With my curiosity initially piqued by Neil’s Linux User Group, I was eager to form my own: the cunningly named Wolverhampton Linux User Group. Six months later, Aq wandered into a meeting, complete with now-trademark bombastic personality.
Over the years, Aq and I shared many a pint and a curry, debating and discussing every imaginable topic about Free Software. No subject was out of reach, and we relished in each other’s passion for the subject. We also relished in the opportunity to prove each other wrong. These debates inspired many projects: one of them was LugRadio.
Throughout the life of LugRadio, Aq and I debated how we— or more specifically, I— recorded the show. As the resident musician in the fabulous foursome, with a room full of recording equipment, I handled recording and editing, using Mac OS X and the Cubase audio production system.
Yes, folks, you read that right: LugRadio was a show all about Free Software but recorded on a proprietary system, with a proprietary application. Fortunately, the community took good steed to remind me of my alleged “freedom hating” pretty much every day. Lucky me. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to spend my life engaged in the rocket science that was Linux audio engineering. I love to play music, not spend my days thinking about which sample size I should set my software to.
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We thought it would be fun to totally rethink audio recording. We sat down with paper and pens, and more cups of tea, discussing and debating until 4 a.m. When I got home and dragged my drained body into bed, my laptop bag contained three pieces of paper outlining an entirely new approach to audio recording.
Despite our brainstorming efforts, I just didn’t have the time or knowledge to write an audio editor. I could have used my meager audio programming and development skills to produce a rather crufty attempt, but it would have been of little use, and I was already intensely busy. Despite this lack of time and skill, I didn’t want our designs to languish in obscurity, so I drafted some mock-ups and wrote a lengthy blog entry explaining how they worked. I informed the LugRadio community and expected silence: the world moving on, our designs unnoticed.
A few weeks later I wandered onto the LugRadio forums and noticed that some code had been committed to a repository. I downloaded it and it looked like an incredibly simple first cut of the interface that existed in my mock-ups.
I was stunned.
So was Aq.
The author was a rather nice chap called Jason Field who had a passion for coding and Linux. I immediately emailed him to make contact. His simple contribution had inspired me to consider the project further and to see whether the designs were really possible to build. He said yes.
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Eventually, after months of work, we made a first release. From a few ideas, expressed with my amateur-grade design skills, we built something that people could touch. Today, although I have stepped back to work on other things, Jokosher is a thriving project.
Most Free Software projects form from one person scratching an itch. They write code and release it; if it scratches other people’s itches, collaboration begins. Jokosher was different. It existed entirely on paper before it did in software. The application was rooted in a new approach to interaction design, so having a documented design was essential. The design and accompanied specification of the interface acted as a reference from which to build the software.
What this experience taught me, entirely by chance, was that the speed and success of a community has a direct correlation to strategy, structure, and planning: even a simple set of mock-ups can help drive progress in the right direction. Communities that appear more by accident than by intention tend to be slow to develop and mature. Organized communities thrive because structure provides a sense of worth, conviction, and oversight. A strategy will make things happen for your community.
~~The Art Of Community -by- Jono Bacon
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