succession planning

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Dec 12, 2007 4:06 PM, Max Spevack <mspevack at redhat.com> wrote:
>> I posted this on my blog (http://spevack.livejournal.com/39464.html),
>> but it was recommended to me that I post it to fedora-advisory-board as
>> well.
>>
>> The Fedora Project Leader job has a natural lifecycle to it.
>>
>> I began my time in this role in February of 2006, about 1 month before
>> Fedora Core 5 was released. Now we are about one month after Fedora 8's
>> release, and the topic of succession planning is very much on my mind.
>>
> 
> Thankyou very much for a couple of things:
> 
> 1) Staying active on this side of the fence. There is a lot of social
> contact needed in both Red Hat and the virtual community... and it can
> be hard to stay active in one where you rarely see people face to face
> when you have meetings with people you can see and talk to every day.
> 
> 2) Staying moderately burn-out free. This is a 24/7 job at a company
> that has been running non-stop 24/7 for 15 years.. and it burns out a
> lot of people. You seem to have stayed moderately burn free.. maybe
> crispy on the outside.. but not charcoal.
> 
> 3) Being patient with people you can't see but only know via email.
> Email and IRC is a very brutal environment where we always say things
> that 10 minutes later we have forgotten or read later and say 'dear
> god I wrote that?' It also can lead to confusion and long term
> disagreements over phrasing that the writer thought was peaceful but
> ended up starting another Balkanization.
> 
> 4) Knowing when to quit. This can be the hardest part of a job.. and
> it makes it really hard to do 1,2,3. There is always another fire,
> another project not making a deadline, another meeting with a VP who
> doesnt 'get it' according to someone else but just isnt communicating
> in geek-tongue, and all the other tiffs, firefights, angry kittens
> that come with releases, engineers, etc etc.
> 
I'd just like to add:

5) Acknowledging and learning from past mistakes.  Especially in regards
to how you've interacted with the wider Fedora Developer Community I've
been impressed with how you've examined your mistakes, figured out what
about them were good ideas and what came across wrong, and then turned
the good ideas into a new action that successfully avoided the original
pitfalls.

Thanks!
-Toshio

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