic, and that may sometimes be forgotten.

Re:Good to see _someone_ can read between the line

Alias on 2006-03-31T05:00:55

> What's seen as barriers? I'm not personally aware of, in the past 5ish years I've been working with TPF, that anyone volunteering to help has been turned away.

It's true that I'm working with examples from technical projects here, but for one small example I've seen a tripling or better of small patches actually being applied to code since moving from SourceForge CVS to email-account based SVN.

There's a couple of extra nigglies needed to get past the SourceForge permissions stuff, but even that was enough to see 2/3rds of potential contributors bail out early.

I've pushed for people emailing or IRCing me patches to shove them into RT instead, and given them direct links to the reporting page and cut and paste to.

This seems to result in better longer-term contribution levels, as down the line if someone else adds a note to that bug, there's a level of cross-fertilisation that occurs and I see some evidence that this creates more of a community and encourages the two to move forward more than they would have otherwise.

If you look at some other fairly thankless jobs, such as testing other people's modules, or writing a Windows installer, both of these have seen increased participation once extra attention was brought to them. (Phalynx and the "metre of beer" thing).

While these are technical examples, it does demonstrate that it is possible to take an unsexy area and make it more so, somehow. I get a sense that the answer is going to be different for each different case though, so I'm not sure how you might leverage this in the non-technical volunteering...

Re:Good to see _someone_ can read between the line

cbrandtbuffalo on 2006-03-31T12:53:32

And, for all TPF-related things I've done and people and I have helped with, I have yet to get a beer for it

I tried to buy one for you on the boat at YAPC in Toronto, but then I couldn't find you (go figure--how can someone hide on a boat?). It was getting warm, so I think I gave it to Kurt.

Re:Good to see _someone_ can read between the line

KM on 2006-03-31T13:47:19

Ha! Well, then I'll modify my statement that someone attempted to buy me a beer :-)

Curse you Kurt, drinking me free, warm beer!

Re:Good to see _someone_ can read between the line

brian_d_foy on 2006-03-30T19:28:21

Volunteers almost never work out, and you can't use their enthusiasm with a programming project like Pugs to judge their enthusiasm for something really mundane like putting tax records online or setting up a blog they won't be able to post on.

Most of the work for TPF is really dull to most people. That's why there aren't too many people doing it.

Re:Good to see _someone_ can read between the line

Ovid on 2006-04-01T00:02:05

++

Yeah, my role as Grant Secretary is all wine, women and song, I tell ya.

Don't be bitter

hfb on 2006-03-30T15:32:11

That's my job. :) I enjoy a certain amount of schadenfreude when I encourage people to volunteer for stuff around these parts as taking the shiny patina off kids like Alias is cheap entertainment. Notariety and beer *cackle* Sure, kid.

Re: Don't be bitter

Allison on 2006-03-31T20:19:01

Not bitter. It was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. But plenty of room for humor. :)

Did I tell you the one about the president, the onion, and the glass of carrot juice? No? So, this onion walks into a bar...