coderamblings.com

After my first pirate post as a new employee to RCS, 4 months later, here are some of my high hopes for Raincity Studios, Vancouver and open source everywhere.

Being one of the organizers of the Open Web Vancouver conference, I and other fellow organizers have invested a portion of our time gratis, for hopefully the benefit of the local opensource Vancouver community and neighbours.
Suffice it to say, I am more than pleased at the thought of opensource development and processes taking off within software development but not being contained by software development companies. A famous opensource manifesto, that I recommend to peruse, if you haven't already, are the writings of Eric Raymond "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
One of the reasons that excited me about working with Raincity Studios, is because of its commitment to opensource and the local community. Working in opensource has I have found, brought its fair share of challenges, from out-of-date documentation and software modules, to wise persons on their mountaintops, and wading upstream through rivers of information just to retrieve that little nugget of gold.
Over the next year, I hope to see interesting developments in the technical and managerial arenas as to how to foster open source in local communities, as well as working in conjunction with various companies and teams across the globe.

Even a short discussion in a monthly Drupal meeting, with a Drupal shop across town, such as Imagex Media, it became evident that collaboration would be in our best interest, to foster growth of Drupal, and to reduce redundant work. I am also excited about, and hoping and wishing for the possibility of communicating with heavy weights such as Lullabot, Achieve Internet, Acquia amongst others.
Everytime that I hear Boris Mann hold a monthly Drupal meeting, if just to answer a few questions or to present a new speaker, I feel that I am listening to a project manager who is coordinating the various Drupal shops and contractors across town, by causing information to be shared and inspiring work to be performed on various modules.
Inevitably, this sort of development model is unusual to traditional companies, who are not known to share information between companies, much less act as lesser branches of a larger co-operative entity.
This unusual mode of operation presents difficult management challenges. Traditional managers might want to impose an autocratic style of government, espousing outdated methods of management, where employees are put in their place, and not asked to think or take initiative. Just to function as cogs in a well-oiled machine. Information is strictly controlled between boss and employee.
In these outdated systems, managers make decisions, and employees execute them. If the employees fail to execute the system properly, it becomes the fault of the employee. If a manager fails to properly plan the project, and provide the means for an employee to accomplish their job, the problem with bad management hardly ever becomes an issue, for the information channels may not be available.
Obviously this method does not work in opensource, where you have more like a thriving ecosystem. Many parallel answers may exist at the same time, but over time, the best, or most accepted answer/module wins out. There are likely to be various leaders in a losing camp disappointed, but they have to accept the decision of the community, or develop better oratorial and documentation skills. In opensource projects, afaik, it is those that do, that rise to the top, and gain the respect of the community.
This lesson does not just apply to opensource development. One of my first jobs straight out of university was as a project engineer. I was under the mistaken impression, that the leader had to show strength and not allow opposing arguments. How wrong and green I was. It became obvious, that many workers on the floor were the real experts, modifying carefully constructed engineering documents, made by haughty engineers who were paid twice or more, thought they knew the best, but did not.
Even huge multinational organizations such as ADP, encourage horizontal rather than vertical structures. The CEO will encourage communication directly with him. HR processes are highly developed to encourage employee initiative, such as yearly Gallup polls, ACE awards and the like.
For smaller groups, to achieve better and faster results, open channels of discussion are essential, for each person can add valuable insight. Cathedral building structures tend to punish people that speak and act out of place, whereas bazaar environments cause the best-of-breed to thrive and grow.

Of course, the reference to Eric Raymond's cathedral-building is of local cultural and historical value, however, today's churches have evolved, such as sunday's First Baptist sermon, warning against legalism.
It is important for all of us in opensource, to treat everybody fairly, not just as a coffee-maker but as a possible co-developer.