[sakai2-tcc] Planning for Sakai 2.10 and beyond

[Charles Severance]

On Sep 24, 2012, at 12:02 PM, Nate Angell wrote:

> While I agree that the formation of the Product Council was ineffective, a quick look at its membership shows that nearly all members were from stakeholder institutions putting substantial resources into Sakai—so that point is not why the PC didn't work. Also, the folks on the PC had Sakai's best interests at heart, just like other bodies such a the TCC. I tire of hearing the PC characterized as some sort of conspiracy. Let's talk about what we will do (thanks Steve!) rather than make up fake stories to illustrate what we won't do. 
> 
> Original PC members:
> Nate Angell, rSmart
> 
> Noah Botimer, UM
> 
> Eli Cochran, UCB
> 
> Michael Feldstein, Oracle (at the time)
> 
> Clay Fenlason, GT
> 
> David Goodrum, IU
> 
> John A. Lewis, Unicon
> 
> Stephen Marquard, UCT
> 
> John Norman, Cambridge
> 
> Max Whitney, NYU
> 


Nate -

The reason that the PC did not work is that its creation was solving a political problem where the pro-OAE members of the community were trying to stamp out the CLE efforts.   Trying to force the end-of-life of the CLE.   The way the PC was formed was hand-picked political appointees selected by the former ED whose publicly stated goal at the time was to end-of-life the CLE.   Other than two token appointments to create an appearance of OAE-CLE balance, the members are straight from the OAE fan club member list circa 2010.

The group was charged with thinking broadly about the global priorities of the Sakai community.  I am sure that all the members of the PC felt that they were thinking broadly and looking at things in a balanced manner, but the net result of the actions of the PC was "hands off" the OAE and loved everything the OAE did and pretty much threw a wet blanket on the CLE for the entire the lifetime of the PC.

It was not a "conspiracy" - it was just a bad idea.   Any time you create governance with authority but no responsibility and let them run around and set policies and directions over resources that don't belong to them - it goes pear-shaped.

/Chuck


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