The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)

[David Roetzel]

Hi,

> Question: what functions do you see a community 
> manager performing. Write his job spec. ( hint hint)
> 

how about that:

* Work with Openmoko Inc. to flesh out a project structure and roadmap
  that encourages community participation
* Work with Openmoko Inc. to enhance collaboration with the community
* Work out a structure for the community (eg. Ubuntu-style teams)
* Work with individual community members to lower the bar for them to
  contribute to Openmoko
* Incentivize community participation (eg. Summer of code)
* Enhance communication between Openmoko Inc. and the community
* Enhance communication between Openmoko and other free software
  projects
* Organize Openmoko presences at community events, conferences etc.

Those are just off the top of my head, there is probably more to this
job.

And those are all topics Openmoko is already working on. But it seems
to be done on the side all the while it could probably occupy several
people full-time.

I have mentioned Ubuntu above. It could serve as an example, although
it surely differs from Openmoko at least in scale and maturity. There
are however some striking similarities, like the fact that the core
development and vision for the project is defined within a company.
Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager, seems to be making a good
job, at least I have found the Ubuntu community to be very passionate
yet helpful and friendly. Jono regularly speaks about his job and its
challenges. I found his LCA 2007 talk quite interesting [1].

I am not convinced that a community manager is strictly necessary for
Openmoko, but having one would surely be helpful.

Kind regards

David

[1] http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2007/talk/173.html