Patoomba

Patoomba is a small cabal of makers and managers who strive to share the truth about what goes on at work.  Some call us project managers, but we prefer to be called people who get stuff done.

Our primary offering to date is a discussion mailing list called PMClinic.

This list is casual, comfortable, and smart, and functions through debate, the exchange of ideas, storytelling, beer drinking, sharing lessons from failure, revealing secret tactics, sarcasm and friendly ridicule. We believe these are the ideal ways to learn from each other and get better at what we do.

How PMClinic works: A weekly situation

Each week, Shawn sends out a situation from a backlog of topics submitted by the community. Our esteemed body of project management experts playfully destroys everybody’s hope by dissecting the problem and offering helpful advice (or at least making fun of the moderator).

If you have a topic or situation that you’d like to discuss, please send that topic to askpmclinic@patoomba.com.

How to Join the Pmclinic List

If you like what we do and you want to join our community, all you need to do is join the discussion group and contribute.

If you are already on the PMClinic list you can change your settings. If you are having any issues, please visit the support page.

Our Code of Conduct

Anybody can participate in the discussion on Patoomba (either on the PMClinic discussion group or the website), provided that they comply with the code of conduct and our copyright clauses.

1. Agree to be open, respectful, and helpful to everybody on the contributor’s list
2. Never post spam or offensive material
3. Posts to the list or the web are automatically published
4. Have a sense of humor about what you read, and what you post
5. Give people the benefit of the doubt
6. Posts to the list or the web may be quoted if insightful
7. You may be asked for permission to use you post as the week’s summary. If you agree, you will be attributed

In the rare or unlikely event that anybody disrupts the community, posts offensive material, or spams the list or the website comments they will be asked to abide by the code of conduct rules or risk being removed from the discussion list or their comment being deleted. Play nice.

Copyright

Everything posted on Patoomba and everything you contribute to Patoomba is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. We respect anybody who prefers to maintain the copyright on your ideas or disagrees with our commons approach. If you disagree, Patoomba probably isn’t for you.

How We Edit the Weekly Situation

Each week, a volunteer editor is responsible for summarizing the responses to the weekly discussion and distilling all of the replies for publication on the blog.

PMClinic Editors are responsible for:

1. Selection of a discussion topic from the backlog of submitted questions at the beginning of the week. The selected situation may be edited to be suitable for publishing to the contributors, and must be submitted to the discussion list on Monday.
2. Moderating the discussion on the contributor’s email list during the week. Editors should ask clarifying questions during the discussion and may moderate the discussion as necessary.
3. Summarizing the discussion for the website at the end of the week and publishing the summary by the following Monday. The summary may include insightful quotes from the discussion. Based on feedback from our community, these quotes will not include direct attribution. If a contributor’s post is the only insightful response to the situation, or their post succinctly summaries the opinion of the community, that post may be submitted as the summary with the contributor’s consent.

Who Runs Patoomba?

Patoomba is managed by a group of volunteer Board of Directors (board@patoomba.com), who are charged with running Patoomba. To the extent possible, we try to gather feedback from everybody on the discussion lists. As every project manager knows successful projects aren’t democracies, and it’s likely that the board will make a decision you don’t like. If that happens, send us email and we’ll talk.

The Board of Directors is staffed by:

• Shawn Murphy, Editor-In-Chief
• Scott Berkun, Editor
• Steven Levy, Editor
• Neil Enns, Editor
• Kav Latiolais, Editor
• Rodica Buzescu, Editor

What Happens If Patoomba Makes Money?

Patoomba isn’t here to make money, but we’d like to pay the bills while helping as many project managers as possible.

In the event (however unlikely) Patoomba makes any money, we will use that money to:

1. Pay for our hosting services
2. Pay for activities, services or events that benefit the community (e.g. PMClinic lunches)
3. Provide compensation for volunteers who contribute to run the site (e.g. our editors or top discussion group contributors)
4. Invest in new opportunities to expand the community’s impact. We might skywrite the weekly summary above company headquarters who need the advice, but it’s more likely that we’ll use any money to buy new servers, publish books, run conferences, and other appropriately community-oriented things

Like many things in life, the editorial guidelines, code of conduct and copyright that guide Patoomba may change at any time.