You do raise very good points though that I am chewing on. I am glad that you expressed them.

… and save an audio recording of one of your practice talks for posting to your blog along with with the pdf of your slide deck (if any)

I think that having something big like SXSW or OSB it’s really easy to lay out the goal for a single event, and then have everyone attach them self to that goal as they see fit. I think that we can do the same for finite slices of the community (get involved in GSoC), but what about the outliers? If we strive too large then we just end up with some pointless vision like ‘learn and have fun doing it’ so that it can apply to all groups.

The other thing that I think would be fun to discuss would be to see what we can do about bottom-up solutions. Tools like Calagator stitch the idea of a larger community together in an opt-in manner. What other tools would we want to see that would allow the concept of a larger community to congeal? Are there ways we can better use the tools we have at hand (ie should we attempt to standardize a hashtag for all pdx tech related mentions on twitter/identica?).

I guess in the end it really boils down to the developer in me requesting a spec, I guess thats the exciting part of this is that we have to build the spec first.

I fear that posts like Mark’s may be more damaging to the community spirit than whatever lack of communication led to it.

As to the situation in general, while it might be valuable if the cats could be successfully herded, I’m not sure the existence of cats (instead of goats) indicates a cancer exists in the community. As Selena points out, you can get the cats to go the way you want when they understand what’s in it for them.

Does that make the cats selfish? Consider that these cats are volunteering to begin with, so how really selfish are they? They signed up to help their org get to Point A, now someone would like them to go more towards Point B. It’s perfectly reasonable, if not convenient, for them to say “That’s cool, I can see how that might be useful. And I’d rather spend my free time doing something else.” The time they commit could be spent with their family or friends or in their gardens or on the ski slopes or staring at clouds.

Doesn’t seem right to me to claim that their volunteering is destroying or detracting from anything. It may not be helping to build it, but that’s different.

Mark, I don’t think we’ve met, but I can tell that you are passionate and have a very different perspective of the community then I do. I appreciate your efforts to get the mayors office more involved in our community. While I feel that more involvement is not always a good thing, I do see the benefit in this case.

As for all of us coming together to share a single vision, I would love to see it happen, but I don’t think that is a fair expectation. There are many individuals, that are part of many different groups, that all have different expectations. Being able to reconcile these down to a single mission statement for the entire community is not going to fairly represent everyone. Yes there are likely to be lots that we can all agree on, but there are going to be things that some individuals or groups will not be able to compromise on, and I think that is fair to allow.

For a quick current events example, lets take a look at the health care debate, even when both sides realize that something needs to be done, the actions that need to be taken to get there are not agreed on by all parties. I feel that your post takes the stance that because everyone in the community is in the community that we should intrinsically have some course of action to the same goal.

For me I am a member of a few groups, I assist in organizing one, and I used to run another. I’ve given talks, I conceder my self involved, but I’ve never run for LoT, so I might be missing out on some global community planning. But if we are to have this single community mission statement, some path to a greater place, where is the outreach to me? I’ve been involved in conversations with other members of the community about what we think that the future should look like, but they all happen in the context of the groups that I belong. This conversation here on selena’s blog is the closest thing that I can remember that comes close to even starting the process of a shared community view, and this is not likely to be the correct forum for getting everyone involved.

So to that end, I completely agree with your concept that we can do better, because I feel that we can. Though for this to work we do need to all come together, but because we are all are currently autonomous units, that needs to be understood and respected. This community is a biological system, and the only reason that any self supporting system will break its current method of success is if there is a perceived benefit to change. So how would this shared goal help my groups? I have to be sold, I like what I have now, what’s in it for me?

Again thank you @mark_lawler for sharing your opinions, and allowing @selenamarie to repost here for the rest to join in the conversation. I do feel that even though we might not see eye to eye, that this is important.

That said, the hackathon is tonight so if anyone wants to join in and discuss this further in person (and take notes). I would love to see this discussion continue.

http://calagator.org/events/1250458325

[Disclosure: I'm involved in posting the reminders about pdxhackathon]

And today, I realized what I had been unable to see through my frustration. “Why can’t we all just get along?” is not a useful question, if what you want to accomplish is to get people to work together. It presupposes something that isn’t true. Of course we can get along, for a pretty broad spectrum of “we.” We do get along, mostly. We might do well to ask “How can we get along better?” or “How can we work together?” or, “How would this work better for you?”

Now, in an effort to address the question you actually asked… What would really make collaboration easier would be a community-run facility to hold meetings and do collaborative stuff in. I really miss going to meetings at CubeSpace, not only because it was a good place for a meeting, but because there were always other groups holding meetings too, close enough in their interests to be interesting to me, but distinct enough that I wouldn’t have thought to seek them out if I hadn’t run across them in person.

I’ve deleted that and pasted it back a few times now. I know I’m not the only one who wants something like that, and I know that I haven’t done diddly about it. Seems as if I ought to put in some effort myself before I suggest such a thing. But tonight, that is the answer I have.