LESSONS ABOUT COMMUNITY FROM STUDIO GHIBLI Dawn M. Foster - PDF document

LESSONS ABOUT COMMUNITY FROM STUDIO GHIBLI Dawn M. Foster Director ¡of ¡Community ¡at ¡Puppet ¡Labs @geekygirldawn dawn@puppetlabs.com ¡ (we’re ¡hiring!) PresentaAon ¡available ¡at ¡fastwonderblog.com

WHOAMI Geek, traveler, reader Past 13+ years doing community & open source Read 73 books last year I keep a list: http://fastwonderblog.com/about/reading/ Photos by Josh Bancroft, Don Park

ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE Communities involve real work from many different people. Not about the leaders, it’s about everyone who participates The real magic of Studio Ghibli lies with the people, both the characters in the films, and the people behind the scenes making them. While the characters in the films are what we see, the real work is in the making of the films. Communities also take more work than what people may think to make sure that everything is running smoothly. There are people working behind the scenes to build and maintain the community infrastructure and make sure that the community is staying free of spam and dealing with any issues that might come up. Communities have leaders who determine project direction and architecture, decide which code to accept, and manage the community. These people are often very visible, but ultimately, it isn't about the leaders, it's about the many people who participate in the community by committing code, answering questions, writing documentation and so much more! A community can survive a change in leadership, just like Studio Ghibli will survive Miyazaki’s retirement, if there are still people doing the work required to make the projects successful. Each Studio Ghibli film is filled with many strange and interesting new people. The pilot who was turned into a pig, a young witch making her way in the world by starting a delivery by broom business, a little fish girl in love with a boy, and so many more. I've met all kinds of people as a result of my participation in communities. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked in open source communities that many of these community members are pretty strange, but very interesting!

LIKE FAMILIES You can’t understand it until you participate and become part of the community. My Neighbors the Yamadas is quite di fg erent from the rest of the Studio Ghibli films. Rather than being a single story, it contains many shorts about this interesting and quirky family. It follows them from losing their daughter in a shopping center to dad coming home drunk and everything in between. While we watch these stories, we probably see comparisons with our own families, but we can’t know exactly what it’s like to be in that particular family when we aren’t part of it. Communities are similar. What can you really tell about a community by observing it from the outside? On the surface, you might see a few mailing lists, an IRC channel, a forum, some code repositories, etc. But until you get into the community and begin participating, you won't understand what it's really like in that community. In this way, communities are like families. Looking in at a family or a community from the outside is very di fg erent from being a part of the family and seeing it from the inside. While families may be hard on each other, they do stick up for each other and work together to overcome obstacles. By working together, we make real connections with other people while also making the community stronger.

UNDERSTAND FIRST Participate gently at first. Take time to understand the community norms. In Spirited Away, Chihiro’s family makes a wrong turn and enters a spirit world. Her parents make an enormous mistake when they first enter and get themselves turned into real pigs after eating like pigs, and the whole family becomes trapped. This is a little like being new in a community. When you don’t understand the norms and how people participate, you are likely to make huge mistakes that can be di ffj cult to recover from. When I joined Puppet Labs, since I wasn’t already an active community member, I made sure that people knew that I wasn’t going to participate in the community at all during the first month. Instead, I used that time to learn how the community functioned. I spent a lot of time talking to people about the community, and started working on some things that I could do in the background, behind the scenes, while I learned. Then I started participating more and more, but I did it very gradually. I’ve seen too many people come into a community with grand ideas that they try to impose on others or try to dump a huge pile of code into the community, and what they are doing is making the same mistake a bunch of times and annoying everyone. So, start small, understand what’s going on, learn from a couple of smaller mistakes, and grow your participation over time.

BE PATIENT Let issues die down on their own and allow others to participate. One rainy night while Satsuko and Mei were waiting patiently by the bus stop for their father to return, they were rewarded with a visit from Totoro who gives them some seeds to plant in exchange for an umbrella. While they may want the seeds to grow into enormous trees overnight, it takes time for a seed to sprout and grow into something substantial. Patience isn’t my strong suit, but I do force myself to be patient when it comes to dealing with the community. I can’t count how many times people have rushed over to me (in person or virtually) to talk about something happening in the community that must be dealt with right away. Maybe someone has insulted the company I work for or said something not very nice about the project. Unless it’s something serious or a violation of our guidelines, my typical response is to wait and see what happens. In most cases, someone else will defend us, which is going to count for more than us trying to defend ourselves. Or maybe the issue dies down naturally, and people recognize that someone is just trolling for a reaction. If it escalates, then maybe I will step in, but it’s not my first reaction. It also allows others to participate. If one person or a small group are jumping in on everything right away, it tends to stifle discussion and reduce contributions from other people, so be patient and see what happens before jumping in.

NO RAGE Take time to cool off and don’t participate when you are angry. In Nausicaä of the Valley of the wind, the ohm were blind with rage, stampeding through the valley without concern for how they might be hurting others. This is another case where being patient can benefit us. Most of us have said things in anger that we regretted later. Since communities are so public, your angry, inappropriate post may just live on forever. It’s a good incentive to step back and think before posting anything that you might regret later. It’s just as easy to take some time to cool o fg and let your anger dissipate first. Take the time you need to make sure that your response is appropriate and be mindful about how your reply might a fg ect other people in the community.

GOOD INTENTIONS Assume community members have good intentions and focus on education and improvement. Borrowers, like Arrietty and her family, are very little people who secretly live in hidden places in people’s homes. like behind walls and under the floorboards. They borrow small amounts of the everyday items they need to survive and take only what they need to avoid being discovered. However, when a small boy discovers Arrietty and her family, he inadvertently brings destruction to their home and almost gets them exterminated. He only wanted to help them and become friends, but upon their escape, they had to leave their home and move on to another place where they could live in secret. Most, but sadly, not all, community members also have good intentions, but many of them don’t get things quite right either. This is a big part of why we have community guidelines. The guidelines that I write are probably a bit long, but I like to include specific tips for how to behave in di fg erent parts of the community, since the way you act on IRC is very di fg erent from a mailing list. I also include our event code of conduct and specific steps that we will take when the guidelines are violated. All of this helps people become more educated about what is and is not appropriate, which hopefully, leads to improvement. Too much of the time, people violate guidelines and codes of conduct because they fail to think about how what they are doing impacts other people, and a gentle reminder is enough to get most people (the ones with good intentions, but inappropriate actions) back on track.

SMART GROWTH Grow gradually and balance resources to manage contributions. In Princess Mononoke and other films, like Pom Poko, expansion of human populations at the expense of the environment is a common theme. Similarly, you want to grow your community in a way that doesn’t damage the rest of the project or existing community. While it may sound exciting to have amazing growth in your community, most communities are better o fg with gradual, incremental growth that allows you to get new people involved in a way that maintains at least some of the existing culture and minimizes disruption to the rest of the community. Make sure you have enough resources to sustain your growth rate. Is the community structured in a way that can grow with the community? Do you have enough people who can help new people get started? Do you have enough people to manage the new contributions coming in? Puppet example.