The Challenge to reach The Summit

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Published: 25 November 2016

• Joomla
• JDay
• Granada
• WebSummit
• Lisbon

In November 2016, I had the unique opportunity to attended two featured technology events. In a first place, I was invited as Open Source Contributor to WebSummit 2016 and secondly I attended to JoomlaDay Granada 2016. The differences between both events are remarkable, and an accurate description of the current challenges that we face today.

WebSummit is a huge European event, with an audience of more than 50,000 attendees, where you can find from big corporations, showing well-planned marketing campaigns, to small start-ups pitching non-working prototypes.

In previous years, WebSummit had taken place in Dublin, but this year, to reach a greater scope, the organisation jumped to Lisbon and executed a perfect strategy. In this context, the beautiful city of Lisbon received our invasion of professionals of the web world, accepted the bet, and it was ready to answer with a proper infrastructure and an army of volunteers.

At this scale, the organisation pulled a success. We can argue that in the first days all venues were full and it was even difficult to listen to the talks in open spaces. Still, after the initial madness, there was room to talk, learn new ideas, or touch the raw source of technology innovation. In this arena, topics like artificial intelligence, big data, drones, virtual reality, automotive, IoT, bots or robotics had their 15 minutes of fame. Of course, we could find our regulars: SaaS, E-commerce, creatives, marketers and technologists, leading banks, sports business, etc. Overall, the current landscape of web technology was well represented.

On the other hand, I attended  JoomlaDay Granada 2016, an event organised by our Joomla! Spanish community. An always incredible opportunity to meet Joomlers, friends, colleges, and students. All of us summoned by our common interest in Joomla! CMS and open source technology.  A moment of time when we were privileged witnesses of how a user group in Granada takes shape.

Both experiences could not be more different. WebSummit prices go from 300€ up to 5.000€, over a year until it is sold out. JDays are frequently free, sponsored by featured software developers or services providers, and located in educational or governmental venues.

From a Joomler point of view, WebSummit is an alien environment. It can be overwhelming or totally annoying. We are used to our community, where close relationships are formed along years to form small niche of nerds. We know each other and we know our professional skills to the detail. For instance, in our gatherings, we talk about what we have been doing recently, not even talking about our commercial activity.

Out there, there is a whole world to challenge us. In the wild, we can find new ideas and apply new concepts to our systems. Evolution is the key to surviving. We need this technology pressure to understand the challenges that our users face every day. To be precise, in Joomla, we have pending questions that we need to answer, and I find myself also looking for solutions to these problems. We only have to combine these new concepts and Joomla! to find new growth opportunities. To be crystal clear, we are in a post-web and post-mobile era; we have to adopt these ideas to evolve.

To sum up, I can conclude that both events helped me to better understand the current state of the art of web technology. In our niche, we have highly qualified enthusiasts, ready to solve any problem. We have a legacy of more than ten years of one of the finest pieces of technology ever created by an open source community. Nothing is stopping us from lead the change into modern times. So, the big question is: do you dare to go there? 

•  One more J-story to tell: A Joomler lost in the WebSummit

Connecting the dots from Joomla! World Conference 2015

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Published: 08 September 2016

My Joomla! marathon started in Joomla! World Conference 2015. I was awarded as project volunteer with JET to attend JWC15! and I presented a session about Mobile Apps at JWC 2015. This community event was my first international conference to meet a big part of Joomla! community. Volunteers who daily collaborate with the project, but rarely have the opportunity to meet in person.

To read more about the experience:

• Introducing Mobile Apps at JWC 2015
• Rocking at Joomla World Conference 2015, Bangalore

If you have the chance to attend the current edition of Joomla World Conference 2016, DO NOT miss the opportunity.

Looking back, a particular session was moving and intriguing for me: JWC15 - Building and Maintaining a Healthy Community, by Priyanka Nag.

Fast forward to September 2016, I am a brand new member of Joomla! Community Leadership Team and her words have a new meaning and embody a call to my inner project manager:

• Belonging: A sense of belonging is what keeps people in communities.
• Open Communications: With an open community and publicly visible and accessible communication channels, anyone can join the community.
• Open Tools: Anyone with an Internet connection and computer can contribute.
• Community Leader: Who is He / She?
• A Community Leader's Responsibilities:
  • Enable People
  • Trust is everything
  • The Value of Listening
  • Avoid Ego, or Others Will Avoid You
• Scaling the Community
  • Building the right tools
  • Resolving community conflicts - CONFLICTS CAN'T BE AVOIDED -
  • Multiple Communication channels
• Community TODO List
  • Identify how we can divide our community into teams
  • Ensure that teams can communicate clearly and effectively
  • Define the scope of each teams, and help team members understand that scope
  • Encourage diversity and opportunity in the community
  • Produce a Code of Conduct
• Quick Steps to Resolve a Conflict
  • Calm and reassure
  • Get the facts
  • Discuss
  • Document
  • Reflect and maintain
• Working with an Open Community
  • Good - Open by default, real diversity
  • Bad - Working with partners (Source, by Stormy Peters)
  • Ugly - Not enough time, lack of commitment, meetings

To the moon!

Excerpt

Open Source organizations and projects are driven by the strength of its community. We have often seen but how big communities fall because of wrong ways of handling it or mismanagements. My talk will be around the lines of how a community leader or manager can take a few extra responsibilities to keep a community healthy.

Description

Being in the Open Source world for the last 4 years, I have got opportunity of working with several different communities. I am also currently working as community manager, here at Scrollback.

Communities are tough to build, true, but what we often forget is the fact that once built, these communities are even tougher to be maintained.

There are some very simple rules around maintaining the health of these communities. Through my talk, I would like to point out a few of those simple tricks to building and maintaining a healthy community.

More references

• Mozilla Community-Building Readings
• Community Management for non-software problems

What is best for the individual can be disastrous for the group

Details

Published: 08 September 2016

Today, I'm reading again about the Nash equilibrium, a simple but powerful idea that explains how self-improving individuals could lead to self-harming crowds.

Two comprehensive article about The Prisoner’s Dilemma and other similar cases:

• Game theory / Prison breakthrough, from The Economist - Aug 20th 2016
• The Prisoner’s Dilemma, by Robin Houston