I’d encourage the group to explore ways for community input into both these changes and moving forward. There are a number of reasons people can’t make it to NixCon, and that doesn’t negate their interest in helping with governance or providing input into the future of the ecosystem.
Indeed. We’re a globally-distributed project with nearly all work done online, but somehow there’s still seems to be a quite widespread belief* that in-person collaboration is more effective. I don’t share that view, but in case it is true, more effort should be dedicated to improving the online workflows where we spend the majority of the working time. Whatever results from this will have powerful impacts on contribution activity, and on the sustainability of the project as a whole.
In any case, it’s an accessibility problem in several ways (physical ability to travel, visa concerns, financial costs, scheduling), as well as having significant ecological impacts.
(*This echoes a similar sentiment held by many in the wider software industry and elsewhere, which, while usually benign on an individual level, only serves narratives that ignore or downplay multiple ongoing global public health crises. It’s worth considering who benefits from this, how, and at what/whose expense.)
Also I would challenge the sentiment from these notes that just because someone is willing or able to “do” work, it’s necessarily the best thing for them to spend their time on. In many cases it may be, but this do-ocracy idea seems it could also be at odds with improvements in governance and community decision making.
I agree here too; the spirit of praxicracy is great for day-to-day operations, because things tend to just get done rather than languish under committee review, but this can sometimes be a bit like launching a rocket before computing its intended trajectory – it will probably fly, but course-correction is expensive, often difficult, and there are limited chances to get it right.
Part of the motivation behind the push for better governance is the realization that the projects are evolving without much (documented, discussed, evaluated) high-level cohesive vision, which is not an unexpected outcome of do-first maximalism.
The good news: we can do better, we’re trying to do better, and more people are engaged than ever!