Keynote talk for JoomlaDay New England 2012: "Governance Challenges in the Joomla project, and why you should care"

1. Overcoming Governance Challenges in the
Joomla project, and why you should care
OR
Helping Joomla to reach its potential
OR
2012: A crossroads for Joomla

2. Joomla's Current Mission Statement:
Our mission is to develop a
flexible platform for online
publishing and
collaboration

3. How are we doing?

2nd most popular FOSS CMS in the world

Approaching 30,000,000 downloads

9,000+ extensions

Support for 60+ languages

Over 500,000 forum members

3 Packt awards in 6 years

~30 JoomlaDays in 2011, 145 JUGs

4. How are we doing?
2011 Water and Stone CMS market share
report:

Adoption: Downloads and usage
decreasing

Third party support: Decreasing

Reputation: Decrease in brand sentiment
and conversion rates, increase in
abandonment

5. Joomla as underdog...

No benevolent dictator to provide clear
vision or resolve issues

No primary business/corporate sponsor
that contributes staff, developers,
financial resources

6. 2012: A Crossroads for Joomla
How can Joomla continue to grow and
remain a FOSS CMS leader?

7. 2012: A Crossroads for Joomla
More than any other single factor, and
more than other leading FOSS CMS, the
Joomla project's future success depends
on our ability to attract and retain a large
and diverse group of skilled volunteer
contributors.

8. Joomla leadership's most important function:
Create and support a culture that will attract
and retain the large and diverse group of
skilled volunteer contributors that our
project's future success depends on.

9. The kind of culture we need to create and support:

Inspiring

Meaningful

Open

Responsive

Respectful

Fun

10. Current Leadership Structure
Community Oversight
Committee

Add OSM members

Remove OSM members

No websites!
Production Leadership Community Leadership Open Source Matters
Team Team

Forums 
Finances

Development 
Directories 
Legal

Documentation 
Magazine 
Trademark

Translations 
JPeople 
Communications

Some websites 
JUGs 
Events

Some websites 
Shop

Some websites

11. Challenges with current leadership structure

We currently set LT level goals, but not
project-wide goals

We don't always coordinate well between
teams, and there is no process to address that

There can be a tendency to focus on team
level responsibilities, instead of more complex
project-wide issues

12. 2011 proposed leadership structure changes
Board of Directors

Overall goals and strategy

Oversight for all committees
Committees
Development Directories Events/Groups Finance Community Mgmt.
Sites/Infrastructur Legal/Tradema Communication
Documentation
e rk s

13. Benefits of proposed leadership structure changes

Allow us to set and monitor progress for
bolder, more inspiring project-wide goals

Make it easier for all teams to follow and
support a unified roadmap

Provide a way to address and overcome
inter-team conflicts

Can make room for new leaders

Allow each committee to have a stronger focus

Reduce drama, increase productivity

Simplify contractual issues

14. Current and upcoming steps:

Working group has been formed to study this
issue and present recommendations

Joint leadership summit at JandBeyond
conference in May will consider those
recommendations and hopefully reach a
decision

15. My dream for Joomla
For us to show what can be achieved when a
diverse group of passionate volunteer
contributors from all over the world are fully
empowered and connected for the purpose of
continually innovating, supporting, and sharing
our community powered software.

16. paul.orwig@opensourcematters.org