[Foundation-l] strategic planning process update

[Robert Rohde]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Eugene Eric Kim <eekim at blueoxen.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Pavlo Shevelo <pavlo.shevelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Who will decide what the strategy will be, and what will be the
>> decision-making process?"
>>
>> this page explains nothing about (or explains in no detail if somebody
>> prefers) how main stakeholder - Foundation will make decision about
>> said strategy. The huge, extremely intensive (and effective, if we
>> will do our best) Earth-wide pipeline for proposal preparation - it's
>> good. But what will be in the very end? How Foundation will decide
>> what idea is good enough to stand behind it (and to put money in it)?
>
> Sorry for taking so long to respond, Pavlo. I'm not sure I'm the right
> person to respond to this. I'll do my best, you can tell me if you
> think it's clear, and hopefully other folks from the Foundation will
> jump in.
>
> The simple answer is: At the end of this process, there will be a
> community-developed plan with a set of recommendations. The Foundation
> board will vote on that plan at its board meeting in November 2010.
>
> Assuming we pull off what we're trying to pull off, I expect that to
> be a rubber stamp. In other words, if this is a good process, if we
> put lots of thought into it, if a large, diverse group of stakeholders
> are engaged, I think the board will go with the plan. That is my
> opinion, not an official statement of fact. :-)
>
> I expect people from the Foundation to actively engage in the process
> with everyone else. I hope that holds true for other stakeholders,
> such as the Chapters, and I would very much love to see all of our
> stakeholders both engage in the process and then go through some
> official approval process. I'm optimistic that this will happen. I
> know that several Chapters are already engaged in their own strategic
> planning processes, and I expect those will align nicely with this
> movement-wide process. I hope that individual projects get more
> actively engaged as well, as I think this is a wonderful opportunity
> to reflect together and to take advantage of common resources for this
> effort.

I think it is worth keeping in mind that not all of the proposals are
the same either.  Though the planning horizon is nominally five years,
some of the suggestions include things that could be done relatively
easily right now.

For example, some issues could be accomplished by a single interested
programmer and/or a team of engaged editors, without needing either
the Foundation's stamp of approval or funding.  I suspect that many
such things, if they are truly worth doing and well supported by the
larger community, would actually get implemented long before the
Foundation gets around to endorsing a long-term plan.

It would probably be a good idea for someone to start sorting
proposals be their perceived difficulty and/or need for external
resources (if no one has been already), so that the easy issues could
be separated from the hard ones.

-Robert Rohde