A Little Background

As shared in the blog post “A new organizational structure and methodology to empower the growth of Joomla!” a group of representatives from each leadership team put forth the plan for proposed leadership changes.

According to the Roadmap in that blog post, this Joomla structure proposal was shared with the Joomla Working Groups and teams on October 21. Once the feedback and input from the working groups has been collected, and incorporated into a revised proposal, the next phase will be to share the revised proposal with the community.

The combined Joomla leadership teams are meeting in Cancun this week for a joint leadership summit prior to the Joomla World Conference (JWC). The structure change plans are on the agenda for these meetings.

Working group feedback

Two action items were created based on feedback from the working group discussions:

1. To communicate with the leadership about how to make summit meetings transparent.
2. To communicate with the community about how the summit meetings could be followed.

Concerns have been raised there about transparency. The Structural Team understands that members of the community would appreciate having access to leadership discussions during this summit.

Discussions between the leadership teams about sharing summit sessions revealed a strong concern that some would not feel comfortable freely expressing themselves if the sessions were live streamed or recorded, and that it would hinder their ability to participate. So streaming or recorded meetings will not be offered. Information from these meetings will be shared in a blog following the summit.

Alternative Proposals at JWC

At the Joomla World Conference a session is being organized on Saturday afternoon during the Joomla in Action sessions, for a discussion between leadership and those wishing to present alternative structure proposals. All attendees that would like to participate and listen to these discussions are welcome. The meeting will take place in the arena during the last hour of the afternoon (exact time to be announced), and it will be recorded for sharing with the community.

At the beginning of this session on Saturday, we will summarize the process and revised timeline, and invite the new proposals to be presented. The new proposals will be considered on their own merit and incorporated into the entire proposal thought process.

Process recap

To recap where we are in this process, at JAB14 a majority of the leadership voted in favor of forming a working group with three members from each leadership team, to continue the work and research on governance started some years ago, and to come up with a proposal. During todays joined Leadership summit the combined leadership expressed their continued support for this mandate.

Revised Timeline

The adjusted timeline as of our meeting today is:

• November 10 - December 21: Revise the Joomla structure proposal based on the feedback
• December 22 - January 11: Revised proposal will be provided to translation teams for translations
• January 12: Publish the revised Joomla structure proposal in multiple languages
• January 12 - February 8:Public discussion and feedback from the community as a whole.
• February 9 - February 22: Leadership team members discuss feedback from the community, and if necessary make additional revisions to proposal.
• February 23 - March 1:Leadership team members vote on the proposed Joomla structure.
• March 2: Publish a blog with the results of vote and the next steps.

The Structural Team wants everyone to understand:

• It was given a mandate by the joint leadership to prepare a proposal and define the process, as a starting point for feedback and input.
• All input is being considered, as well as alternative proposals. The Structural Team can be contacted at , if you would like to submit input to the team via email.
• The leadership summit will not be producing any finalized version of the proposal. It will be discussed and improved, in light of the current feedback. The revised proposal will be published on January 12, 2015 for community input and feedback.
• The timeline is flexible.
• Please be assured that the Structural Team is listening.

That so many ideas on structure are being shared, we see as a sign that Joomla is alive and well, and that, most likely, change is needed.

We wish to thank everyone for their ongoing contribution and involvement in these discussions.

You can share your thoughts and comments about this announcement in this public forum thread: forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=864805