[tdf-discuss] Re: TDF/LO on a wrong way?

Hi Johannes,

Le 14/12/10 13:52, Johannes A. Bodwing a écrit :

Interesting comments and very praiseworthy intentions, but ...

> So many things are done different in many goups. That costs energy and
> time and at least motivation. But there are many things that could be
> done together. Like a common Home-Site or the exchange of articles for
> LO-Magazins and so on.

Perhaps the reasons why this is so are deeply seated in each group's
national and cultural identity


> Where is the common and worldwide frame for the TDF/LO-Project? And
> where is the structure and organization to find (website?)?
> Or - how can we build it together?

I feel that the more appropriate question should be : where is the
Foundation, and what are its values ? As yet, and to my knowledge, the
Foundation still has no legal identity, without firm governance. As has
been shown on various discussion lists, this has lead to rather a large
amount of e-mail exchange without any real possibility to decide and
execute concrete actions by the members of the Community at large. If
you want to federate everyone under a single hat, then the hat has to
actually physically exist in the first place, and someone has to be
wearing it.

As an example, take the case for the web site development platform. Not
only are there still questions as to which website platform we are going
to be using, but also we have a fledlging website which, as you rightly
say, is a hotchpotch of individual contributions by each of the NL
groups. People are not going to sit still and twiddle their thumbs
whilst waiting for the pseudo-main site to come online, so naturally
have gone about doing their own thing within their own groups. That is
not IMHO necessarily a bad thing : most NL group members know what works
and what doesn't for their target group, yet by the same token, this
leads to an overall impression for the whole of the project as being
somewhat disparate and incoherent, especially given the lack of an
official "centralising" power.

Again, that might not necessarily be a bad thing with regard to certain
audience targets, but IMHO it will affect the opinion of the corporate
sector. Corporations don't like external mess when they address an
outside project, they have enough of their own to deal with internally,
without wishing to bother with why, for a given product, the
corresponding website looks different in English to that in Spanish,
German, French or Chinese, say. That can be particularly unsettling. On
the other hand, informal users are probably quite happy that they can go
to their own language part of the site and find things presented in way
they understand or can relate to. It all boils down to your target
audience. Target companies, and you need coherency, consistency and
reliability, both in operation and appearance. Don't get me wrong here,
you can still tailor content to individual cultures even in this case,
but it has to conform to the corporate way of looking at things. Target
individuals, you can tailor your content and organisational structure
and operations to please that group of individuals.


One way or the other, a decision will have to be made. If such a
decision has been made, I can not yet see it filtering down through the
bazaar. I don't need a cathedral, but a roof over my head would be nice ;-)



Alex





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