[LispSea] so much for stone soup

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Daniel J Pezely wrote:
> Maybe I've been stuck in an outmoded idea...
>
> Maybe there is no longer much use for the kind of users' group that 
> I've been advocating.
>
>     Then again, I foolishly expected that by putting LispSea in motion 
> again, others would step up to action.  Not words-- action.  While I 
> don't mind doing the necessary work, I won't do /all/ the work myself.

I agree it's foolish.  The job of a leader, whether for a group or a 
project, is to shoulder a potentially enormous amount of work to plant 
the 1st seed of something.  Other people are really only along for the 
ride and will not do anything until their personal threshold of critical 
mass has been reached.  Even then, they likely won't do anything because 
in the real world people have to pay bills, do their own tech jobs, 
spend time with SOs, families, and dogs, etc.  Money is what focuses 
people to do more than that.  This has been my experience over the last 
14 years of mailing lists and attempts at open source business models.

You have a grand vision.  The problem with grand visions is, they're 
tons of work.  If you set your initial sights lower, I believe you'd 
have more success.  SeaFunc is nowhere near as amazing as all the things 
you've proposed, but it is sustainable, and it does grow.  It grows at 
the rate of actual energy that people are willing to put in.  A 
motivated person such as you or I can augment such energy, but there is 
always the base curve of available energy to be reckoned with.  That's 
reality.

I've seen groups with more people and resources evaporate.  For 
instance, the Alias NW Users Group was well funded, had significant 
commercial sponsors for running contests with prize money, and had large 
attendance.  I don't have all the reasons why it imploded, but I suspect 
that as a cultural activity, it was really the product of 2 or 3 key 
individuals and many followers not doing much.  I wanted to do more for 
it, but the vision of the President of the group was not technically 
compatible with what I wanted to do.  He was all Linux Linux Linux high 
end film development, and he didn't want to hear about Windows, 
cross-platform, or games really.  In other words, it wasn't my fault.  
There was a time when my full energies were offered, but he didn't like 
it.  So my full energies went to CMake and Chicken Scheme.  I've 
continued those partnerships for 9 months now and they're still going fine.

The lesson I take way from that is, work with what you've got in front 
of you, not with what you ideally want.

>
>
> Thanks for exploring this idea with me over the past month.

No problem.  I think you've seen the actual level of manpower you have 
to work with.  Now the question is, are any of your personal goals still 
attainable under such circumstances.  There just isn't an army of people 
out there to get any particular thing done.  Armies have to be built, 
and it's a tricky business.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every