For the last 12 months, I have been given the inflated title of ‘LugRadio Community Hero’ after being given the aware at LugRadio Live 2005 – there’s a video of the live show here. As this years event comes arround (22nd and 23rd July – be there!) I’ve been thinking a little about what it means to be a community hero, and what it has meant to me to be given the title.
I guess that being a community hero is all about investing in the community, in particular about ensuring that new and old members are equally well catered for, and that the discussion within a community (usually in geek communities this happens in 1 or 2 of 4 different places – IRC, forums, usenet and mailing lists) remains vibrant and interesting. It’s about getting involved in any new things that happen within the community, and about helping out where possible.
Geek communities are funny places – for the most part they operate under a ‘meritocracy’, that is, the person who most merits leadership is given it. In a programming project, this usually means the person who contributes the best or most code. More importantly, ideas are accepted into such a project based on their merit, rather than necessarily a democratic vote. In theory, this should mean that you lose some of the elements of the ‘camel’ style committee situation. (What do you call a horse made by a committee? A camel)
I was completely gobsmacked when my name got read out at LRL05. If you watch the video, you will see me in a slight daze (although that was probably, at least in part, alcohol induced) collecting my trophy wordlessly. To be mentioned in that way, in a meritocratic community, meant a great deal to me. It meant that not only that I had been noticed, but that what I did was appreciated. To be honest, I hadn’t really considered what I did that out of the ordinary – I loved the show, and loved being part of the community, and so many of the subsequent actions came naturally.
Since then I have strived to set a high standard for the lucky geek that will take my place for the coming 12 months, and to make doubly sure that I was worthy of the honour that had been given. I hope that I had suceeded.
Community Hero or not, being part of the LugRadio community has been a thoroughly rewarding experience (and not just the £100 worth of O’Reilly books I got 
) and one that I hope continues for many years to come.
mrBen
/me bows honourably in great respect of community hero
I can’t think of anyone to replace you, though, so you might be your own successor
Well, you’ve inspired me to use open source more. I switched MS Office for OpenOffice and am very happy with that. I ditched a cracked version of Photoshop for The GIMP. Not so happy about that as Photoshop is great and leaves The GIMP standing, but morally it was the right thing to do. If I can ever justify (or happily blow) the £500 for PS I’d gladly go back. I’ve even ditched a legit copy of Dreamweaver to give Nvu a go.
Still using Windows, but if Linux ever becomes easy to use*, I’ll ditch the last of MS too.
Keep truckin’!
You never qualified your * – what was your footer going to say?
Sorry. “Easy to use” as in it works without fiddling. I don’t want to have to fiddle just to get audio, 3D support and a fast internet connection; I want those working on a clean install! I hate to admit it, but Windows at least did those things fine.
In my experience Windows only does these things fine on a pre-installed machine. A clean install of Windows quite often will require the install of 3rd party drivers before it will do the things you require. Additionally, a clean install of Windows is severly lacking in software compared to a clean install of Linux.
Ultimately, though, I agree with you. However, much of the problem is that the hardware vendors have made things difficult for Linux, by not allowing the redistribution of their software, which means that you either have to pay for a distribution boxset, or put up with an additional install.
Certainly Ubuntu has come the closest, in my experience, to providing a seamless install, although Fedora and SuSE are not far behind. The day will come when everything is as good, if not better, than Windows.
That’ll be a good day indeed. My Windows went on as a clean install and it was all fine. I updated the drivers (simple one-click affairs) to make it finer. As for the software, true, Linux does come with a lot more but to be honest a lot of it I don’t want/need. Tha’t one reason I don’t like PCs pre-built. I don’t want some stupid AOL thing, thanks. I have a DVD decoder, and I have an office package I like. Please don’t decide for me what I want installed.
It was a well deserved reward. From the very first days of lugradio a group of people came together to offer support both to the show and the community as a whole. Throughout those first couple of years there where a couple of people who where constantly the nicest people you could ever want to be involved in and helped the whole community at every opportunity.
Both yourself and kNo` deserved all the praise you got at lugradio live and you really where the community hero of the first two years and I don’t think anyone would have disputed that fact. The great shame is you have carried on being the biggest supporter of the community and nobody as really challenged you by being available everywhere and being so dam pleasent at all times. You are just too nice a guy to be unsurped
I think it’s time to change the name of the award to the MrBen Community Award because if the name doesn’t change you are going to win the dam thing every year :p