ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

You are receiving this email because you haven't been making substantial
progress on your chapter, and we are less than two weeks away from the first
release.

I've been a fairly nice project leader thus far, very lenient and open to
suggestions. I've let you manage your own chapter and basically trusted you
with a whole chapter to write, even though I haven't known any of your
background or writing ability.

You've all taken this task on (hopefully) knowing full well of the
requirements of the project, the publicity it has got and the huge amount of
pressure there now lies on this project to prevent us looking like complete
idiots. We need to get this thing out in the world, we need to show the
Ubuntu community that we can deliver on our promise. We have 234(!!) members
in our team, but for some reason we aren't making any progress. Why not?

I realize that this project is ambitious, it's a huge undertaking and I know
that I am expecting a lot from a group of volunteers. But we need to be
ambitious to succeed, as James Champy once said, "big results require big
ambitions." We don't fart around with bureaucracy or councils to decide on
the next move - everything we have done thus far has been on a whim, fast
decisions to get fast results. Don't make me regret this type of project
management.

If the task is too difficult, or you are finding it too hard to complete
your chapter - then please tell myself or one of the other admins and we can
easily reassign it to someone else. I suggest that, instead of whinging and
bailing out, you get your head down and you finish what you intended to
start. Not only will you earn respect from the community for being one of
the coveted manual authors, but you will also earn respect in my eyes and
there will be a good potential for more opportunities in projects if you
want to further your "Ubuntu career."

We've got hundreds of translators waiting for more content to translate,
we've got thousands of people who are eager to see the final product. We may
even have millions of users who will see this on their default install. We
can't bail out now. Everything is in place for you, I've spent a lot of my
own time setting up the wiki, launchpad, IRC, the mailing list,
processes/guides etc to help you write your chapter.

So, with all that in mind, I'm giving all the main authors *48 hours* to
come up with some noticeable results otherwise your chapter will be
reassigned to someone who's more fit to the job. For all those people who
have already dedicated a lot of time to the manual, well done, you've done
an excellent job. Now if we can get the other 200+ members of the team doing
something to help as well, that would be fantastic.

"The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort
of each individual." - Vincent Lombardi

--
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
Dunedin, New Zealand

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
www.interesting.co.nz