Late last year the topic of a vision for CiviCRM came up on the partner email list. What is it that brings us all together? And where are we headed over the next few years? It was good to chat this through with people and there was a general consensus that:
- having something written down would be really useful in many situations: it would help explain our project to new people (be they users, service providers, or funders) and inspire them to join us; it would be something you could read on those days when you feel like chucking it all in, to remind yourself, 'oh yeah, that's why I'm doing this'; and it would be a tool to bring clarity to our releases and help us set priorities.
- since CiviCRM means many different things to many different people, we'll need input from the entire community to create the vision. And it will be a challenge to collate all these views into something clear, representative, and meaningful.
We also agreed that writing by committee is never fun or effective, so instead, thought we should create an initial first draft that can be used as the basis for a discussion. Something that everyone can critique, challenge and rewrite. The idea is that everyone has their say, and a brave (and foolhardy) group of volunteers take all that input and hone it into something clear, meaningful and inspiring.
You can see the early draft here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Vision+and+principles. It based on discussions so far, and on similar documents from similar projects.
The draft is split into two parts:
a vision: what we believe in and where we are headed - we're trying to keep this short
our principles: how we work together to support our vision - a longer explanation of how we work together
So, does this resonate with you and your role in the community? What have we missed out? What should we cut out? Whether you have been involved for years, or are just getting started, we want to hear from you. All you word smiths out there – how can we make this message more succinct, meaningful and inspiring? End users - we are especially interested in your input.
A wise old owl once said “A vision without a task is a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world.” Please log into the wiki, and help create our vision.