User:Sethwoodworth/CommunityStructure

The Structure of our Community at OLPC

There is a need for a stronger and better supported volunteer community at OLPC. The goals of the project are very broad and far reaching in Hardware, in Software and in Content. To satisfy them a larger community structure is required.

OLPC has had a lot of success with some groups of its volunteers. The community development community is strong, and the required tools are well known and used. The Support-gang manged to answer thousands of support tickets and write a lot of great documentation in the process. Overall there are a lot of people who want to volunteer for OLPC, both developers and non-developers. And it makes sense that OLPC has to be flexible to support these people in different ways. After all the Gnome development community doesn't look or behave like the Wikipedia or Librivox communities.

Unfortunately not nearly as much work has been completed in content as there has been in hardware or software. The work in hardware was mostly localized physically to OLPC and is mostly complete or at least stable. Software work has come a very long way and involves many volunteers who contribute. The necessary skills to volunteer in content are far lower than those of Hardware or Software. And ideally OLPC could engage many more content contributors.

Any structure for volunteers to participate need to be done in specific ways. Methods that require substantial time investments from OLPC or are unattractive to volunteers are to be avoided. The established method for online collaboration involves ad-hoc groups, self assigned tasks, and little hierarchical structure. These structures must be highly communicative to participants and well supported by powerful technological tools. Users must feel an overall sense of ownership in their project and must have some sense of their place in the overall structure, even if it is self-assigned. A great majority of these requirements can be satisfied by the current wiki and mailing lists if used properly.

Examples of other organization's Community Structures

It would be useful at this point to note what other FOSS and Open Content organizations have done to solve some of these problems. Many of these group structures have grown organically while some have adopted other structures and adapted them to their purposes.

What Gnome does

• Created a formal Membership process
• Allows membership for 'substantial contribution to Gnome'
• Contributions are mostly code, but can be advocacy, docs, etc
• Membership gives you voting rights in the foundation
• Membership gives you an @gnome.com address

What Ubuntu does

• Cloned and modified Gnome's Membership system
• Membership from many more non-code tasks
• Gives members @ubuntu.com addresses
• Also gives business cards (self printed) for Members
• Facilitates contributions

What Wikipedia does

• Allows and fosters meta-wiki teams
• Teams are self assigned and work directly on content and meta-wiki
• Strong system of communication via talk pages
• Some teams include Newcomers welcoming/training, anti-vandalism
• Subject area editors, graphic design, audio recording
• Strong system of rewards and prestege via barnstars
• Adminship granted as type of 'membership'

What Mozilla does

• Mozilla created a Campus Representatives program for students
• Students organize Pro firefox/mozilla events on campus
• Students are supported by Mozilla by swag and product discounts
• Mozilla gets word out, larger install base and a recruiting pool

What PETA/PETA2 does

• PETA created street teams of youth/students
• Students distribute fliers, posters and stickers
• They get points for documenting their work
• Points are redeemable for free swag and discounted swag

What OLPC does

• OLPC currently has two ways for volunteers to feel ownership
• Support-gang allows users to get inside info and provide feedback
• Users must in turn help via support in irc and answer email tickets

What should the community structure of OLPC look like?

What OLPC can copy

• A Community Membership system
• would involve current 'substantial contributors' from Support-gang
• A set of rewards and privs: teamwiki, @volunteers.l.o?, -BY in source?
• Strong communication via wiki
• Wiki structures for collaborating between groups
• Strong Documentation for all projects / needed tasks

While coding projects (Gnome, OLPC-dev) seem to be able to conduct themselves with just a mailing list, content projects need more polished forms of communication. Ubuntu has a multitude of mailing lists, but also make very strong use of their wiki and Launchpad website.

OLPC must copy structure examples from organizations with similar goals and tasks.

A full content volunteer structure:

• A sense of individual recognition of volunteers
  • Individuality and recognition could be fostered by Userpages
• A sense of ownership by volunteers

• Must have an ultimate personal goal in the project
  • Membership based on contributions could provide a mid-term recognition for volunteers