The Cult Of Personality
At the heart of the success of many communities are loud, public and well known voices that sometimes take on an almost celebrity like status among fans and contributors to the community. Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge explore whether these denizens of the cult of personality really bring value to a project, what opportunities they bring and what risks they face.
Remember, we are just the start of the conversation! What do you think? What are you experiences with the cult of personality in the communities you are interested in? Do you think these personalities are critical to a community’s success, or do you think we should get away them altogether? Share your thoughts in the shot comments below…
26 Comments to “The Cult Of Personality”
Leave a Reply
sorin7486 (83)
Derek (72)
marxjohnson (61)
Flamekebab (50)
b1ackcr0w (49)
Hessiess (42)
James Duncan (42)
mg (42)
tola (40)
Shane Fagan (39)
One of the risks of being a figurehead for a project, or even just a well-known figure working as part of a project, is that of becoming a lightning rod for every complaint and whinge that the community has about that project.
Take Canonical’s recent appointment of Matt Asay as COO, for example. Already there have been several comments about how he represents Canonical’s lack of commitment to openness. Which is utter nonsense of course (though I speak as a Canonical employee and so am of course biased).
As an open source developer you need to be thick-skinned anyway, because of the amplifying effect the internet has on impoliteness, but as a well-known developer I would assume that it’s at least an order of magnitude worse.
“becoming a lightning rod for every complaint and whinge that the community has about that project”
Ya. Indeed. This is part of what I was getting at with the sense of responsibility. If you’re in the unenviable position of being de facto spokesperson for a project even though you don’t really want to be, then you take all this whinging, but it’s hard to say “forget it, I’m leaving” because you have a responsibility to the project to not leave it with a vacuum instead of a spokesperson.
The lighting rod effect is definitely one of the risks of being in that position I think, and and from talk to some figureheads, they all go through their own personal journey to handle this and not go bonkers.
I think that part of the reason for this happening is the same thing with celebrity: you feel at least reasonably detached and of the view “I am never gonna meet that person, so I may as well hammer on them” which removes that sense of accountability.
I’ve often thought that the thing with celebrity is that what we see is the brand that is projected around the celebrity, not the person. So it’s like attacking any other brand when someone yells at them.
I think one of the reasons that Linus is useful is that he’s very much a person, not a brand. Theo de Raadt is the same way; he’s very passionate, but he’s always come across to me as a real human being.
RMS is the other way around: he promotes his brand and speaks for his brand, and so becomes very easy to attack because you’re not really attacking a person any more. Eric Raymond was the same way.
Just a thought.
I think a key thing here is also conveying emotion. I am reasonably convinced that part of the reason why RMS gets so much shit is that he is almost machine like in his resistance to criticism. I have never seen him act emotionally with anyone.
I think most good people will not attack people who are emotionally sensitive to the criticism so that feelings get hurt.
What do you think?
That’s a really nice idea. I’d never thought of it that way, that he is stubbornly resistant to showing emotional responses to criticism in his public persona. In fact, it has definitely been a thought in the past that his responses in his talks to criticisms or questions are very rational and detail oriented and not at all emotional. Not to say RMS isn’t a solid person, I’ve found his sense of humour to come through pretty well a lot of the time, just that your idea that he doesn’t get riled up in flamewars is definitely bang on.
Have you read many of Linus’ threads on the LKML? He definitely gets heated up and works through a lot of good arguments, but he’s not as detached as RMS.
If the project is a success that is attributed onto the spokesman and if the project has some troubles that is attributed to the spokesman. I suppose being a good cult figure is about pushing the good stuff to those who did the hard work and being the lightning rod for the project to protect it from unnecessary bashing at the same time. Being the lightning rod is undesirable but I think a critical position, especially in the realm of open source where the authors of code are known to everybody. They keep the flame wars from directly attacking contributors which may distract them. Yes the rodeo clowns of the internet.
In many ways this has many parallels with management: a great manager protects his/her team from the pressures of upper management. Maybe a great figurehead protects the project from the pressures outside?
Some friends and I have this long-standing asshole genius theory. Basically, most great artists, musicians, and other people at the top of their respective field are (justifiably) arrogant assholes.
I think there’s some cause/effect loop involved; having that kind of personality will drive some to relentlessly pursue their goals, and achieving their goals feeds that personality.
Honestly, I’d rather have people from Roger Waters to Theo de Raadt doing great stuff than a wishy-washy democracy mired in infighting and squandering their potential (cough Gentoo, a few years ago anyway).
Even the lovable Linus Torvalds is an arrogant bastard; he just has a sense of humor about it.
It’s interesting that when talking about personalities in Open Source we have actualy been talking about two different types of personalities.
There are the people who are known by their coding actions (even if they did only write a F—in kernel) and there are the people who are known by their leadership or promotional activities.
The latter might never have written a line of code in their lives but they are the public face of their project and known to all in the community.
It’s definitely a benefit, if you want your project to grow, to have a “personality” or “public face” that is approachable and lives on planet earth. Whom has skills in talking, motivating and communicating with people in “meat-space” and not just online or even via lines of commented code.
I would even argue that all the “personalities” of Open Source are known because of these skills and not for any coding ability.
‘I would even argue that all the “personalities” of Open Source are known because of these skills and not for any coding ability.’
I’m not sure I’d agree with you on this Brian. Look at someone like David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails. He’s pretty well known and he’s a pretty good coder (I’m sure he wouldn’t be backward in suggesting it anyway, and the Rails framework is known as being a pretty good piece of code, I thought).
I wonder how much a community takes on all the opinions of their celebrity unquestioningly, or appears to accept all their opinions. For example, DHH has, in the past, ripped into Java for being overly complicated and mundane and now it appears that if you want to be a Rails developer, it’s almost as if you must have that opinion. I may be reading more into it than is there, but that’s the vibe I get anyway.
In that sense, as well as being a lightning rod, there’s a risk that a community is viewed as a bunch of clones of their celebrity (which you may or may not be happy with, depending on who that is).
Just my two cents.
Another great shot guys. I think I’m in the fanclub side of things though I wouldn’t say I’d stand there filming Linus, I have asked Alan Cox for a photo before now and he was more then happy.
The difficulty for me is I read about the people who are contributing so much and have created this whole ecosystem which I now partake in, so its a bit hard to not look up to them. They are celebrities to me, sure they’ve not been on an island for weeks, or gotten locked in a house or pretend to be someone else on TV but around the things that interest me, they are celebrities.
I don’t watch much TV, maybe 3 hours a week on average but I spend easily 10 hours a day in front of a computer. These people are stars in my Soap Operas and having the opportunity to meet and greet is sometimes too much for some people.
I think its getting things into context, would someone respect you more if you walked upto them and asked them for an autograph or if you worked hard on a piece of code or project they were working on? I’d assume the latter.
I think you’re being a little hard on Linus there, Jono. Yes he “only wrote a fucking kernel” but that kernel has had a pretty big impact on the opensource movement, wouldn’t you say? Unfortunately that means he’s a celebrity, whether he likes it or not, and like other celebrities he needs to figure out to deal with that fame (like by rarely going to conferences outside of Portland).
Can’t say I envy him.
)
My comment on this is more about the fanboys that Linus: while no-one can deny Linus’s contributions, in my mind at the end of the day he wrote a key piece of low-level software, and I just don’t get the fanboying. Then again, I am not a fanboy so maybe I will never understand.
I absolutely agree on the Twitter thing, Aq, though a lot of it depends on how a celebrity uses Twitter.
Someone like Kent Beck, to the greater extent, only uses Twitter to discuss code-related things, recommendations, insights, etc.
Others, such as, say, Randall Schwarz, talk about all sorts of things. I know he’s looking for work (or was), went to see Avatar with his mother, and just sold the first house he bought. I know Ade B just started a job with RedHat and appears to be a vegetarian – that sort of intimate knowledge does, I think, give you a misplaced sensation of familiarity with the celebrity, and surely it must be odd to have some dude from the wild suddenly congratulate you on selling your house or something without feeling like you’ve asked for that feedback.
What I find curious, from time to time, is watching the conversations between pairs of celebrities I follow (e.g. watching Aq and Ade B organising which pub they’re going to meet in). ;o)
I think it is important to have figureheads to look to for influence in any walk of life but keep in mind a) these figureheads live, breathe,eat mac and cheese and poo just like the rest of us. b) Our own lives/opinions/ideas are not any less valid then theirs.
The open source world by its very nature has a much more fertile pool of influence then alot of other communities. This was also talked about in the latest Linux Outlaws show where Dan and Fab pointed out that microsoft and apple have Balmer/Gates/Jobbs as the head honchos, whereas in the open community we have dozens, all appealing to different personalities and mindsets. I personally gravitate towards the more casual of the honchos. I just cant take overly serious people very seriously
Yes very true Jono but one big question exists… if this low level software was not created would Linux even exist today? For that Linus deserves all the fanboys he can get!
I love being a developer of a project because I get such nice e-mails but then, I also have to deal with e-mails asking “when is it going to be done?” as if what im doing is a walk in the park!
Also people expect me to devote most of my free time to the project even though I am not even getting donations. (its not setup yet)
I think I get Jono’s point about it being about the fanboys though. They could be a little more subtle in their praise, perhaps.
Does the phrase “Cult of Personality” apply when we are talking about these people discussed so far? Imho, the answer is no – not really. The definition just does not really seem to fit for me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
I mean, we are hardly talking about – like, the cult around Steve Jobs or something, you know?
http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/17/steve-jobs-profile-shows-our-obsession-with-the-cult-of-personality/
I think that Jono made an excellent point when talking about putting things in perspective. A guy that ‘created a kernel’ did not do anything for the money, glory or even to be in the public eye. People in open source projects, however well known they may be, deserve there privacy like everybody else. Actors, singers, entertainers etc have made a lot of money from the public and, like it or not, they have a debt to the public, they chose to make money from being in the spotlight so they must give back of their time at least. However a software developer/hacker, especially in the open source community, does not seek riches or fame. Take into consideration that many of the top ‘hackers’ that I know are not generally sociable people, this does not make them bad people, it just simply means that take a keyboard away from them for an evening and they really are out of their comfort zone. If a person is sociable and happy being in the spotlight then it is not an issue. But when a person would like to attend a conference without being badgered in-between every sip of coffee, then their wishes should be respected.
Another part of the cult of personality is the {pod|ogg|shot}casters. I have been listening to podcasts for years, and I feel like I know a lot of the various hosts and presenters. You guys in the Lugradio community as well as the Linux Outlaws, the TLLTS guys, and so forth are voices for the community. We invite you into our homes/cars/offices/heads, we laugh at your jokes (I remember you reading out emails from listeners caught in the “Lugradio effect”…Hell, I remember being read out about suffering the lugradio effect…) and you seem to love being out there presenting.
It wasn’t until I started a podcast of my own that I realized the following:
1) It’s a fat lot of work; 2) I hate the sound of my own voice 3) You don’t (at least I don’t) do it as an attention whore.
When I started my podcast, it was because I found a niche that I felt needed to be covered. And I suspect most of us (we come from a core set of socially awkward geeks, Leo Laporte not withstanding) are more comfortable in front of the keyboard than behind the mic…With the possible exception of Jono and his hand eating, mind melting, cookie monster metal…:)
Cheers, –vr
LOL!
Btw, what is your podcast?
The Armored Penguin. http://www.armoredpenguin.net. Its on hiatis (after three episodes) due to real life commitments (120 mile round trip to work, etc.)
Before I got into kernel coding I was inspired by a talk David S. Miller gave on porting Linux to the ultrasparc. As people started using my code, I felt obliged to pass on that passion and inspire others to hack.
But a weird thing started happening: people who didn’t know my code at all started fan-boying. There are numerous hackers I admire for their magic code and planet-sized brains who are just doing the awesome while leading projects, posting on lists, speaking and blogging gets disproportionate kudos.
Eventually you start to distinguish between the noise of random praise and the cherished appreciation of those you admire yourself (eg. they come to you with hard problems thinking you might solve it where they failed.)
Some really good shows recently, thanks! Rusty.
That (“they come to you with hard problems thinking you might solve it where they failed”) is a really good metric, actually. Once you’ve reached that stage, you can be reasonably sure that you’re seen as making a big contribution. Good way of thinking about it!
Sorry about the slight derail but..
Living Colour recorded a superb song in the Early 90’s called “Cult of Personality”.
Well worth a download when Ubuntu Music store is up and running