Magento

I am very proud to announce today that I am joining the Magento community team.  I’ve been a fan of Magento for a while and I am really excited to have this opportunity to work closely with the community and with Varien to establish some good synergy! 

As you know, the Magento community has been growing very rapidly approaching 80,000 community members.  In the true spirit of community software development this growth has also brought with it many voices to be heard and many ideas to ponder from a large and ever-growing number of extremely enthusiastic contributors.  My broad goal is to ensure that all voices are heeded, all opinions are understood, to foster good communication and work together to achieve goals that will grow the community and the contributor base as well as strengthening Magento itself.  I move quickly, so I’d like to share with the community my short list of things which I plan on helping become a reality in the next few weeks, all working towards the above stated broad goal.

1. Facilitate communication with the community - i.e. talk to me.  I would like to engage in conversation with both the community and regional community managers as well as Varien, to understand what everyone thoughts are on every important issue.  Communication is crucial, especially when working in a community environment, and since I’m new here, I think it would be helpful to find out what everyone and anyone has on their mind.  At the same time, I would like to be able to clarify any miscommunication, and slay it before it even gets a chance to rear its ugly head!  In case you were wondering, yes, I did being a sword with me.  Wow, thats sharp, okay, I’m putting it down now.


2. Establish a community advisory board - Any community of our size is going to need representatives, that is a vital path through which any ideas can be exchanged and considered.  My plan is to work on putting together an advisory board made up of both Varien and community members to ensure that both interests are kept aligned and in sync.  I will be contacting people in the next few days regarding this, so please stay tuned.


3. Establish policy and procedure for community interaction - it is no surprise that there are community members who are eager to contribute time and code to Magento.  Especially code!  Varien is also very eager to see this happen.  There have been concerned community members who have spoken out about this, and I want to allay any fears they might have.  I would like to put policies and practices in place for making this a reality soon.  This is going to be a big task but its something thats front and center for Varien as well as for all of us--I’m on it.  Moreover, I would like to increase community participation in all areas and that is going to require me to keep in close touch with everyone so that we can all mutually establish guidelines for new community members to get involved in all areas of Magento.

I look forward to working with the community and with Varien to make all this a reality.  Most importantly, let’s not forget to have fun.  We have a great thing going here and it’s only gonna get better.  I’m also looking forward to hearing from the community, my email is oz@varien.com, hit me up to chat or leave a comment in this post.

Koby