Community Introspection
Same risks and rewards as for the individual
One of the things I love about being a member of the Plone community, is our capacity for introspection. Like all things, however, it has its place and its limits. I've been contemplating how we might find those limits.
At the recent World Plone Day, I had the opportunity to hear Donna Snow's story in more detail. She was one of the "old school" skinners who was hurt by the Plone 3 changes. She has been assimilated. :) She's now a stronger advocate than ever. That's a great example of how the Plone communities' introspection is an asset. We didn't flinch, we incorporated.
OTOH, sometimes I think our community could have a bit more patience with the significant though perhaps unsexy transitions that the Plone stack is in the middle of. We're no longer the new kid on the block and so we lose some of our sex appeal. We're now a successful project whose greatest challenge now may well be to gracefully manage the history of that success while we continue to improve.
It may not be so scintillating to participate in keeping a successful project nimble as it was to participate in the rise of a shining new success. I know, however, that I at least will be very pleased with my time if I'm now a part of the subtler success of standing up well to new challenges and challengers.
I very much value our community's capacity to make constructive use of criticism and to be critical of ourselves. I just think it would help morale to also raise enthusiasm while we're doing so.
Previous:
Nonprofit Software Development Summit
Nail, meet head
I said a couple of years ago that we wouldn't be attracting any new developers at all in this interim period between the old and the new technologies — and that has pretty much played out the way it was predicted, with some notable exceptions like David Glick and a few other superstar developers.
My surprise, however, has been how few developers that have left Plone for greener pastures while we go through this extended transition period. Some of the very few that did leave have even come back, wiser and more experienced with other systems, but still preferring to work with Plone.
We have the right people to pull this off, we are currently doing it, and we have the time to do it right, since Plone 3.x is already providing everyone with good money. Witness the stability of the 3.x branch combined with the exciting changes in what will become the 4.x line in parallel, and it's easy to be very enthusiastic about the future.
It's an important story to tell, and we should tell it more often.