The trials and tribulations of one Gaia Software Dev.
It's been a long time
shouldn't have left ya, without a dope beat to step ta!"
Dam..wasn't Aaliyah great? I sure miss her music.
Well, I'm sure most of you have read that thread on Site Feedback about Gaia going more cooporate and restricting the creativity of the developers. Ooooo. the Evil Empire strikes back to take over the Republic! hehe. Gaia definitely is changing...and as our company grows in size, it's difficult to hold on to the old ways of designing new features. Imagine 4-5 developers programming a feature according to their own interpretations of how a project should be done! It would be chaos. The look and feel of the site would eventualy become non-cohesive. (We can actually see some examples of this on the site right now!)
I've been at Gaia for a year and a half, and we're like family here. Like most families, we'll definitely have our share of growing pains. As we welcome new people to our team, it'll take time for them to understand Gaia and what our users want. The great thing is that Lanzer and Craig has created an environment for us to express our concerns openly. An example that comes to mind was the disappointment over the April Fool's Event. Upper management read the concerns of our users on Site Feedback and rectified the situation by adding new events to the project list! We still LISTEN to you guys! I PROMISE.
Here's design process I'm familiar with:
1) get the statement of work for the project 2) discuss 3) program, program, program 4) address concerns 5) release project 6) reflect on things that could be done differently for future projects
Not too corporate right?
I've worked with BIG companies in the past, and I know how bad the Corporate machine could be. You're just a number in the account books or a pawn on a chessboard.
From my experience, I'm sure this is not the case. I've voiced my concerns to management about project details in the past and to their credit, they've always listened to what I've had to say. Did they implement every suggestion I made? No.....Would it have been great if they did!? HELL YEAH!
Lanzer and the rest of the founders did a great job of laying the foundation for communication at Gaia. Communication breeds creativity, and we see examples of this everyday from the MCs to the new Battle MMO that is in the works. I'm glad that we have such a passionate group of employees and users because it just shows how much we care about this site. Although our opinions may differ at times, I know ultimately we just want this site to succeed. biggrin
So I've heard rumors of some admins, like Lanzer L0cke and VO wanting to leave.
Is there any truth to that?
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Lady Kayura · Community Member · Fri Apr 11, 2008 @ 02:09am
I don't see Gaia as the big bad corporate place. I work in a place where I am just a number. o.o;;
And really, I'm not too worried about Gaia not listening to its userbase. My main concern is that the moderators are leaving. Like, not just one or two but about 10. The team was already not big enough to handle the site, and no new mods have been added. I know that there was that mod application thing but it doesn't work unless you actually use it. :/
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Infamous · Community Member · Fri Apr 11, 2008 @ 05:06pm
smile The way Gaia is described by you guys just brings me back to the environment I feel at my job. I work at a youth organization whose goal is to train high school-aged youth of the Metro [important but relatively small city] area to become youth leaders. The environment is just so....GREAT and I feel it to be serendipitous for me to be able to have been accepted into their program and then accepted again as a Student Staff member this year and AGAIN as a [community leader title] Leader for the summer program. During the SAME program I was enrolled in during the last summer!
It also somehow works out that my workplace, in addition to Gaia, is also going through a transisition period where we need a new Executive Director and just yesterday we had a community meeting where people from different eras of our prestigious program came together to discuss its future, the direction of our program in the next 3 years and the qualities of our future Exec Direc. I just know that even though things aren't as good as they could be things WILL be better as none of that negativity has permeated through to the fabric of the workplace: a relaxed setting where the youth are just as involved as the adults in programming and it is the youth themselves that run the programs, with only a tocuh of adult guidance. This seems to be a model, or at least a very considerably nuanced version of it, for Gaia. And guess what: it works!
-Erebus Haze.
P.S. Instead of "reflecting' on what could be done better, you should do a round of Plus and Delatas: where you record something that when well, not matter how trivial (Plus) and you also write down things you should change the next time (Delta). This way you acknowledge the good work of everyone while building up the staff community (yes, AGAIN) by publicly recognizing the good work of the staff. Never mind; you already do something like that, I assume.
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Erebus Haze · Community Member · Sat Apr 12, 2008 @ 01:42am
Ooo... the journal entry needs some loving too. Of course, if I saw you post around more I would know about you Mr. dev! =o
I'm just glad things are okay at HQ and that you guys have decided to up your communication. <3 Thankies!
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Cosmic Remnant · Community Member · Sat Apr 12, 2008 @ 01:43am
..............wow......
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ng118 · Community Member · Sat Apr 12, 2008 @ 03:39am
I think we just needed a bit more clarity on aspects. It's cool now I think <3 we just had a few problems at one point which worried people <3
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Cleocatra · Community Member · Tue Apr 15, 2008 @ 01:38am