When John Cox – the Xaraya lead – was asked “You are well known as an innovative and knowledgeable programmer” in an interview at Webmaster Forum recently, he replied: “I have about 40 people in the project that might just disagree with the innovative and knowledgeable programmer part. I tend to make folks in the project scratch their heads at my goofy ideas. That said, Xaraya is a team project, which I just happen a small part of right now.“!
That cracked me up! This is a guy that was the inspiration for both PostNuke and Xaraya and probably a lot more open source projects and snippets along the way but he still maintains his humility and habitually gives credit to everyone else but himself! As far as I am concerned however, he is the “glue” for these projects. Tell you what John, don’t count me as one of those 40 who would object, I think Forbes should do a leadership article featuring you and yes you DO deserve that! I just hope that you will continue to lead after 1.0 is released. (please?)
Comments
bah
I give the credit to everyone because they deserve the credit for the innovation. I just try to lighten everyone up a bit and keep the work going, and learn as I go. Really though, everyone deserves the credit for the sucess, and nothing really depends on one person. There are way too many people doing the work for me to take credit for my little part, and it just doesn’t seem right to me. I just happen to be in the light a bit from time to time but that goes with the job (things go right I get adulation, things get rocky and I am the devil).
jc
Re: bah
I agree with you totally, and I have learned this particular trait (giving credit where credit is due) particularly from my own minisule involvement in open source and particularly PostNuke.
Still, I admire you for your leadership. But of course I will grumble when I think things are going wrong with Xaraya and will hold YOU as a project manager responsible!! 🙂