Swimming with chum in shark infested waters
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Web pagePurchasingAmerican Physical SocietyEntire functionMathematicsPoint (geometry)Group actionPerspective (visual)TwitterMultiplication signProjective planeComputing platformCodeContext awarenessSoftware developerGUI widgetError messageProduct (business)Drop (liquid)Stability theoryRight angleSensitivity analysisFrame problemNumberData structureCartesian coordinate systemMereologyWebsiteCapability Maturity ModelMedical imagingHypermediaAverage3 (number)CD-ROMRevision controlHacker (term)QuicksortGodMachine visionInterprozesskommunikationCache (computing)Buffer solutionMobile appPosition operatorAddress spaceSoftwareWindowDefault (computer science)AbstractionComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
All right. Thanks for coming. This talk is about summing with chutney in shark-infested waters, Grinnom III outreach in the modern age. This talk is really about my experience doing outreach for Grinnom.
00:20
So hope you guys get some interesting facts out of this. So first, let me introduce myself. My name is Sri Ramakrishna. I'm currently employed with Intel Corporation. I've been part of the Grinnom project since 1997.
00:40
So I started around six months after the project started. I started off doing Grinnom summaries, which is like project summaries like what happened, and how many statistics about who did what, and so forth.
01:00
And that merged into doing a Grinnom journal, which was basically a journal with articles and whatnot. And finally, I'm now working for the engagement team. I'm also a director. I was elected director of the Grinnom Foundation, which
01:20
handles the non-coding parts of Grinnom. So moving forward, that's who I am. So the first thing is really to define what is outreach, and how does it concern us. So I like to define that first, just so that we're all on the same page.
01:41
So for me, outreach is really about the ability to communicate the goals of our project, address problem trends, and communicate them to developers, and so forth. And also really to be a positive buffer between users and developers, right?
02:03
So people have problems or things like that. You need somebody who has really good interpersonal skills to communicate both, and deal with things with some sensitivity.
02:22
So I really want to start off first with some historical perspective. I do that because there's some lessons to be learned when we transition from Grinnom 1.x to Grinnom 2.x, right?
02:42
So when we started off Grinnom 1.x, it just started, right? It's a new project. And the average age of your Grinnom developer was probably 19 years old. We had at least one developer I know who was maybe 12,
03:04
maybe even 10. So when you think about it, what do these guys know about software development? They were just starting out, and they wanted to do something interesting, right? They wanted to write a desktop.
03:21
And they had all kinds of ideas, all kinds of cool stuff. And every feature was awesome. Basically showing off, right? It's testosterone. And we were going to show all the cool things that we can do with a desktop. We had the code. We can do it.
03:41
And of course, that led to a lot of funny features like swallowed apps. I don't know if anybody, does anybody remember swallowed apps? Where, oh, OK, your old one. A lot of this comes from older window managers, like FEWM, where you could swallow xclock and put it inside the dock.
04:00
It was one of the more ridiculous features we had in GNOME. But you know what? All those features came at a cost. That cost is really instability. When you have every feature you can,
04:21
you are going to run into trouble. And I've talked to a lot of people about that time frame and to why we did what we did when we went to 2x. And we were actually in trouble. Because we were so undisciplined,
04:42
we incurred the wrath of distros. I was told this that they wanted to drop us because we were so unstable. Our platform was a moving target because we kept changing things. We kept playing around with the code,
05:00
kept trying to do things. So nobody could write for the platform. So that was pretty broken. So when we transitioned to GNOME 2.0, it was more than just a version number.
05:29
This was really about transitioning from basically some young kids to people who are learning how to actually do software
05:43
development. And really it was about growing up, being mature. And so we had to worry about things like API stability. We had to worry about a lot of those things. Because if you didn't, nobody can trust the platform.
06:02
So all this is, I'm trying to say all this, I'm going back to this historical perspective to kind of give you an understanding of why we are what we are. And why we're sometimes very conservative. Why we are so thoughtful about how we put something
06:23
into the platform. Because of lessons learned from GNOME 1.x to 2.x. Because that was a hard transition. Because every application developer had to rewrite their app.
06:42
One really good example was there was a financial app, GNU Cache. It took them like five years to actually finally convert from 1.x to 2.x because they wrote so many,
07:05
they wrote their own widgets. And it took them forever. So we presented 2.x. And it was different than 1.x. And you know what that means.
07:22
People hate change. And boy, did they hate it. And because we took all those fun things, we took away swallowed apps. Oh god. So it's really interesting, people's reactions
07:40
when something like this occurs. Because they really get irate because, again, it was, I don't know how to explain it. It was just they really wanted to play around with so many things.
08:01
Lots of little things they want to play around with. But we didn't want to do that. We actually wanted to simplify things. We really decided on having a kind of just works mentality. We want to have sane defaults. We want to have our software work for 99% of the people
08:23
without having to mess with it. So we actually had one other thing. We actually wanted to have our software to be usable by anybody, regardless of physical ability. So we started the accessibility toolkit just
08:40
because of that. So when we went through, from Gnome 2.0 to 2.12 was actually the best part of the Gnome project. That was the best because that was when we started getting the user land tools.
09:07
We had how, we had the abstraction layers. We were able to finally put a DVD or CD-ROM into a computer and have it automatically mounted. Wow.
09:22
But we evolved, right? We evolved the desktop. And what came out as a final product was something everybody really loved. So we can change things and still come up with something really good at the end.
09:44
But during that entire time, we, during that entire time, it was funny because we were removing things left, right, and center. But when we did it, we never did any outreach.
10:05
So people really complained, really. I mean, it's like common wisdom that when Gnome removes features, like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's right, because everybody remembers this part. This is the part they remember. That's where that whole thing came from, was this part.
10:24
But outreach, what did we know? We were, what, 22, 23? And we were hackers. We never did all those things. We were interactive with people. Why would we do that? We were into our code.
10:41
So we never really did outreach. It was part, because doing outreach actually requires some maturity, right? And we didn't do that. And because we didn't do that, we had a lot of people with latent hostility.
11:04
So when we removed things, we didn't provide any context. That's why we did it. We didn't actually explain why we were making the changes. And most importantly, we allowed others
11:20
to write our story. That's where common wisdom comes about, because we didn't write our story. We let other people write everything for us. Why we sat around in our IRC channels and looked at things and shook our heads and whatever, we didn't have anybody engaging. There was a slashdot thread or something.
11:43
We didn't do anything. So we let people write our story. And so those things became, I guess, common wisdom.
12:02
Could we have done better? Sure. We could have. But you have to gain wisdom before you could have done better. I don't think we had that. And being so young and understood, and we didn't.
12:21
It's unheard of. It was free software. We didn't really do. I mean, I don't know. I don't remember any project at the time doing any outreach or doing any kind of that kind of formalism. So we didn't engage our critics.
12:43
Then came GNOME 3. Now, I don't know about others, but I knew what was going to come. I saw this story before, and it was great.
13:00
A lot of us were involved in that release. We did, it was arguably our best release. We had, we were on, we had brochures. We had videos. We had short little videos on YouTube. We had all kinds of cool stuff. We really planned, we did a really good job of planning this.
13:23
So when it was released, initial reactions were not so spectacular. Oops, I missed a slide. You can't miss the cat. So the unholy mess that is GNOME 3,
13:43
that was Linus's quote there. When I think of Linus, I always think of this cat, because that's really, it really does kind of encapsulate the reaction. It was really funny, because LWN had the largest common thread they ever had.
14:04
It was the, what was it, it was Grumpy something, Grumpy Editor's review of GNOME 3, I think is what it was. And it was, it was hilarious. It was hilarious and also sad at the same time.
14:22
But, okay, so why did they hit it? Well, we completely changed how we interacted. I mean, GNOME 2, GNOME 3, they're like completely different how we interact with it. So we changed how we interact with the desktop.
14:42
We made no bridge from the old to the new. And because of all that outrage, a lot of people decided, well, maybe I have to learn something new, I might as well try to look at somewhere else, right? We had a problem with the message.
15:09
So we had a problem, we had a problem. News travels, bad news and ugly news travel even faster.
15:22
This is the age of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and a bunch of other stuff. So the outreach is required for damage control and communication. Because if you didn't do damage control,
15:42
it'll just get worse. And it will just completely have this negative view of the project. So again, it comes back to this. We cannot allow others to write the story.
16:00
Never allow anybody to write your story. So it's really important to engage your critics. When we engage, we're communicating our intent, our goals,
16:26
and most importantly, our passion. When you challenge your critics, they will see ground to you. It's happened many times. I don't let anybody speak badly without at least asking them why they feel that way.
16:42
Because when you do, they will change their mind. They will. But don't do this. That's the worst thing you can do. When we first started off,
17:00
that's exactly what we kinda did. Because when you get that much hate, you really wanna stick your head in the sand. It is a natural thing. When we released Code 3, we were hiding out in the IRC. It was our peace place, right?
17:21
It was where we... But we had to crawl out of there. We had to crawl out of there. And especially when you had all these people like Linus Torvalds and other high-ranking people. I mean, it was.
17:40
And we had reviews from the Linus Action Show. It was nuts. So how did we start this? This actually says, Kanoa 3.0 engagement, pounding sand with an anvil. Unfortunately, you can read all of that.
18:02
It was a slow start. Really slow. We had no apparatus to engage the community. Nothing. How do you start a conversation? Nobody was helping out, pointing out why we were doing the designs.
18:20
What was the reason behind them? Nobody was out there doing that. Nobody was engaging people with misconceptions. Oh, it's a mobile OS. Oh, this looks like it's something that's great to put on my phone. It's all wrong.
18:44
And also, we weren't really sharing proper documentation. Where can they go to find out themselves? So we need to pull together our communication channels. So we did a couple things.
19:02
We created a Facebook page. We had a Twitter account. We had a Google Plus. We created some communities on there. We had a Gnome account as well. And we took control of the Gnome namespace on Freenet.
19:22
So nobody else could create. Gnome sucks, or something like that. Right? We monitored the poundgnome hashtag. Make sure, see what people are saying about us.
19:41
Well, I personally did this because, sorry, I'm not cussing. I used to search for Gnome on Google Plus. And I used to, break nose. And I would actually start fights. Because, like I said, I wasn't gonna allow anybody
20:02
to write this story, right? I wasn't gonna do it. And I used to go on Reddit. There was no place I wasn't. I wasn't there. We did some other things. We redesigned our Wiki. Made sure people could do that. We had blog posts.
20:22
Alan Day would show up with nice blog posts about the latest designs and things like that. Matthias also, Claussen also did some stuff. You can see I applied Gnome. So we're getting our information out there.
20:41
We sometimes still get the same thing. Oh, Gnome removes creatures. It's almost, I don't know, it's still reflexive. But you can see, right, from that Gnome too. Why is that so reflexive? I can understand it.
21:02
When your engagement is sort of interesting. There are all kinds of people who are upset for a number of reasons. I happened to be on the plane with Keith Packard.
21:23
And he was on the plane. And 10 minutes after he sits down, he started going off on Gnome. He loves to do that. And there's a reason for that. The reason is, is that Gnome 2 was perfect for him.
21:42
It was, he really loved the window manager. It was fully compliant. He loved it. And when we transitioned to Gnome Shell, he lost something. For him, it was an emotional response
22:01
because it was completely what he wanted and now it's not. And it almost felt like a betrayal because he was so involved in that project. And Santo and Eric Handhold, they were really involved. And that sudden loss, it's so emotional.
22:25
And he was actually told, oh, well, this project's not for you. And if you think about that, that wasn't a really good thing to say. So when you're engaging,
22:43
it's really important to be sensitive. Acknowledgement is actually one of the best things you can do when somebody complains is I acknowledge that I acknowledge the problem. We can't always fix it.
23:02
If he says JavaScript sucks, we're already on that path. We're not gonna change it. So it's always about negotiation. Well, if we did this, would that be okay? If they changed goalposts, I don't know. But it's always continuing to have a dialogue.
23:25
And it's actually better when they're angry because at least they care. If they're met with nothing, then where do you go from there?
23:42
So engagement can be challenging, but it can be done, and it does change minds. And GNOME is controversial. We do things that other desktops don't. We push things.
24:00
We put pressure on the ecosystem. And that's a good thing because somebody has to do it. So I was saying engagement can be good. So we could have, sometimes an intense conversation can lead to fear.
24:23
That's always great. But there's been a lot of these where conversations like those could turn into a net positive. So actually, with all that, enthusiasm is up.
24:43
Now, that may not be because of engagement. It could be that people have gotten used to it and they're able to adapt to it. So in fact, we had two guys, and I was talking about the Linux Action Show guys.
25:00
They both love GNOME now. After that horrific review they had earlier, it was a startling contrast. So is our job done? Job is never done. It's always a continual dialogue.
25:22
So we're not done by a long shot. We have to keep monitoring. We have to make sure that when we have things like transparency is removed from GNOME Terminal, that we know how to engage.
25:40
We know how to, and there's not a five alarm fire that we have to go. So these things happen, and you have to go and address it. Actually, all I have, so I can take some questions.
26:00
Thank you. Repeat the question. I didn't ask any. Who has? I'm hoping GNOME 4 doesn't, we're not even close to GNOME 4 yet,
26:22
so hopefully it won't be anything. I think we're done making huge, huge changes like that. If it is, we can blame other people.
26:41
Dude, you don't have to blame me. The other questions? Yes.
27:06
We actually started off calling ourselves the marketing team. We're not really selling you anything in this sense. Marketing is really about selling you something.
27:20
That's why we changed it to engagement, because I'm really engaging all of you. We're trying to engage, because we want to have a conversation. Marketing is really a one-way thing, right? So does it seem to you that it's marketing?
27:56
Yeah, and I do that by asking questions. I don't, because it's really about when somebody,
28:05
I mean, when I'm talking to somebody, it's because they're either saying something good or something bad. They say something bad and I go, well, what is it that you dislike? That way, I'm not stepping over the line. I'm not saying, well, we do this and this
28:22
and this and this, you know, you should try. We're not, it's more passive. I'm not, you know what I'm saying? We do announcements of certain things, like, hey, we have this new design character, comment, you know, those kind of things.
28:40
So hopefully I've answered your question. You look doubtful. Yes. I'm really trying to get inside their head. Yes.
29:20
Oh, you mean like sharing our technologies?
29:24
Oh, where I'm done. I'm psyched. Thank you.