This week I attended DrupalCon in Nashville, TN. I always enjoy open source conferences and this event was no different. There were hundreds of sessions available over the 3 day event and it’s always tricky to navigate the feeling of “information overload” when attending a multi-day conference like this.

One of the tricks I’ve learned over the years of attending these events is to take one session slot each day and not attend a session. Instead I find a quiet location somewhere and jot down my thoughts on what I’ve been hearing and learning. This helps me to keep from getting conference brain where I’m sitting in a session but not hearing anything. This also gives me a chance to catch up on other messages so when I am in a session I can give it my undivided attention.

I’d like to share with you is the result of one of those reflection sessions. This nugget of greatness came from the opening keynote on Day 2. Steve Francia, @spf13, was sharing his story and it was full of helpful information, anecdotal advice, and stories from his personal journey. It truly was an amazing keynote. As he spoke there was a few slides in particular he shared which caught my eye and attention. They specifically addressed an issue I am constantly aware of with the Mautic community.

You’ll have to forgive my sketching, and trust me when I say his slides were much prettier. But I imagine you’ll get a fairly good idea of the concept. Not to mention, if you are that interested; you should have attended!

Here’s the basic concept: Open NOT Inclusive.

The idea was one that Steve mentioned he discovered while working with Google and the Go community. What he saw was that the core team (Google) was doing all the contributing to the code and the community was observing and consuming without being actively included or taking active leadership roles. As a result the true power of the community was left untapped and the internal team was a limiting factor.

I was struck with the similarities to the Mautic community and as you can tell from my sketch I self-identified with our team in a similar fashion. At this point I found myself agreeing with Steve’s problem statement and as such was eager to see what he shared next. Below is again my representation of the slide that followed.

Steve offered a simple solution. Well, it appears simple, but the implications are of course much greater. The suggestion as outlined above involves Distributed Control - when the community is able to make leadership decisions and assume roles of responsibility the dynamics change. This seemingly obvious change to inclusive gives a sense of ownership to the community. It makes the community truly empowered and in control of it’s own destiny. What a fantastic and exciting future.

While I believe that the Mautic community is working hard to assume positions of leadership and my intent is to see this growth occur as soon as possible this served as a valuable reminder to me what we are all striving for. Steve pointed out that the Drupal community was an excellent example of this inclusive open community functioning properly and looking around at the thousand or so in attendance I would have to agree with him. I look forward to the Mautic events in the future when we can say the same thing and demonstrate it with the many community leaders taking an active role in the future of our project.

That’s all for this post, but I will continue to share my thoughts from my reflection sessions in the near future. In the meantime, let’s not forget this valuable lesson and keep striving to make Mautic the most amazing community it can be.