Community development

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We have a broad community with disparate but aligned goals, growing faster in different languages and regions than on its most active lists and sites (the # of non-core mailing lists and community sites is currently doubling every 6-9 months, faster than the size of this wiki or the volume of the main lists and IRC chans).

Goals

Targets
Leverage, focus, inspire creation for children, and for the XO.
Tools
Amplification, society, introspection, beauty, celebration.
Timelines
Roughly in order: rituals that facilitate community identity ... Profiles and group identity ... Discussions and heuristics of utility and beauty... Submission and review... Critique and classification ... Regular awards and collaboration groups... Formalized upstream integration/publication

Facilitation

On facilitating community collaboration & communication:

Our community is looking for single points of connection, for clarity:

one place to join our community;
one place to look for updates and news;
one place to submit new ideas and projects;
one place to find projects, materials, or friends from an XO.

And an active followup program so that someone who says they want to develop for the XO, or a group that wants to partner with OLPC, is constantly being offered ways to commit to their own interest, accomplish something they can be proud of*, and tell the world about it. This includes offering opportunities to learn about the project, come to workshops for professional or organizational develompent, acquire materials for themselves / their partners, &c.


Opportunities

  • Creators program : unused funding available on wide spectrum, 1M/yr (5%)
  • Curator network : librarians, code gurus, masters projects (Tim Anderson ideas) : 1000 studs/yr (5%)
    • Translation network : FOSS, in-training translators; polyglots, students : 400/yr (2%)
    • Subject/Activity advisors (200 across 50 disciplines) : (5%)
  • Events : 1000 ppl/yr + 40x100 @ diff venues (5%)
  • Other networks
    • Penpal network : 1/10 g1g1s, cum. : 10000/yr (1% /yr)
    • Tutor network (400, cum.) - (2% /yr)
    • Code review network?

Outreach

. communication programs (networks. push information [site, wiki, m-lists]) . event/conference organization [ours, presence at others] . community partnerships . advising internal groups

Aside: Examples of success

  • Nepal : the current project is small, and may not scale. But they have done one thing better than any other school : published copiously and constantly, with an active blog, an active wikisite, a photo-stream to flickr for every event, and very active mailing list contributions.
Their team is large, and includes core people who put in 80-hour weeks.
They work hard to find english-fluent contributors to publish to the world for them, though 80% of them have very little english.
They have an open-door policy - they actively recruit any talented person who wants to spend at least three months with them, and set up workshops for developers and creators to visit them for a week to make things for their schools.
They ask for help regularly, offer help to others, and are organized about receiving help : when someone throws them a line, they make every use of it. And they are not shy about where they receive help; they are equally glad to get support from OLE, a visit from Squeak hero Bert F, and support directly from the government.
  • OLPC@Duke : a university program that almost wasn't able to get XOs, until Dan Ariely paid them a visit this summer. A model example of how to put together a proposal and press forward with a project without explicit support from OLPC.
Now organizing their own grassroots events (see grassrootsCon).
A model for university chapters


Targets

Three core areas to focus on are Communication, community organization, and collaborations/partnerships. Along a different dimention we have two spheres of influence : local groups (including ngo's on the ground, local pta's and non-technical sigs, volunteer/community matching for sister schools or field work, broadcasting local news and creation) and online groups (free software, open education, contributor/project matching, localization, communication online)

1. Communication

  • website/wiki/mailing lists: consolidation, monitoring, summarization
    questions: who are in our current audience? who do we want to reach?
    measures: number and quality of audience members in specific groups; activity of each channel (by language)
  • advising internally: how to contribute to, be advised by, work with our communities
    questions: how does each branch of OLPC and its Partners work with communities? how can these communities work better together / what do they need from one another?
    measures: regular inquries: what is working, what is needed? where are collaborations visible, are groups actively engaged?
  • materials, swag, guides
    questions: what materials are needed? who is working on them? how are they being received?
    measures: downloads of materials; # of pieces produced/sold/handed out
  • statistics: scripts, regular generation and publication
    questions: who are the active community members? where is the latest activity? what materials, open tasks, projects, opportunities, contacts and contributors do we have?


2. Community organization

  • local chapters (mou's, trademark agreements), university chapters, interest groups
    questions: what chapters have started forming? is the process for this complete? what chapters are fully formed and active? what other SIGs and active groups exist?
    measures: # of groups, # of school groups, # of developers, # of enthusiasts/Givers. by region and language; with google map overlays.
  • community-run projects and interest groups
    contributors program · mentoring, project matching · content & activity review · release testing
    questions: what projects are there, how independent is each one? what are the projects doing / where is their work visible? what standards and processes do they use? what is required to get involved, how easy is it to do so?
    measures: # of participants, regular stats and reports
  • community gatherings (coordinating invitations, processing donations for events)
    events, speaker matching · major annual events
    questions: what events and gatherings should happen every year; who is in charge of each? what events should be attended each year; how many qualified presenters do we have
    measures: attendees, publishable output; # of events attended / keynotes given; quality of organizing teams fundraising/press/outreach for events with host cities; quality of global attendance for international gatherings


3. Community partnerships

  • global collaborative efforts (ourstories, wikiversity, wikikids)
    questions: what global collaborations can most impact children's education? what categories do these fall into? what communities are most compatible with OLPC's mission? how are we working together with them?
  • community partners (community/creative sites, children's sites, local community orgs)
    measures: size of shared communities; # of participants in our network; community network map - progress made, from first contact to active collaboration, sized by scale/size of the partnership, organized by region and language
  • community advisory body (to point out obvious partner communities in different regions and languaegs)
    measures: geo and language diversity of advisory group; activity of public input from advisors

Implementation

We need people, volunteers and staff, to take on most of the following roles to support this development:

  • Site designer -- Design to leverage existing projects / sites / feeds, build social net (uploading / bookmarking / reviewing / annotation)
  • Pro development program architect/manager -- design program to support and engage devs. (half time? support/infra for sw interns?)
  • Authors program manager -- ditto for authors, publishers, artists. (half time?)
  • Community ombudsman : Assess resources, timelines; develop partnerships (w countries, large partners and local groups); help execute and finish comm. projects (combine with campaigns)
  • Media/Campaign organizer/Comm programs [cf. what FSF and others do] : Campaign for contributions, inspire communities of development, help them find their own sustainable support/funding. (also: PR, ombudsman)

And a number of interns or contractors for ongoing work:

  • Design/activity interface interns : audio/video ; bookreader ; webbrowser. (under Eben, all 3?)
  • Learning sw interns : learning team needs 1-2 ppl to express constructionism at its best, infuse others with a sense of how to build and create w/ the XO.


See also

ombudsman, contributors program, developers, community groups, chapters

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