Nice post Darin. Unfortunately I missed the Jan 17th
call, but I really like the statement that came out of it, which you link
below:
…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 only thing I would consider changing or removing is the “visibility
of our councils” bit, because it could make it sound like the first
priority of our council is to make itself visible. We can become more visible
by acting on the other priorities listed.
Mik
From:
eclipse.org-architecture-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-architecture-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Darin
Swanson
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 8:50 PM
To: eclipse.org-architecture-council
Subject: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] Call action item: Announcing
ourselves
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
==============================================================================
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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