Building national level teams

This blog entry describes what national MeeGo network is and what it could be. Viewpoint is  teams which are the core of any community. Introduced model is  a refined vision or version which has been build through the experiences in Finland (MNFI). The model described here will not be the last. It is natural for the community to stay constantly on the move. Still some teams are more ‘sticky’ than others and that is natural. This stickiness is discussed briefly. The model is not constructed entirely from my own thoughts. A lot of MNFI members (and some others) have been involved by creating practices and guidelines. My role in this is to gather things together and raise some discussion (hopefully). I own my gratitude to all of you, but to name a few cybette, jnwi, timoph, smoinen, Riussi, Ans5i, matrixx, sandst1, bergie, Stskeeps and jibun.

Why teams and not groups?

Before taking a look at the initial teams in MNFI, one might be wondering why I prefer to use the word ‘team’ and not for example ‘group’? According to some scholars and other thinkers, groups are formed before teams. Groups are loose networks or collectives and teams are in fact first only groups. But if things go well, group becomes a team which is more cohesive unit, possesses complementary skills and abilities, share a goal and are committed to achieve that goal. Of course this might sound like pure semantics, but it’s not. Another difference between teams and groups is leadership. In groups leader or leaders define the goals and members are willingly accountable to leader(s). In teams, members hold each other accountable and try to reach consensus on goals and how to approach identified goals. Yet another difference is found how groups and teams handle conflicts. When conflicts arise in group – for example someone is not performing as expected – members look for the leader and expect him/her to act. In teams, members approach the person directly. Final difference I wish to expose is related to decision making. Groups use commonly voting or implied agreement. Teams prefer to use consensus. There are other viewpoints to this, but I will not address those here.

At the global level MeeGo community uses the term ‘working group’. That’s fine, if you are not anarchist and hard core FOSS like me. The word working does not fit in unless you are participating MeeGo related activities as paid staff. Even though I get paid to be community manager, the word still pushes my away. Team as a term is more casual and loose enough and it fits the purpose (at least in national level) which is to get people committed to community.

I would also like to see a clear division between teams and task-forces. Teams are something that are sort of sticky; teams live longer and have more general nature in community. Task-forces are small groups, which are established for special purpose and live only to gain a specific goal. After the goal or goals have been reached, it is disassembled either for good or for some time (for example Program Task-force).

The initial teams

Our national network has been around for about 4 months now. I did have a vision of national level MeeGo network in the early stages, when I started to co-host Tampere MeeGo Network (TMN) meetings with Myrtti. I posted my vision to newly established TMN mailing list with topic: ”I have a dream”. Cheesy and worn, but it says exactly what it was, a dream.  The mail (Oct 25 2010) started with the following:

I’ve had this idea in my head for a week or so and it’s time to spit it out. I can see that a sort of community portal would be needed in the future. The portal would aggregate several info streams and possibly offer some tools for the community. By community I mean MeeGo Networks in Finland. The portal would serve as a single entry point to all local networks, MeeGo related events and activity in Finland.

In the beginning (Oct -Sept 2010) there was nothing more than Tampere MeeGo Network and lost wannabe community manager, which also co-hosted TMN meetups. At the same time Helsinki, Turku and Jyväskylä also started to organize activities. As far as I know, just Helsinki and Tampere have been active since that, but I might be wrong. After we got TMN up and running, the idea of national events matured. After a while,  foundations for the national community were defined when 6 teams were established:

I did not select pieces of puzzle by accident to describe teams. Building community from teams is like doing a puzzle. Sometimes pieces fit perfectly, sometimes not and justified forcing is needed (not necessarily by the manager). Some pieces are connected to several other pieces (gain more focus or have more activity) while some stay near the edge of the board. Unlike in puzzles, the pieces of community can overlap slightly. Too big overlapping in tasks and responsibilities will create disorder and can cause ‘territorial disputes’.  Of course community must be open to new teams or new combinations of existing teams. That’s why there are holes and hooks on the edges of pieces. I could discuss the group dynamics of teams, but it would be out of scope of this entry. Better save that for later.

Right from the start, some members of TMN jumped into teams (which were at first groups). In October some interest towards national co-operation raised in Helsinki. In December Helsinki MeeGo Network (HMN) joined newly born MNFI. This moment can be said to be the real birthday of MNFI. That moment was 1st December 2010 when HMN had meetup in Helsinki and I visited there to tell them about our (TMN) visions related to Summit and national community. Response was good and some joined immediately. You can read more about the early stages of MNFI from previous blog entry.

Let’s take a look at (just briefly) the early teams illustrated in picture above. First of all, it’s a colorful bunch Team names have hardly anything constant. One team is called task-force, one does not include the word team and rest are teams which varying prefix. It is said that some amount of formality and uniformity in naming structures is good. In this case, that was not followed. One team name includes even MeeGo community specific jargon (meegons). That name used inside our community is fine, but for the outsiders, from where new members come, it might seem a bit odd and puzzling. Who should we blame for this mess? Well, yeah, no other than me. I have been involved in some communities before and some ideas came from those experiences. Furthermore, since I’m a researcher I read some books and other writings. One good book for every community builder/enabler/manager is  Jono Bacon’s The Art of Community. It includes basics to get you started, but remember that every community is a bit different and you need to adjust those ‘advices’. And that is what I’m doing now, adjusting the model to fit our needs and situation.

MNFI teams were established while keeping two things in mind. First, we planned MeeGo Summit for the spring and teams seemed natural tool for that purpose (clear goal which everyone agreed on). Second, some teams need to stay alive after the summit and form more constant basis for community. This blog entry tries to take a look at life after MeeGo Summit FI, so the focus is on ‘sticky’ teams.

Communication & Tech team

This team (for the sake of clarity let’s call it C&T) is responsible our server, national level mailing lists (freenode and meegonetwork), irc Ops and controls our own domain. Freenode is our national level mailing list provider. We use meegonetwork domain for team mailing lists and mail addresses. In other words, C&T is rather tech oriented and looks a lot like company IT department. Before the redistribution of tasks between this team and Marketing team, social media related tasks were sort of ‘no mans land’. Our national level social media were handled by me and smoinen.

C&T lead handled (and still does as far as I know) Tampere MeeGo Network Facebook page. Same lead also manages the LinkedIn group. This is something that is not consistent or clear in our practices, since Marketing team is supposed to manage all social media related services. This will be discussed below in details. This overlapping is an example of previously discussed task overlapping between teams. Even though it might look inconsistent or illogical, these overlappings or sneaking in other team’s ‘backyards’ normally does not matter as long as everyone knows about it. Besides we are not a big community, at least not yet so information spreads inside our community mostly from person to person. People seem to prefer personal communication over posting to national mailing list. This observation is based on the facts that MNFI has around 250 members (based on Meetup.com) and a little over 30 have joined national mailing list. Even our IRC channel (#meego-fi) has more people (over 50). Meetups are also one communication tool, since a lot of issues related to MNFI are discussed there, partly because I have reserved 15 minutes for my self in some of our TMN meetups.

Program Task-force

This team was established to take care of Summit program. Tasks included among others things to define the structure, gather ideas who should be the speakers (and then invite or approach selected candidates), what kind of tracks there should be, where the tracks can be placed and what other activities there could be. This team was based on inviting suitable community members to it. In other words, it was not open team. A of lot ideas regarding the Summit content came from community. Even though the team had responsibility to take care of the program, several community members were involved. For example, a great deal of the Meegathon competition definition was result of community work.

Marketing team

Marketing team has been (or still is) one of the most popular teams. Several members are involved in it partly because it includes a wide variety of tasks from simple leaflet distribution to graphical design. Moreover, the members in this team are highly active. This team is open, meaning that anyone is welcome to join it. Marketing team was previously more oriented to print media and  constructing marketing material such as leaflets, posters and t-shirts. They handle the whole process  from the start to distribution. This means that they design material, contact printing companies, get the prints and organize distribution. In other words, marketing team acts as quite independent unit. Of course they ask opinions from rest of the community, but they do decisions (in marketing issues). Tasks and role of this team has changed lately, but I will address that later.

Hosting team

Team’s duties include comprehensive management of items which affect speaker’s enjoyment. Such items are for example arranging hotel rooms, providing information and assisting in session preparations. Managing pre-registration and registration (including portal) is one of the key responsibilities of this team. Hosting team also takes care of Summit information desk, updates program during the event, tweets and assists Summit participants in various situations. In brief, they are the human touch or face of Summit organizers. They are the people to go to when you have lost your precious laptop, netbook, N900, tablet, shoes, coat, Tux/MeeGon figure or hacking buddy. Information desk is also the correct place to inform the organizers about different activities which summit participants are encouraged to arrange at the venue. Such activities include hands-on sessions for small groups, unconference/barcamp sessions and workhops (or in this case hack-shops).

Hack3r team

To be labeled as Hacker is an honor among us. The word hacker means to us the same as ‘Sir’ does for the royalty. Members of this team are talented in different technical areas and posses deep knowledge. They are not so interested about anything that involves maintaining systems. Instead they are true explorers and tinkerers, always looking for new tech to try. Team members are not overwhelmed in front of technical problems and can think outside-the-box to find solutions.

This team has been responsible for defining ‘developer USB- stick’, which will be given to all Summit participants. That stick will include lots of tools for MeeGo related application development from various sources. The main idea behind this stick is to cut down the need to download all tools at the venue. Furthermore, it will hopefully serve participants’ needs also after the summit.

Party MeeGons

This is probably ‘teh’ team where the party animals join. Members of this team are true multi-talented entertainers; VJs, DJs with ideas for stunning laser shows. Parties are important part of any summit or conference. Because our Summit is developer and hacker oriented event, we do not want to offer our summit participants fancy dinners at mansions or rigid and boring wine tasting. We prefer to have more casual and relaxed parties, which can include ad hoc competitions and shows.

Part of this team’s work is to find location for the party and negotiate necessary issues with facility provider. They are also encouraged to find opportunities to have joint parties with other developing and hacking oriented communities. Also getting a sponsor for the party is important and one of the tasks. In other words, this team is given quite free hands on how the parties are arranged.

That’s enough about the initial teams. You can read more about the teams from previous blog entries (for example about Program Task-force). That was the situation for a few months. Things started to change (in my mind also) around Jan-Feb 2011.

Something old – something new

In February 2011 Marketing Team lead and Communication & Tech Team lead had discussions in which they agreed that some of the tasks need to be redistributed. My initial response was:” This is great! Teams start to behave as teams and define own nature and ‘borders’.” This showed also another important aspect of good and vibrant community. This is how teams and community should work: share ideas and work together as community between teams at least in team lead level. Of course sharing ideas and information between teams in general (including member to member) is highly necessary, even more than in lead level. This is why the importance of fluent communication is highlighted in my new model below.

The need for fluent communication is nothing new to those who have been in communities for some time, yet it is sometimes necessary to remind about that. In the figure above, communication is taken ‘away’ from Tech team. This change should be understood figuratively. Lets take a closer look at communication and the teams.

Communication

Tech Team is still responsible for technical items related to communication. Reason why the word is separated, is that communication is everyone’s responsibility. Simply follow the rule: tell others what you are doing, if you want others to participate or it affects other parts of community.

Tech team lead (cybette) created a marvelous acronym and guideline for the team leads to follow. Team leads are given more responsibility in communication. In our community team leads have been given permission (username and passwd) to use our ping.fm service through which we push information to various social media tubes such as twitter, facebook and linkedIn group. Pushing is mostly generating bigger knowledge about us among the possible new members ie pushing a story out to the marketplace. At the same time we are pulling people in. Pulling is here understood as “focus[ing] to all the ways we use content and the web to pull attention and discussion in.”[source]

Enough with the social media and back to communication. Cybette labeled the guideline as D.S.P!

1. Discuss,
2. Share and
3. Ping!

Issues are first discussed inside teams or in other appropriate collectives. Ones some kind of opinion or proposal has been reached, it should be shared. Sharing can take place for example in our mailing list. The third step is to push information outside, not to keep it all within ourselves. This kind of model is simple and easy to remember. All this has been our practice for some time now and it’s part of the old.

Instead, what is new in this model, is the emphasis on social activities. Of course one can argue that MeeGo networks exist to do system and software development and innovations. This is true, but limiting one’s view to that neglects the other significant strengths of MeeGo ecosystem, namely social events.

Event Team

Having real world meetups – preferably monthly – are unique features of MeeGo ecosystem. Ubuntu or Android community does not have similar meetups. The closest thing to regular MeeGo meetups  are hackerspace events. More about hackerspace you can read from my other blog and from previous blog entry which compares MeeGo networks and hackerspaces.

This unique feature which differentiates us from other Open Source ecosystems affects our community structure and practices as well. We need ‘event team’. We need a team that coordinates our national level events and acts as a context to discuss issues related to monthly local meetups and other social events in local (cities) level. In other words, this team would be the core Summit organizing team. The other aspect – organizing meetups – is discussed below in details.

This team includes the previously discussed Hosting team. I would bring meetup organizers (and co-organizers) to this team. Until now, their important role has been neglected. They have existed, but without any clear position or context in our community. This is partly understandable, because in our community local MeeGo networks are independent from the national body. Still, remaining independent they should be part of our core activities.

Meetup organizers

Let’s take a look at what meetup organizers do, why they are valuable and why they should be included to ‘event’ team. Five duty areas can be identified: general level meetup organizing, sponsor negotiations, meetup promotion, inspiring and activating members in local level, and starting Summit preparations and acting as core Summit organizer team.

1. Organizes meetups

Well, obviously they are responsible for the meetups. This means finding locations to hold meetups, print the nametags, makes necessary arrangement with facility owners, is our local contact person and face to outside world. Concerning the space, best option is to get fixed location which has enough space and at least adequate setup for presentations. Otherwise you might end up running behind the sponsors instead of making them come to you.

This also includes sketching agenda for every meetup. It does not how ever mean that organizer should generate topics for presentations. Instead he/she should encourage members to suggest presentations and collect those as agenda. Tool for this might be local mailing list, as we have in TMN. Mailing list also helps to keep members informed about different issues and fosters activity even between the meetups. We have used meetup.com services as well. It has been the main tool for organizers. Yet our intention is to get rid of it as soon as possible. Not that it’s completely screwed, it has some features that are not as good as they could be. We will implement similar (yet improved) service in our national level portal.

2. Negotiates with sponsors (others help to get)

Often sponsors can be easily found or persuaded to take part. At least in Tampere, sponsors have been interested to be part of us. Previous sentence expresses the way I see sponsors’ role in our community. They are not ‘others’ somewhere outside the community. They are part of the community. We should listen what they say, but not loose our ability to remain independent. They must also know that they are seen as part of the community.

3. Takes care of meetup promotion

This taks is part of our marketing and communication. Putting our events to meego.com events list, the world around us can see that we are active and alive. Listing events can also attract new members. Adding our events to meego.com events is also one form of communication towards global community. By doing so, we tell rest of the community that ‘hey! We are here, we are plenty and we do interesting things!’ We have been adding our events to vapaasuomi.fi calendar too, but that is somewhat too laborious and it has been neglected lately. It would be a great place to put info, since it distributes event details for example to ubuntu-fi.org’s frontpage.

4. Activates members to contribute

Meetups need presentations, demos, implementations and permanent or casual co-organizers. Meetup organizers should be innovative, explorer like personalities. They should be bold in ideas. They are supposed to inspire members with different ideas. Let the members act as filters, they will tell you whether your idea is mad, insane, impossible or great, inspiring and a little from outer space. Flying drone is an example of such goofy idea. We tried that in Tampere and right after that in Helsinki. People talked for weeks about that presentation and drone flying around. It even inspired some members to start developing new application to drone.

5. Start Summit preparations

Main responsibility to get annual summit preparations going (includes building necessary teams). and meetup organizers are supposed to work together. Why put Meetup organizers to begin Summit organizing? First of all, they are at least monthly in touch with the people in our cities where meetups are organized. They hear what is interesting, they discuss with a lot meetup participants. Secondly, they know the facilities in their area probably pretty well. Thirdly, they are constantly in touch with local companies (which are commonly also multinational) because of meetup sponsoring. In brief, they are are extremely well connected people and they should be encouraged to be so.

Of course meetup organizers are not alone in starting Summit preparations. In 2011 Summit preparations Program Task-force took the lead in overall planning. Reason for that was simple. Community manager and two other initial promoters of the Summit worked in same company (Hermia) and were located in same city. Two of these key persons were in the Program Task-force as well and the third knew the facility providers in Tampere extremely well and was experienced event organizer. This triangle formed the ‘high council’ to make last decisions after discussing issues with others. In other words, even if Event Team would start the preparations, some kind of ‘general management’ team -even if it is distributed in several teams – will most likely be established and some outsiders can be included if necessary.

Additional activities

Meetup participants often continue the night after meetups. These events or activities are not really tasks of organizer(s), since post-meetup gatherings for example in nearby bar often occur without interfering. At least in HMN and TMN people go to nearby restaurants after the meetups for a few beers. In Tampere, sometimes nearly half of the meetup participants (normally around 40-50) attend the post-meetup gatherings. The significance of post-meetup meetings is mostly related to networking and continuing discussions which started at meetup.

Another possible task for meetup organizers is to act as contact person between other local communities and MNFI/Local MeeGo Network. An example of this could happen in Tampere. In Tampere we hold our meetups at Demola. Demola is now building some kind of developer lounge, which is supposed to be a place where Demola visitors and student can get their hands on different devices.  Those devices will also include MeeGo OS.  The lounge is as far as I know planned to be used also as demo site, where applications and other presentations could be held. I would like to see presence of TMN and MNFI in that lounge. By presence I don’t refer to maintaining the space, but more like a chance to attract more people to MeeGo activities and spread knowledge about MeeGo. This would be important since visitors of Demola often include key members of local companies, students and City officials. Having meetups in fixed location would enable deeper cooperation with the facility owners.

As it can be seen, meetup organizers act pretty independently and that’s how we like to keep it.

Marketing team

This team was discussed earlier and the role of team is changing already. In our February community meeting, responsibilities between marketing team were altered. This was due to too high overlapping in tasks and responsibilities with the Communication & Tech team.  Now this team is responsible for: marketing material such as posters and leaflets, media policy, website content policy, social media accounts, press releases and other press related issues. In addition to that, Marketing team lead acts as community managers right hand or side kick. Now the task and responsibility division between the above teams is more clear since C&T is now responsible for: MNFI portal development, Summit venue IT infrastructure/connections, Live streaming of presentations during the summit, video interviews (speakers etc.), App for summit program (summit program related, not Intel), Summit registration tech, IRC channel(s) (ops) and Mailing lists (freelists.org, meegonetwork.fi).

Development team

Members of this team are still true hack3rs! Just the name is different. One of the new responsibilities of this team is to manage our ‘organization’ and members of it in AppUp Developer Program (Intel). This team will continue (hopefully) in developing tools for us. In other words, they stay with the code and hardware hacking. I guess this team is how most people (the great public) see Open Source communities, bunch of coders.

Task-forces

Of course all the things do not fit into the above teams or if one team is stuffed with loads of tasks and members it will become hard to manage. Remember that optimal team size is 7-12. People can not always participate in team work, they will be absent sometimes even for weeks. Then if team size is less than 7,  the broadness of skill is not enough and absent members make ‘holes’. Again, if there are more 12 members, it will make management and coordination harder (but not impossible).

Therefore, it is necessary to set up task-forces, which were discussed in the beginning. In the previously introduced structure of MNFI Event Team and Marketing Team has some gray puzzle pieces. They represent the task-forces. These little units can overlap between teams more than normal teams, but they will live for relatively short time and for specific purposes.

Closure

So this is my view how MNFI could be restructured. The moment for another redistribution of tasks is not now. Suitable time could be after MeeGo Summit FI, after which some kind of restructuring is necessary anyway. Of course all the above is still rather vague and by no means perfect. Also the role of portal is still unknown, since building of it has just began and no-one really knows what it will be. Hopefully it will make some tasks easier for all and unites information flows. As a recap, below is current and new (possible) MNFI structures.

Current

New

Any thoughts? Just add comment below. Feedback is always welcome.

Content is available under 2011, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Related posts:

1. The teams
2. Community layers and roles
3. MeeGo triangle – spring 2011
4. Summits & Program
5. Hello World! (or community)