LibreOffice Conference 2026: Ten thoughts on community leadership

kind of a different talk. So, usually you hear either nothing from me at the conference or you hear some of the administrative bits and pieces. And today I want to present something that has been uh that I've been uh writing um inspired by TDF many many years ago. And the idea is to explain a bit what it means to get active in a community in particular in a in a role like in a board in a in a membership committee and I broke it down in 10 lessons 10 thoughts that um we've all learned and I would like to share that quickly. So you know me so I can quickly skip that. The first question is what is a community? That's an interesting question. And it's actually one those of you who have applied for a job at TDF, it's one of the questions we ask because there's no right or wrong answer. We ask if you were to describe a community, how would you describe it? And there there's lots of really interesting ways to describe that to approach that. And one I like a lot is taken or is based on an article I saw at Wikipedia a while ago and it talks about a group of people with a shared identity and jointed interest. And that I think is quite an accurate summary. Um because obviously one person alone isn't a community. Two can be. It's not so much but it can grow. But a group of people is is a solid basis. But then of course those people need to have something in common. You need to have something that unites you, something that um you work together, common goals. And to me the this shared identity has its origin in joint interests. We have a similar goal. We have different backgrounds. We have different hats, different professions. But we have a similar goal here. And a community member can be either totally private. We have lots of volunteers here who do this just in a private capacity or you can represent a company or an organization or you can do both. That's totally legitimate. And in the end and we see this here at the conference we have memories from other conference from others event where we've met um with this guy here I've been taking pictures at conferences for 19 years now so we have a lot of shared memories um and this is what what in the end unites a community that you have memories you have things you work together things you you remember and um one thing I'm quite skeptical these days that term community is used really massively you have some random product that some people talk about and immediately some marketing agency comes around the corner and calls it a community. That's not my understanding but of course the the absolute objective definition is not that easy. Now the problem is um back in the day and I guess not many of you remember that at the open of office or project we tried to describe a community and the picture was an antill a lot of ants walking in totally different directions and somebody trying to somehow organize a bit that chaos. Um that's also quite an appropriate picture because if you look the different skills and different interests we have here people walk in various directions and somehow we need to organize that and make it work. Now the challenge is of course things have grown, things have professionalized and they are organizations and organizations always mean legal obligations mean statutes means rules. Um but it enables us also to do things to organize conferences to sign contracts to employ people that that comes with it. So you need that and now organizations have roles and to me there are two kind of roles. One is a formal role. You're a member of the board or you're a member of a membership committee. you're a member of some body within an organization. That's a formal role. And then you have informal roles. That is you lead the marketing, you lead infrastructure. Usually is not an officially legally defined role, but a a role um that is not less important, but it's not formalized to that degree. And the main question is what does it mean? And if if you ask the current board when they entered office what they thought it means and what they then learned it means I guess there's quite a gap and I'm trying to break that down in 10 pieces that I think are important to run a project successfully and what people should be aware of and what the challenges are. The first is cooperation. Cooperation because people might run together. They might stand for elections together but there is no guarantee how the outcome is. So it's very likely you end up in a mixed group of people. Yet you need to somehow make it work and need to cooperate. And to do that it means of course you need to work in an open fashion. You to work in an honest fashion. If you're playing games, if you're playing politics, it's unlikely to work out. You need to remember you all, as you say in Germany, you sit in the same boat. You have the same goals. You share the same fate. Um transparency is key both internally when you work when you take decisions but also outward facing to the people who are not in a certain body when you share things with your community then that's important something that can't be overemphasized for most people this is a volunteer role in most organizations it's an unpaid role so if you do that you want it to be effective if you waste time it's no joy so cooperation is one of the key things to run a community. And looking at corporation, of course, not everybody has exactly the same background, exactly the same interest, exactly the same plan, the same steps to take. What is important is you have something in common. And here we have a similar goal. We want that product to work. We want that community to work. Somebody is more interested in marketing and design and infrastructure, that doesn't matter. But there is some sort of at least abstract common goal that people have in mind and that's important. You should share your goals. You should talk about them. What do you want to achieve? What is your goal? And in a formal body, define responsibilities. If everybody does everything or nobody does nothing, you have a problem. Now, if you have different kinds of people, and I think it's fair enough here to say we have a lot of different kind of people, different background, ages, professions, beliefs, cultures, and whatnot. Um, you have different views. That per se isn't bad. If everybody thinks exactly the same, it's getting kind of boring and uninspiring. It's a bit like salt in the soup. Soup without salt is very boring. If you overs salt it, you can't eat it. So, you need to find the right balance to make it happen. And that means if you have different views, it brings in, you know, new points of view, brings in more diversity. It can, it doesn't have to, but it can create new opportunities. At the same time, it means you likely have to enter some compromises. If not everybody wants the very same thing, but you need to find something you share, a common denominator, something that you can all align on. And then you can have goals and they must not always be exclusive. Very many goals are very compatible to one another. Sometimes of course not if somebody here would like to make a proprietary office suit to be sold that wouldn't fly. But many goals are quite comparable. The second pillar is commitment. If you are elected in a role, whether it's a formal one or not, it usually means what you've been doing is visible. Somebody has recognized it. Somebody thinks you can do the job. So that's that's good. Be proud of that because it means somebody sees something very positive in what you do. However, and that's the big thing many people don't have on screen. Being um awarded with a former award is not a crown you put on a medal you wear just because you did something good. It also comes with a lot of responsibilities. It comes with a ton of additional work in many areas you have no clue about. So that's something I can't overemphasize because many people think I'm in the board, I'm here, I'm there. This is just a medal I'm wearing. But you have a lot of different things to do all of a sudden that are totally unrelated to what you've been doing. Totally. You're a developer ending up dealing with taxes. It's not what your profession is. And it means time. It's really hard to say. I think a couple of years ago, and I doubt it has gotten better. At TDF, we had a look how many hours are people actually investing and our guess that we made was about 15 to 20 days per year that if you're in a board at least, you have to invest in time. That's quite a lot. That's that's a lot of time that you you spend. So, different tasks or additional tasks in additional areas you don't know about and a lot of time to be spent. Keep that in mind. Not to scare you away, but to show you the reality of things. Third pillar is what I call variety. Some may think, okay, I'm I'm elected in in a board or a marketing representative or whatever and then I'm the public face of the project. That is true. You're the public face. You're recognized. I mean, we have a chairperson opening the meeting. We have the marketing people running meetings. And you're also a legal representative. But if you think that's red carpet and that's nice food and sparkling wine, it's a lot of work and responsibility. The the reality is not that glamorous. As you see here, you have meetings, budgets, taxes, law, all the boring stuff nobody wants to deal with. So that comes with it. It's not you walk over the red carpet. Yes, you get celebrated every once in a while, but it's not you get the red carpet each day. That's the reality. And the problem is a lot of that is not visible to the public. I think it we have something similar in development when a lot of work goes into something and what the user sees is not much but the effort that went into it is giant and that can lead to frustration if you're not used to it. You spend a lot of work and it's not really visible to the public. That means as we say in Germany you need a thick skin or a thick fur. You need to be a bit resistant. You need to be with a bit of persistence in in what you do and you need to be willing to learn thing. You need to be able to tolerate frustration because you for sure will be frustrated. That's just to be expected. The good thing is normally if you have a diverse group, people have different interests. They have different skills. There's one person great in organizing things, the other one is great on stage. The next person has another skill. So make use of that. If you put the introvert on stage and force them to give a presentation and put the chaotic guy somewhere to do accounting, you have a complete chaos. Look at the skills you have and use them. It sounds simple, but I can tell you it's not always easy to remind yourself of that when you run something. And again, the responsibilities are key. Who is in charge of what? Spelled it out clearly so there are no doubts, no bad surprises. That brings me to the next item that I call delegation. Something I I need to show I'm strong. I need to do everything by myself. And at the beginning of any organization, you likely will do that because there is just no way around. But actually delegation is not weakness. It's strength. You are able to isolate work packages to hand them out to delegate it to someone. It needs trust. But this is something to look into and you can delegate to other volunteers to your colleagues and you can once you have the money externalize it and give it in the hand of professionals and looking at what you normally do in in less or more that order. The first thing and I'm sorry to all the accountants but it's boring. You don't want to do unless you're the accountant who volunteers in the board but normally no board member ever should deal with that stuff. So you give it to somebody who learned that job, who is skilled in that, who handles that and you externalize it. Same for legal and tax advice. Just because they are so complicated, you don't do that yourself. The administration in general, you want to outsource and even in a project like ours, certain IT topics you outsource. You don't need to do everything. You delegate it away so you can focus on your main tasks. What you should do is the big picture, the strategy. You shouldn't micromanage and do everything yourself. You look at what are the long-term goals. You should develop that. That's similar to any company. But also for us at a not for profofit, this is what we should do. And you need to take the ultimate responsibility. But you fulfill that by actually delegating, by watching the big picture, by ensuring deadlines are met, by controlling things. You don't need the knowledge of all the details. You need the knowledge to control what has been delivered to you. This is the skill that you need to have. It needs trust. And again, there's a ton of topics you might never have heard of, but it doesn't mean they're not important. Rather, the opposite. Usually, they're quite important. Fifth, but that we are halfway through is responsibility. If you're working in a group, it's maybe not in a legal sense, but at least in a moral sense, a shared responsibility. If something goes wrong, that group is perceived as being in charge. Like they're perceived as being in charge. If something goes well, like we had a successful conference, we thank all the organizers. We thank everybody who made it possible. So in the good and the bad times, you're united. And that's why what I said before, you need to get an overview of what needs to be done. You need to meet deadlines. You need to be able to control things that get delivered. Um, but not do everything yourself. And again, I can't emphasize it enough. Just because you have no clue of a topic does not mean it's not important. This is something that people often learn the hard way. Um, but it's something people should have on screen. The social aspect. We're at a conference here with many many people. We socialize. Projects are about social interaction. And it brings me a bit to the um to the challenge between paid people and volunteers because in the end you have a responsibility that you need to fulfill and you might have a paid team. In the case of TDF will soon be 20 people that is not small anymore. And while for all the volunteers this is merely a hobby and if it doesn't work they will find something else for the people who work that that's that's their life that's their income that's what they what they depend on and that means all of a sudden you might face a situation you have been an employee your your full life you you never managed someone and all of a sudden you somehow own the responsibility for 20 people. That is something not to be underestimated. can be quite overwhelming if you never have been exposed to that. So there are demands, there are requests that are rightfully asked and that you need to provide even if you're a subordinate employee elsewhere. This is something that comes with quite a a demanding um learning curve. So, um, general advice, it's it's common sense, but again, it's helpful to be reminded of that every once in a while that yes, there is a lot of stuff to learn, a lot of common sense helps. Um, and as usual, it's best to talk with one another, not about one another. And it's the small things. is to say thank you to somebody for something that work. Even if it's just what is expected that people do their tasks, whether it's paid staff or volunteers, thank them, appreciate them. That's the thing that you should do. And this is what usually you summarize as soft skills as something that you need to bring at the table in certain positions. And in particular in in roles where you're all of a sudden a representative, you're not you might not be used to that. you've never been trained for that. But it's something you need to bring at the table. You can take something out of yourself. It's not just work because of course if you motivate employees and motivate volunteers, you get a lot in return. You get their loyalty. You yourself get a lot of experience that you can use for your future jobs. And that is not to be underestimated as well. And of course, if you are behaving in a proper manner, if you're able to interact, you will get a lot of support in the community. Again, these are things that in the end it's not black magic. It's it's common sense, but um every so often it's really helpful to remind ourselves about that diversity. Diversity is key. And if you look, we have the same in many companies, but we have it particular in projects of our size. Just look at the amount of people here, the age, the profession, the culture, their beliefs, where they come come from. Um it's it's it's a massive diversity. So we have languages. The assumption everybody speaks English. No. Um we have people here who really struggle. English is not the second language in all of the countries world. But we need to have one common denominator and we've settled with English. But it's not a given that in in every corner of the world, of course, people speak English. Don't underestimate it. Culture can make a difference how people expect to interact um in their daily life. religion maybe not so much but still one time um we had a a surprise request and um actually then we tried to remember that the next time at our Berlin conference somebody knocked at the door and was asking for a prayer room because for them it was their daily habit to have certain prayers and that's something if you can accommodate for that why not then profession some people are in it for their whole life we have people doing something fundamentally different we have doctors we teachers. That's something to not underestimate. But of course, it um has an impact on everybody's point of view. How how they are socialized, what they are doing has an impact on their point of view. And of course, the larger any group gets, the more also challenging personalities you will meet. It's just statistical. It will grow. If it's much higher in the IT field, I don't know. But the larger a group get, the more likely it is. you will also have very demanding and challenging personalities. And here I think there is a difference at least when it comes to countries, language, cultures. If you have a local sports club or a local whatever club, um you might have the same different people, different professions, different ages, but it already gets complicated. Different culture, different countries, different language. You find that less likely. So in in global projects, you find all of that. and that can make things complicated that is not always easy but it also gives you a different point of view that can actually help your project to grow. So you need to be open. You need to also be able to challenge your own or question your own points of view that comes with it because you will get a lot of input that is unknown to you. Um but it comes with it and it can be demanding. It is overhead but it can be quite rewarding as well. coordination something again you have in any commercial company somehow need to coordinate but even more so if you have a mix of volunteers and uh paid people um as mentioned English we need to settle with one default language but it's not a given everybody is just fluent in English um and it's for me that the most interesting time of the year is the time of the annual report when we get a lot of feedback from many many countries ries and from many of them I don't hear for many months and then you see what they've been doing which events they did how they onboarded volunteers that's and that means somebody is writing that and another person is translating that and that is precious insight that you just because of the language and also the time zone barrier is really hard to distill. Um the hope is that with with tools coming up and you get live translations and whatn not things will be easier but still two people talking in their mother language will be always much more easier at exchanging thoughts than people using tools and translators and localizers. That is just something we can't get away with. Um time zones we talk about events in summer. Now if I ask Elelliana about the season in Brazil it's exactly the opposite. it doesn't have a big impact but we need to keep it in mind that in a worldwide project we have exactly that we have fundamentally different time zones we have different seasons um stuff can be really really different from from how you expect it and it starts with small stuff like when is Europe changing daylight savings when is the west changing I never get it right so you have tools for that but keep it in mind just because in Germany the daylight savings is changing doesn't mean it changes in other countries and of Of course, you always have a bit the challenge between the paid people who normally prefer some structured working schedule, some option to really um have a a a fixed schedule or some routine and volunteers are the opposite. If we have for example an issue with weblate over the weekend when everybody is translating and somebody can only look into it on Monday or let Monday be a public holiday it's on Tuesday then you have a problem because then they need to wait one more week and there's no perfect balance. So we need to somehow make it work to to find the balance between volunteers and paid staff. And some things that can help is start as easy as starting a poll. When do people have time? Sometimes you just find a window that works for everyone. Alternate time slots so people can attend at least every once in a while or every other meeting. Um, for the time zones, send a calendar invite. It's automatically properly reflected at the recipient and you don't have to haggle which time do we have in whatever country. Communication is the same. I'm very much email driven. My my work life is an email. For others, it's not so much. It's a question of how you work and also about the age. But um what we found out email is quite helpful to start discussing things to document things um to have something where people can react whenever they find time. You don't need to be synchronously in a room. Um phone video can be helpful. At some point you send a million of emails and it's like a quick phone call could solve things. That means you need to get two people potentially in different time zones in a in a call. So you need to use them wisely whenever they work best, but we have the way to communicate in real time, which means people must be present in real time. And we have the means to do it not in real time. That gives everybody the opportunity to reply when they have time or to put that email to a localization software. So in the end it depends on having some sensible frequency. A meeting every week no volunteer can make. It's just not going to happen. A meeting every six months might not not be sufficient. You know um agendas. What is this meeting about? If you spend half an hour debating what do we discuss about you waste half an hour. Um deadlines, voting periods and all the formalities. If you get that in order, you can really focus on the actual content. And again, this is not particular to a not for-p profofit. This is what any company has to deal with. But of course, in our setup, active worldwide with a with a a wide range of community members, it's even more pressing to fulfill that. The ninth item is trust because whatever you do in the end without trust, it's very unlikely to fly. And what we've discovered is um emails are risky. You send something or anything written is risky. You send something under a certain assumption how it would be received. You mean something humorous or sarcastic but there's no guarantee it arrives like at one example many many years ago there was a colleague you you sent them a nice long email and they were replying with one or two sentence like what's that? Don't you like me? Do you think my mail is nonsense? One point we asked him and the answer was no no absolutely not it's just I'm working and I have like 30 seconds in my lunch bag or 30 seconds when my boss is not watching and I quickly want to give you a feedback so the I cannot say hello and thanks have a nice day goodbye I write one or two sentences and once you know that the email have a different context you know why they do that you're not upset if you don't know it you might get upset just thinking that they uh don't like what you're doing So keep that that in mind. And then there's the risk of a so-called confirmation bias. Meaning you assume something or a person's behavior or person's intention and then you try to rationalize whatever they do to match that confirmation bias. Sometimes you might be right and that person is behaving exactly like that, but sometimes you might be utter wrong. And finding that out is not not so easy. So in the end for a project like ours, translations are key. We we try to improve on that to have more things translated so people can read it in their native language. It's easier to understand. It's easier to digest. But at the end of the day also trust plays a role. Trust trust is really really key. And with that the last item is a positive outlook and I hope this is something all you can subscribe to is when we engage also speed on a paid basis be on a on a volunteer basis in such a project there's something we take out of that and it's it's like with any job yes you can take the money and be fine but most people try to find a bit of a deeper meaning in what they do and um I think in summary for everybody here what they do is worthwhile it excites them um over the years and maybe you only see that when you look back but it lets you grow a lot personally thinking when we started 20 years ago in in the the open project or more than 20 years ago how people are now what they do how they've grown personally how they they've grown professionally um is quite amazing um and then it's something that I see when talking to friends who have local jobs who don't leave town much who are very local bound. The the insights you get and the the the view into the world how how things are working how others are thinking is something that is quite enriching that is invaluable that I consider a privilege to be able to do that to to fly around to see people and that is not related to the paid job that is related to be active in the project. You had that many many years as a pure volunteer. You were flying around. People showed you their cities as locals. You didn't take that big tourist bus. You were shown cities by people living there. That's that's a real big privilege that many people don't have that we might take for granted because we have it every year. This afternoon we get a city tour here in Poron. Um and we have that kind every year. So far it's somehow normal but it's a big big privilege that I think we shouldn't um shouldn't underestimate. And as such there is um with that I'm I'm uh I'm finished. So we are hopefully sort of in time for the coffee break. Just in summary um there's a lot to learn a lot to do to make it happen and not every day is always perfect. That is that is clear. In the end there's a lot of reward and um it's in particular for those who aim for role in a formal body to understand a bit at least what is to be expected what they need to be prepared to not to scare people away. Anything any new venture you do in life is work but just to keep in mind there is something to be done. It's not a crown you put on just because you're so great. It comes with actual work. And in the end, if people work together, everything can be solved. And with that, thank you very much. And uh I think we are sort of yeah in time for the coffee break. Thanks.