[From nobody Fri Feb 18 12:15:38 2005 Received: (qmail 1595 invoked by alias); 17 Feb 2005 17:46:10 -0000 Delivered-To: whytheluckystiff-net-ruby-talk@whytheluckystiff.net Received: (qmail 1592 invoked from network); 17 Feb 2005 17:46:10 -0000 Received: from pfepb.post.tele.dk (195.41.46.236) by 65.125.236.163 with SMTP; 17 Feb 2005 17:46:10 -0000 Received: from [10.0.1.7] (0x5358c986.bynxx18.adsl-dhcp.tele.dk [83.88.201.134]) by pfepb.post.tele.dk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B3165EE06D; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:41:21 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <EAENKKNOJPMNCDMLDOMLIEDIHOAA.curt@hibbs.com> References: <EAENKKNOJPMNCDMLDOMLIEDIHOAA.curt@hibbs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v619.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: <486a217e11400ed543e0894620a48d1c@loudthinking.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "Chad Fowler" <chad@chadfowler.com>, "James Britt" <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com>, <dblack@wobblini.net>, <ruby-talk@whytheluckystiff.net> From: David Heinemeier Hansson <david@loudthinking.com> Subject: Re: Should I add you? [was FW: Ruby Visual Identity Team] Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:41:20 +0100 To: "Curt Hibbs" <curt@hibbs.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619.2) I wouldn't mind passing comments when it comes to something to show. I must admit, though, that I in general don't have a huge amount of faith in committee-driven redesigns. I've been involved in quite a few over time and they tend to fizzle unless the responsibility is very clearly divided. I'd recommend putting a core task force together consisting of no more than 3 people that holds executive decision power on how its supposed to be. The kicker is that all of these should be producers. Either writing, designing html/css, or hooking the technical aspects of it up (installing wikis, weblogs, etc). A small targeted team can't carry mere "opinionators". Then we could have a larger suggestion group consisting of perhaps 5-7 people. Their role would be to attempt to sway the task force with persuasive arguments for change. But they must now their role to be one of feedback, but executive direction. As an example of this model, I redesigned and implemented rubyonrails.com together with one fellow programmer/designer over the course of 1-2 weeks. We previewed progress to a larger suggestion group during the period, but was able to actually complete the project by assuming full authority to move on it. -- David Heinemeier Hansson, http://www.basecamphq.com/ -- Web-based Project Management http://www.rubyonrails.org/ -- Web-application framework for Ruby http://www.loudthinking.com/ -- Broadcasting Brain ]