[eclipse.org-architecture-council] Call action item: Announcing ourselve

[Darin Swanson <Darin_Swanson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have inlined a proposed blog post
that resolves my action item from the meeting (the pictures are unlikely
to be formatted correctly)
Please comment if you feel changes are
required (patches gracefully accepted :-) )

My plan is to post on Monday night and
send out a note to the eclipse.org-committers mailing list as well.

Thanks
Darins

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I
have an action item from the last Eclipse
Architecture council meeting: Announce
ourselves and describe what we are trying to achieve.

We believe that there are committers out there who do not know that the
council exists. We are working to change this.

Who is the Architecture Council?
The council is composed of senior Committers with a proven track record
of innovation, motivation and dedication to Eclipse. A list is available
here.

What is the Architecture Council? 
Cynically you could say it is a bunch of people who have worked on Eclipse
for a long time and like talking to each other once
a month.
While these might be two of the identifying traits of the council :-)

we
are actually on a group mission:

From [1], the council is "... responsible for the development, articulation, and maintenance of the Eclipse Platform Architecture and ensuring the Principles of the Development Process through mentorship."

From [2] the council is "... involved in both technical and process aspects of the projects in its quest to ensure the long-term technical health of the Eclipse platforms because the social and process structure of a project has been shown to have a direct impact on the technical quality of its extensible frameworks and exemplary tools."

For more please read here.

How is the Architecture Council going to achieve its mission?
"The Council will be as effective and useful as we make it." Rather obvious but it is amazing how often the simple truisms are overlooked.
We all have varied reasons for being involved with Eclipse but we all share a common goal: the desire to see continued technological success and innovation occur at Eclipse fostered by a healthy and vibrant committer community.
The job of the Council is to look out beyond the current work and ensure that our processes foster success rather than impede progress. Instead of just listing the problems (which is always the easiest path), we need to tackle head-on issues that impact Eclipse, including but definitely not limited to visibility of our councils, release trains, UI consistency and project diversity.

The Eclipse committers can contribute to the success of the council by keeping us accountable and ensuring we are responding to any issues with the viability and evolution of Eclipse.

So be successful on our mission the council needs to react to the current and future successes and challenges to Eclipse and to keep informed of developments from the committers. As well, we are tasked to lead by example within our own projects and within the role of mentor.

Please watch our work...it is guaranteed to be interesting...

Building picture credit: http://www.bigfoto.com/themes/architecture/index.htm

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