In late 2013, Jean Tabaka, Eric Willeke and Liz Keogh came up with the idea of a Community of Thinkers, with a statement about what that meant to them. Rather than post it centrally, they each posted it individually, and encouraged others to copy and paste if they agreed and supported the notion.
We support this vision of community:
“A Community of Thinkers”
I am a member of a community of thinkers.
I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
I challenge each community in the software industry to:
- reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible;
- provide an excellent experience for its members;
- support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
- exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
- engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
- embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and,
- thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.
I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders.
I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.
”A Community of Thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Please attribute to the distributor of your copy or derivative.
The original “Thinkers” post is now, like Jean, gone. But thanks to genius of the original concept, making it a distributed concept, we can thank Karl Scotland for having published it on his blog! We encourage you to “steal” this and put it on your own site, with attribution, too.
Original instances of this post exist on Liz Keogh’s and Eric Willeke’s respective blogs. That said, it was built to steal (and credit)!
I put it on my blog back then, too! http://lisacrispin.com/2009/12/07/a-community-of-thinkers/ I feel like those of us who joined at the time have lived up to the challenge. But, the software industry grows so fast – Bob Martin said last year that the number of devs doubles each year. So how can we reach these hordes of new software professionals and invite them into our community?
That would be http://lisacrispin.com/a-community-of-thinkers/ 😉