When Vision Meets Reality

I’m involved in the Open Source community. This week the official openSUSE Forums went live. I’ve been working on making this vision become a reality since January 2007, over 16 months. It’s not been easy.

I’ve learned a few things, not all of them for the first time, but during the project they all felt brand new. ☺

• I’ve learned that working with volunteers to accomplish anything with due dates will make you crazy.

• I’ve learned that working with people you’ve never met to accomplish a shared goal gives one an amazing sense of accomplishment.

• I’ve learned that vision and perseverance trump resistance to change and skepticism.

• I’ve learned that if you lead, and people don’t understand your vision, folks will hate you.

• I’ve learned that commitment means different things to different people.

• I’ve learned that doing something, and not caring about who gets credit enables success.

• I’ve learned that if you don’t do something, folks will criticize you.

• I’ve learned that if you do something folks will criticize you.

• I’ve learned that criticism fades away when you succeed.

• I’ve learned you can bridge language, distance, and time to make new friends.

• I’ve learned who my friends are.

• I’ve learned that when you reach the goal, none of the shit matters.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.

This entry was posted on June 14, 2008 at 7:01 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.