1. MacuariumLabs
community action research
Looking at the
wetware
Understanding stakeholders
for succesful communities
Miguel Cornejo Castro
fOSSa 2011, Lyon
November 26th 2011
miguel@macuarium.com
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2. Evolution: closed communities into
conversation spaces
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community action research
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3. Wetware is what defines OSS
• The code itself is agnostic. The difference is how it gets built, and
why. The relationship between the software and the wetware.
• There is a pesky, irreverent, egotistic, creative, rather wonderful thing
between the keyboard and the chair. Mostly water. And let's not
mention users. Not corporate sponsors. Nor the wider ecosystem.
• Most often, OSS is the result (and the driving cause) of a healthy
community. But communities take so many different shapes. And are
so fissiparous.
• "I don't expect wetware to work as logically as software". Orson Scott
Card, "Speaker for the dead".
• Allogical? Illogical? Really?
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4. Community and your project
• Communities as people and conversations and something else. The channel and tools are
(sort of) irrelevant.
• When the project is just you…
– … “the community” is a friend and some geeky early users.
• When you’ve got a product…
– … “the community” helps you make it useful.
• When you’re established…
– “the community” is the engine and main channel of the value-adding ecosystem.
• When you’re staid (or when you least expect it)…
– “the community” breaks apart and walks out on you.
• When you think the community just takes care of itself...
– "the community" fails and your dream project falters.
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5. Community?
Owner.
Manager.
Member.
Conversation space.
Sponsor.
Core.
Power contributors.
Ecosystem.
Dev community.
User community.
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community action research
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6. Wetware is a host of stakeholders
• The sponsor. In one way or another.
• The (original or current) vision leader.
• The trusted, involved core.
• The wider, variegated contributors.
• The (hopefully many) ecosystem units that add some
value.
• The end users, more or less unlettered.
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7. Different stakeholders, different reasons
• For the individual coder it may be a job, but in the aggregate it's volunteer work.
– Even when paid, most in the community work at it because they want it. Beyond the core, it’s often quite close to
volunteer work.
– Logical, driven, (usually) product of many hands and minds: the tool you build because you want to use it… and no
two uses are alike.
• For the sponsor, OSS may not be (only and necessarily) a religion…
– It can just be a business strategy to level the technological field or make prevalent your standard (Apple’s work with
Konqueror or -sort of- FaceTime)
– It can be just a business estratega to facilitate access to the technology at the lowest cost, so you can build an early
user base of future upgraders (Alfresco, OpenBravo…).
– It can be just a business strategy to make your professional services widely known to custom-development
prospects (mySQL in Oracle).
– It can just be a business strategy to cheaply build a base of customers you can sell services to (Auttomatic with
wordpress.com, and so many others).
• And the ecosystem is another WIIFM planet.
• Any which way, it needs a community. And if it doesn’t, it gets one anyhow. Pesky things, communities..
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8. Alignment, alignment, alignment
• Just what are we building?
– The goal, and the philosophy. Either share or don’t join. Needs to be clear.
• What are we doing it for?
– The reasons driving us and paying our hours. Need to be compatible.
• How are we doing the work?
– Dev methods, processes, tools. Some are religions. Need to share a core
creed.
• Who is in charge, at each level?
– And why? And to what extent? And how well? Remind me about the mission
thing.
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9. Affinity, competence, firepower...
Servant leadership for the wetware
• Negotiate, choose, drive competition.
• Shared? My dream?
– Motivation stems from shared decisions. Not just absent leadership. You need your people to reliably do the
boring useful tasks too. You need them to share the big idea.
• Your creature, your call?
– Decide what you want to decide upon. And remember that what you set free, you can't control.
• Participation?
– Or delegation. Or implicit trust. No contribution without representation (you can get it, but motivation,
innovation and quality will not be the same).
• Changing course?
– Beware the fork. Watch you traction. In short, listen. And be ready to lose excess weight rather than a clear focus.
• Are manners important?
– With brain workers? Every day.
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10. Affinity, competence, firepower:
The alogical wetware
• Are we divided?
– Separate work groups set agendas and see things differently.
• Are we compatible?
– Some people just can’t get along. Even engineers.
• Do we share a vision?
– Whatever our reasons, are we seeking the same creature? With a passion?
• Are the gurus properly packaged?
– The OS worker has a right to be heard. A silenced contributor is halfway a
mutineer.
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11. You work for yourself, yes, but if you
want scale...
• Do you know your users and their priorities?
• The creator of Wordpress was a Drupal early user and community member. He
left because Drupal gave no priority to ease of use. Now, Drupal is spending so
many hours building ease of use back in.
• Are you talking to them?
• The survival of an OS tool (and even of SAP) depends on its being useful to
users at every level. That depends on support: the user community.
• Who is keeping an eye on the end users?
• The kind of collaborator who can drive a user community is not the one who can
code best. It's the user wrangler. And they're delicate beasts.
• And it' not in one place: it makes up a "conversational space". Not a sigle space.
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12. Mind the ecosystem... and the sponsor
• They're involved for a sound business reason. And they
contribute along their own needs.
• They need the project to be a certain way (from licensing to
features), expect to be heard, and measure results.
• They can switch horses... or directly fork (Konqueror to WebKit).
• They're useful: they wield lots of brain hours.
• They are usually needed to make the project useful tp the wider
public.
• They (especially the main sponsor) feel entitled.
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13. In short: many types of wetware,
different motivations and expectation
End user: features,
support quality.
Ecosystem: quality,
WIIIFM, business
strategies.
Contributor:
representation,
appreciation,
participation... And
vision.
Core: mission, vision,
power, togetherness.
Sponsor: pragmatic
measurable goals
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14. More on this point of view
http://emekaeme.wordpress.com/publicaciones
and please let me know your experiences:
Miguel Cornejo
miguel@macuarium.com
Managing partner
MacuariumLabs is a project of
Macuarium Network
http://www.macuarium.com/foro
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community action research
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