I love communities and I love open source
This means that when I start ideas, I always try to create a community around it and see if I can make the results open source.
Yet next to that, I try to support communities, open-source projects that I see and like.
How that usually works, is that I start using a product.
Really using it, like any other user would use it.
Yet I’m crazy creative and every time I use something I see lots of different things that I like or that I want to do. And instead of getting frustrated, I share that info with the team that creates the product/conference/…
I share that info using things like
- improvement game ⇒ perfect for general feedback
- feedback forms if they allow me to send the info I’m trying to send
or any other way I can reach the people behind the thing I’m using.
what I don’t do is as important:
I don’t prioritize or attach value to my idea’s.
Not because I don’t care. I do and I have a big ego so when I think about idea’s my ego thinks they are the best in the world and my ego wants this team to adapt my idea’s.
Yet I’m also humble enough to know that I’m not that important or maybe special enough to know that I might not be the target audience of the product that I’m using. (My ego prefer the I’m more special over the I’m not important enough phrasing 😉 )
I make it sound like a joke, yet I’m serious, I prefer that the team or their product owner looks at their backlog of work and decides how important my idea is for their target audience.
Of course it’s not nice to hear that what I think of, is not a priority, yet what is worse, is that a team jumps and works on every idea that everyone has. As I know that results in a product without a vision. And we all know and use products without a clear vision. And if you are a bit like me, you hate them. I prefer products with a vision I don’t share over products without a vision. As I know they serve their purpose and their audience best.
My role is to inspire, to support teams and tell them I care so much about their products, that I want to spend some of my own precious time writing out how I would improve. And yes with each and every idea I share, I hope people listen to me.