This blog entry discusses different layers of MeeGo community and roles they posses, if things would go as I would like things to evolve. Some things might seem rather bold, but I’ll try to justify my opinions as profoundly as possible. Focus is on events and who is responsible for what and why. Ok, the pyramid :) Some kind of structure is needed when community includes hundreds or thousands of members. That can hardly be denied even by hard core anarchists. Pyramid is one common way to describe structure. Those of you who see pyramid as ‘evil’ since it resembles corporate or military style management, take a look at any other FOSS project. They all have ‘pyramid’. They have masses, contributors, working groups, gatekeepers and some even dictators, benevolent or other. In my view, that pyramid is turned upside down.

The pyramid is not drawn upside down by accident. It is done for a reason. Open Source development’s strength including MeeGo community is in the people who constitute that community. At the highest level are Local MeeGo Networks (LMN). They are the foundation of our community. Second layer should be regional (/national) level networks. The ‘bottom’ is Community Office. All situations and discussions should take place as near as possible to local MeeGo networks. Only when matters can not be solved at local level or affects for example regional issues/global community issues, they should be taken to next level.

Community office is there to serve ‘higher level’ parts of the community. Community office does not exist to dictate how things are done, what forms different things take or how local MeeGo Networks should function. Community office has an important role in creating guidelines and coordinating efforts which is done by listening what our members say. This requires that members participate community office work in meetings, email discussions and other forms of communication. Messages and information must flow both ways, up to down - down to up, to ensure mutual understanding and agreement. Otherwise guidelines and such are based on hunch and gut-feeling, not on facts or needs of developers and other community members. Of course there are issues that belong to community office eg community managers. Which those issues are, depends on community at hand.

Local events

Local events refers to local meetups. Normally meetups are understood as monthly meetups organized by local MeeGo network. Topics discussed and demoed in meetups are somehow MeeGo related. But that can be boring in the long run. Local networks can organize other kind of events too. One option is to have weekend-long event. That offers more time and enables to concentrate on issues that can not be dealt with in one evening meetups. An example of such weekend event could be ‘bug munching’. Weekend could include lessons about different approaches to identifying and fixing bugs, hands-on examples with different tools and development environments. That was just an example, use your imagination and create other possibilities: weekend hackathons (combine on-site activity and virtual participation), make a visit to local hackerspace, get a new gadget, demonstrate it and let people play with it, etc. Something that breaks the routine can boost your local community and get them excited again.

Why do we need regional level?

Regional level network is responsible for handling regional events such as MeeGo Summits. It must be kept in mind that regional level body does not dictate what local networks do (just as community office does not dictate what regional networks do). Organizing national or regional event requires partners and sponsors. That is more easily done when you can speak in the name of national network, instead of one city in your country. Furthermore, if regional body is used, you might have better chance to get all MeeGo developers in your area behind the Summit. If just one local network decides to organize a summit, others might feel ‘not so welcome’ and left out or secondary.

Of course the beginning can be different even considering organizing national events. It might be (or is probable) that people from venue site will take more crucial role, but that is natural. In time people from other cities will join the efforts. But still, people in venue site will take care of most of tasks. Why? They know the area, facilities, possibilities since they live there. Furthermore they see each other often in local meetups and get bonded.

Summits are planned to bridge the gap between local meetups and MeeGo Conferences(see guideline). I think that is what Amy Leeland has said a few times and that is written in guidelines too. According to event guidelines, summits “are hosted by the community entirely and are not in any way managed or planned by the MeeGo Project”. This puts all responsibility of Summits to the hands of local (or as prefer to say regional) communities. The same guideline states that organizing Summit is greater task than organizing local meetup. Based on my experiences during the last months, I can concur to that. Current guidelines suggest that each year some local group starts the process. This suggests that summit organizing begins outside the local networks boundaries. That is of course one interpretation only.

The guideline (which is useful and great in general) also seems to assume that no summit organization teams (guideline speaks about a team) will be formed or preserved from year to year. This is where I partly disagree. I do understand that the guideline is still in progress and I have contributed to that some parts that I now criticize. That only means that lessons have been learned. Here’s a few pointers.

In my opinion the team in guideline refers to some kind of management team, which in turn creates plans for the summit and gets blessing for the Summit before starting the actual work. From whom is this blessing asked? That is still open. Guideline does not bring up any other teams , that would be part of organizing the summit. Obviously there will be, each year. There is no point inventing the wheel again year after year. Based on our experience, teams will be formed and practices such as communication and team work are established. This is were regional level body steps in. Those teams are part of national network, which is responsible for the summit. Some of those teams handle same tasks (which serve the whole national community) even between the summits. It would be unnatural to attach those teams to some local network. Besides summit planning, getting sponsors, building program, getting speakers, finding suitable venue and other tasks take a lot time, months to be more precise. Much like Summits bridge meetups and international events, regional networks bridge local networks and community office. MeeGo community office should encourage local networks to join together and support all efforts in that. Those regions that have organized a summit should collect/write down an example (reference) of summit organizing teams and what they do. This would help the others and redoing the same mistakes. In other words, sort of “dos and donts”. I am willing to be part of this process as soon as MeeGo Summit FI 2011 in Tampere is over and I have kept my well-earned vacation.