Changes for Bricolage
Stefano Mazzocchi, who has been called a "serial community builder" and has lead a few ASF projects, once told me that the only true measure of the strength of a community is how it endures a change in leadership. Well, the Bricolage community is about to find out how strong it is. David Wheeler who, under his company Kineticode, has been the driving force behind the Bricolage project, has taken a full time job with Values of n, to help build a new product called Stikkit.
In an email posted on the Bricolage list, David pledged to stay engaged with the community and remain a committer on the project, but said he will not be able to devote as much time to developing and extending the platform himself. He put out a call for others to actively contribute and step up into a leadership role. While the Bricolage community has a critical mass, David's energy has really kept the project going. He answers most of the questions on the list and takes ownership of most of the operations and enhancement ideas. In these cases, you never know whether having one really active member enables others to be more passive or whether that active member is just filling a vacuum. It looks like we are about to find out.
There are a number of companies that use Bricolage. Each one has a clear motivation to keep the community energized. It remains to be seen whether they will invest their time to do it. I have been watching Bricolage for quite some time and I hope that we see a new leader grow out of this change.