Open Advice/Things I am Happy I Did not Know

Things I’m Happy I Didn’t Know

by Alexandra Leisse

in: Open Advice

This text is available under the CC-BY-SA license. (see also: Open Advice/Info)

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Names 3 “High-Profile-Project” 4 The Outsider 5 Conclusion 6 about the author

Introduction

When Lydia asked me to join her book project under the working title of “things I wish I had known”, my mind went blank. Things I wish I had known but didn’t? Nothing came to mind.

I am not saying that I didn’t need to learn anything, on the contrary. I had to learn a lot and I made countless mistakes. But situations or mistakes I would have preferred to avoid? I can’t think of any.

All of us have the annoying tendency to look at the things that we could do better, the things we do not know, and perceive them as weaknesses. But what about weaknesses that are our strengths?

Here is my personal story about ignorance, naivety and false perception, and about how happy I am I had no clue.

Names

I had no idea who this guy was I met during the first day of my job. He entered the room, introduced himself, and started asking tough questions that gave me the impression that all I thought I would be doing was nonsense. He was apparently well informed about my doings in KDE and the people I used to deal with. Still we seemed to have different standpoints. At some point I grew tired of his provocations and lost patience. I told him that things are not always as easy with people as engineers wish they were.

It was only after he had left after about an hour of discussing that I googled his name: Matthias Ettrich. What I read explained a lot about why he asked the questions he did. If I had known before that he is one of the founders of the KDE project I would have likely argued in a very different way – if at all.

I had to look up quite some names during the last years, and I was happy every single time that I did it after the first contact.

This is probably my most important point. When I met all these FOSS people for the first time I had almost never heard their names before. I did not know about their history, their merits, nor their failures. I approached everyone in the same way: on eye-level.

By being ignorant (or naive, as some have called it), I did not feel inferior to the people I met when I started my journey into FOSS land. I knew I had a lot to learn but I never had the impression I had a lower position than others as a person.

“High-Profile-Project”

I had not religiously followed dot.kde.org nor PlanetKDE, let alone all those countless other FOSS related publications before I started lurking on KDE mailing-lists. I perceived those channels first and foremost as means of communication to a very select audience, mainly users of and contributors to the project itself.

For quite some time, it did not even cross my mind that the articles I published on The Dot might be picked up by journalists. I put an effort into writing them because I wanted to do a good job rather than because I was afraid of making a fool out of myself in the world’s face. The press list was maintained by other people and what I wrote did not appear that important to me either. I wanted to reach certain people, and the official channels and my own blog seemed like the most efficient way of doing it.

Being quoted on ReadWriteWeb after announcing on my blog that I would start a new job almost came as a shock to me. It is not that I did not know that people read what I write – I certainly hope they do! – I simply did not expect it to be that much of a topic. It wasn’t even summer break.

Good thing nobody told me; I would not have been able to publish a single line.

The Outsider

Some time ago when I attended my first conference I did so with the firm belief that I was different from the other attendees. I saw myself as an outsider because I did not have much in common with anybody else apart from a fuzzy interest in technology: I had been freelancing for some years already after graduating from university, I had no relevant education in the field, and I was mother of a 10 year-old child. On paper at least, it could not get much different from the usual suspects one meets inside FOSS projects.

In 2008 I attended a KOffice sprint as part of the KDE marketing and promotion team to prepare the 2.0 release. The initial idea was to sketch out a series of promotional activities supporting the release to grow both developer and user base, for which there were three of us running a parallel track to the developer discussion.

We tried to understand how we could position KOffice and adapt communication to the intended audience. Pretty soon in the process, we discovered that we had to take a step back: at that point, the immaturity of the suite made it impossible to position it as an option for unsuspecting users. We had to stick with developers and early adopters. It was a tough sell to some of the developers but as outsiders we had the chance to look at the software without thinking of all the blood, sweat and tears that went into the code.

For a lot of projects, no matter of which kind they are, the core contributors have a hard time taking an objective look at the state of affairs. We tend to not see the great accomplishments while we are so focused on the issues in detail, or the other way around. Sometimes we miss a good opportunity because we think it has nothing to do with what we are doing – or that no-one would want this in the first place.

In all these cases, people outside the project have the potential to inject some different viewpoints into the discussion, particularly when it comes to prioritization. It is even more helpful if they are not developers themselves: they will ask different questions, will not feel pressured into knowing and understanding all technical details, and they can help decisions and communication on a higher level.

Conclusion

Ignorance is bliss. It is not only true for the individuals who benefits from the fearlessness that results from a lack of knowledge but also for the projects these individuals join. They bring different views and experiences.

And now, go and find yourself a project that interests you, regardless of what you think you know.

about the author

Alexandra Leisse left one stage to enter another and turn her other passion – software and the web – into a profession. After a transition period of 12 months of freelancing both in software and opera – and sinking countless hours into KDE activities, she joined Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks as Web Community Manager. She is the woman behind the Qt Developer Network and Qt’s community activities on the web. Despite holding a degree in opera performance, she mostly refuses to sing in public.