[Events] Brainstorming for an event idea: Earn a nice person

[Karen Rustad]

I agree w. Lukas--taking some people, training them to be Nice People, and
then making them go out and have to also train themselves to be Nice Experts
in whatever community they choose (with all the anthropological embedding
issues that outsider status brings to the table) seems like you're making
your task unnecessarily difficult and complex.

Perhaps instead of pitching it as a sort of external fellowship program,
recruit mostly among existing FOSS contributors / community members for the
same sort of community-building training (and subsequent trumpeting of
Certified Nice Person status), then in the second phase, instead of
requiring them to choose new projects, have them bring that knowledge back
to their originating ones (or others, if they want) and observe what they do
with it. (Recording successes and failures with copious blog posts,
preferably, both for visibility of the program and so everyone can learn.)

Then people only have to learn one set of skills, instead of two
simultaneously, and you still move towards your overall goal!

-- Karen

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 11:31 PM, Lukas Blakk <lukasblakk at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11-07-02 9:18 PM, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
>
>>
>> I have some questions for the people on this Events list:
>>
>> * Do you think that this would improve open source communities?
>>
>>  I totally get what you're hoping for here, and you've put a lot of work
> and thought into this.  Reading this proposal as-is, I'm not sure it would
> improve the open source communities I've dealt with.
>
> The open source community I know very well is Mozilla's and I've found that
> we have a lot of nice people on hand in most public IRC channels who are
> welcoming to new folks and point people towards the information they seek.
>  Whenever I've poked my head into other "communities" (read: IRC channels)
> I've had mixed results but what sticks out for me about this idea is that
> just putting 'nice people' in a room doesn't necessarily help. Someone could
> be very nice to me and not be able to answer my questions, and if they are
> totally new to the community, these 'nice people' might not know to whom or
> where I should be directed for more information.  I'm worried that the goal
> of this project a) assumes a lack of nice people already in the communities
> who also have deep knowledge of that community and b) that it would put
> 'nice people' into the middle of a community without sufficient knowledge
> and thus put off a new person who is looking for answers first and not
> necessarily niceness.
>
>  * Would you be willing to be on the Working Group?
>>
>>  I can't commit time to that right now, so I'm just sharing my opinions.
>  I look keeping track of the project and hearing more about it as it
> progresses.
>
>
>  * Are there specific suggestions you would make to improve the project?
>>
> Instead of working from a place that suggests a scarcity or lack of nice
> people in existing communities, ask communities to shout out who their 'nice
> people' are and then try to pair up the Trainees with those folks, shadowing
> a nice & knowledgeable person instead of "here's some docs on how to be a
> nice person in this community you're new to" and now you're on your own,
> thrown into the deep end.
>
>
>> If I don't hear much in reply, I'll try to get this going myself with just
>> me on the Working Group. I'm prety excited about that already. More
>> conversation, discussion, and help on the Working Group would be lovely.
>>
>> -- Asheesh.
>> _________________
>>
> Thank you Asheesh for your persistent optimism, willingness to take action,
> and great flow of ideas!
>
> Cheers,
> Lukas
>
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