this is an analogy that is worthy of discussion, but i dont think this discussion really touches on some key things. the first is that in bluegrass, like gypsy jazz, the idea of jams are central. jams are informal gatherings where people come and go and play tunes together. they are often damn fun, which is really the reason they exist. some jams are more novice, others are more advanced, but in general you are expected to be welcoming, or at the very least not mean. and this is how people are able to start to learn the style. they are able to sit right next to people who are much better than them and learn. this is the best way to learn this kind of music, to be right next to someone who is doing the things you want to do.<p>the jams also serve a second purpose which is that they are a pretty good way of communicating everyone's musical skills to each other. it doesn't tell you everything about a musician, but its a good gauge of overall maturity, interests, and sound. this means that likeminded musicians find each other quickly. festivals are interesting to watch, because you see that by the end of 4 days or so, people have often created informal jam groups that are quasi bands at that point.<p>tech meetups seem to be a really shitty quasi jam. open source projects seem to be a better format, and though i havent really been part of it, demoscene, defcon, chiptunes, infosec... strike me as communities that are a little more mature about the whole thing. i dont know them well enough, but i get the vibe anyway. they seem to have stronger sense of community.<p>i think that really good software teams are almost certainly the product of something resembling a jamming environment. the key is that all the members of the team have independently decided that they respect all the other members and want to be on the team with them. i think this is not fully understood and institutionalized in software management practices. i think that now the focus is too much on "here is the problem we want to solve, lets find the people that are skilled in this area". i guess im saying that good teams will create themselves and management is kind of a crutch. i get that there are real world constraints etc blah blah. but sometimes i wonder about this: money does not help creating good music, and i kind of think that might be more true of software than we think too.