The New and Improved Art Team

Nicu Buculei nicu_fedora at nicubunu.ro
Mon Feb 26 10:26:30 UTC 2007


Máirín Duffy wrote:
> 
> If you folks are willing to give it another shot with a clean slate, 
> clear charter, and well-defined goals as are being discussed right now, 
> I would be willing to come back at this point and take a team lead 
> position if you'd still have me. (However, it's up to you as it's your 
> community; I have *plenty* of other things on my plate so I certainly 
> won't be offended if not. :) )

I for one could not think at anybody else able to lead the team.

I would suggest for start focus on short term goals so the team can 
*see* some results and (re-)gain trust.

> Anyway, here are some of my ideas on moving forward, let me know what 
> you think:
> 
> = Future Approach to Art Team Organization =
> 
> Do you really think having a centralized community is the best way to 
> go? If so, should it be:
> 
> 1) tight-knit - all other Fedora groups come here and 'contract out' to 
> this group and work together on all types of projects,
> 
> OR,
> 
> 2) loosely coupled - different team members work in the different areas 
> Paul suggested, and communicate/keep updated with each other on this 
> list or by some other means. E.g., there may be some art team folks 
> whose specialty is making banners/posters/etc for events so they work 
> closely with marketing and ambassadors, while there may be some art team 
> folks who are more interested in the website so they work closely with 
> the infrastructure team members.
> 
> For what it's worth, in my professional career I have been part of both 
> types of teams and in my experience the latter type of environment has 
> been more productive & rewarding, producing better results. What do you 
> all think is a better approach?

I used to favor the first approach (centralized) but I am in the process 
of changing my mind, it seems a loosely coupled team is better equipped 
to survive.
Even a centralized team should be descentralized in sub-teams for each 
activity area, so the result is again loosely coupled.

> = Making it Easier to Understand What's Going On and How to Contribute 
> to the Art Team =
> 
> In terms of moving forward, improving, and growing - I recently read a 
> blog post from a Fedora community member [1]:
> 
> 'I’ve looked at some of the mailing lists fedora art and fedora 
> marketing but haven’t really invested a lot of time into them mostly 
> because I don’t know what can or needs to be done.'

And we can, of course, communicate better, we have a lot of ways, let go 
all of us in one of those:
- the Fedora Art group in Mugshot
- a new Fedora group on DeviantART.com
- a new Fedora group on flickr

Also, I encourage members of the team to blog and maybe we aggregate the 
blogs of the team members in something like 
planet.artcommunity.fedoraproject.org and push our latest work with the 
power of aggregation and RSS.

> == Short-Order Request Queue ==
> 
> If this is the scenario would-be contributors are running into, I think 
> we need to address it by improving this to attract more art team 
> members, as John alluded to [2]. I really like Paul's idea of having a 
> short-order queue/list wiki page of requests that other groups within 
> the Fedora Project have made of the art team. It would be a great place 
> for newbies to see a list of short-term, quick projects so they can 
> quickly get their feet wet and get involved. These requests could be 
> broken down into some of the basic categories Paul suggested [3]:

I have an idea for a short term task, will talk about it in a separate 
thread to keep the talk focused.

> == Long-Term Project List ==
> 
> In addition, for transparency it may also be wise to have a page listing 
> out more-involved, ongoing, longer-term projects; it would include all 
> the categories above as well as:

You listed a lot of good long term project here.

> These projects would all be treated more as subteams rather than 
> short-order queues, where folks working on whichever long-term project 
> would list their names so folks wanting to get involved would know who 
> to contact. They should also link to the wiki pages where their 
> development/process is taking place.

Sure, sub-teams.

I think for each kind of project, be it long term or short term here is 
need for initiative: anyone with some experience in the field (some, not 
exhaustive experience) should step up, take the initiative and start the 
subproject.
So for all members: read the list with possible projects, see if you 
like something, if you know the basics about anything and start your own 
sub-team.

-- 
nicu
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro




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