Hi Everyone
We as the Joomla leadership team understand that we need to improve our communication with Joomla users.
Sometimes we have done really well and other times we haven't. Two positive examples were the recent election of new Open Source Matters board members and the choice of a host for the new Joomla demo site. In both cases, we followed or are following these four steps:
- The first community blog post asks for feedback.
- The second post gives the results of that feedback.
- The third post details the final decision.
- Finally, we implement the decision.
By following these steps, you as the Joomla community member are clearly informed, have the chance to provide feedback and at no point are you caught by surprise.
More Consistent and Transparent Communication
We'd like to propose that, with your help, we design and implement a better and most consistent structure for all major decisions made by the Joomla team.
There are two questions we need to answer:
1) Which questions are important enough to undergo community consultation?
It just wouldn't be feasible to run all decisions through the community. The Joomla team would become weighed down with bureaucracy. So, how do we decide which questions require this process? These are examples of possible criteria:
- Decisions over a certain dollar value?
- Decisions that are community-facing in a certain way?
- Decisions that involve appointing people to elected positions?
2) What steps should all these decisions go through?
The examples above are typical of the process we're considering. There would be four public phases to the process:
- Explanation of the question and request for feedback
- Feedback results
- Decision
- Implementation
The Communication Review Team
We have put together a group of people to discuss and design this communication process. In addition to the Joomla team, we're inviting people from the community:
- Jen Kramer
- Cory Webb
- You
We hope to actually use this review as an example of more consistent and transparent communication.
Your Ideas
The first step of course, is your feedback.
- Which questions are important enough to undergo community consultation?
- What steps should all these decisions go through?
Please either feel free to leave your answers to these questions in the comments section below, but for your ideas to be formally considered, please submit them using the form below. This form closed on Friday, April 9th, 2010. Thank you for all your feedback.
