This blog post is the twelfth in a series of many that I will be posting about UDS, the Ubuntu Developer Summit.
Interesting ideas get generated when we meet and share our stories. That's the magic of UDS!
Over lunch (at UDS) today, I had the pleasure of sitting between Alison Randall and Charles Profitt. Inevitably a passionate and pleasant discussion about community ensued. I'm passionate about creating new on-ramps and processes that are optimized to on-board and grow community as fast as possible. You might be thinking, "Wait a minute. Haven't we already done that?"
We were talking about Alison's amazing "Community Participation in User Experience" session earlier this morning. One of the things that was said at that session was that "Design teams don't often understand how to engage and to work with the community" (and I would add vice-versa to that statement).
At that sentence something hit me. Which community?
When we say the word community, why do we forget the adjectives? Admittedly, I'm no grammar enthusiast, but this is beginning to hobble us. We can't have an effective discussion about community engagement, or other aspects of community until we know and state explicitly which community we are talking about.
Here are some potential adjectives to consider putting in front of the word community when we speak about it:
- World Community
- "People-who-will-never-use-Ubuntu" Community
- "People-who-have-never-heard-of-Ubuntu" Community
- Potential Ubuntu User Community
- Casual Ubuntu User Community
- Ubuntu Enthusiast Community
- Ubuntu Online Community
- Ubuntu Advocacy Community
- Ubuntu Power-User Community
- Non-Technical Ubuntu Community
- Ubuntu Contributor Community
- Ubuntu Member Community
- Ubuntu LoCo Leader Community
- Ubuntu Developer Community
- Ubuntu "Canonical-Developer" Community
- Ubuntu Bug-triage Community
- Ubuntu Design Community
- Ubuntu Quality Assurance Community
- Ubuntu Testing Community
- Ubuntu Founder Community
- Ubuntu Translation Community
- Ubuntu Local Community
- Ubuntu Local-as-in-your-town Community
Here is my request: When we speak about community, lets use adjectives. Let's use more than one adjective if one isn't enough. Let's use precise language to help frame the problems we are trying to solve in the Precise cycle.
Thanks!
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image (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Choconancy1