Fresh blood, Debian and India
* We need fresh blood! Yes. Like Lucas mentioned in his last post, along with Debian itself, many small teams and big teams are highly out-numbered and probably dying slowly. Currently, debian-in team has only two active members (jaldhar and if I count myself). We live on #indlinux at moment, which also leads to confusion about actual focus area of team.
So, here are some clear text messages:
- Debian-IN is team to work for ‘Indic’ packages as well as bringing new and fresh blood to Debian from India.
- Its not true that we only work for fonts, we have many other packages: aspell dictionaries and festival-* packages and so on. Update: QA Page for Debian-In-Workers. Thanks Runa.
- We aim to provide platform for upcoming DDs from India. Sadly, all DDs in India are highly isolated at moment.
- Hopefully, we will get #debian-in at oftc. Update: Recovered ‘dead’ channel now. Thanks to Ganneff and h0lger for help. Come and join us!!
Please note that we are considering developers only right now. We have already good numbers of users of Debian in India.
kthnx.
Instead of just writing “and so on…” you could have linked to a page showing all the packages that the Debian-IN team is working on. Just so new developers can take a look and see if they find anything interesting
If the perception is that Debian-IN does Indic only - then the approach towards changing the perception would be putting in place a list of tasks the leaders would like to tackle. The one benefit of that activity is that it brings to forefront the vision and focus of the team. What do you “want” to do ? What do you think you “can” do ? And then internally decide on what can be taken as measurements to estimate whether your plans are going accordingly or, there is required to do a course correction.
The important thing over here is to have very specific items that are relevant to the group in India and then asking for contributions. Narrowing the focus helps.
@Runa: Updated now.
@Sankarshan: Thanks. My aim is to have focus on contributing rather than doing work silently. So, in order to do that, as first step, #debian-in at oftc.net network is resurrected.
Giving contribution to Debian is easy but keeping your spirit is .. sadly hardest part of your life.. See: http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=286
The point I was trying to make is that it is required for a project to have two things : a strategic focus and a list of tasks which constitute the “tactics”. The list of tasks make it easier for new and existing contributors to figure if what they are doing is good and required for the project and, whether it would help it to become what it wants to be. Now I am sure you have the “vision” part of Debian-IN thought out. What would be good to have is what are the specific areas in which you would require contribution. And, what are the smaller tasks and the pre-required knowledge for that contribution.
As regards keeping the spirit up - I’d suggest that you don’t let it seep into your vision this year.