I would say what would give OSE a lot
more momentum is a coordinated effort to start local groups. As
someone who has so far just been on the outside looking in, reading
the forums, and exploring the wiki, there has been this tendency to
loose momentum from a lack of feeling this is a coordinated team
effort. It feels like your suppose to contribute to the wiki with no
sense you are accomplishing the larger effort or that you have to
start your own project unsupported and hope it will be accepted with
no financial backing.
This group needs to be decentralized.
This group needs face to face contact to build trust in the system.
This project cannot benefit that much from evangelizism because the
entry threshold is so large. There is the time getting lost in the
wiki, finding the correct channels to find a project or where you
would be useful, finding that all most projects have to self funded.
And although these problems are being addressed, they'll will always
be a lose of momentum without transparency and the trust that
accompanies.
To ease this transition people need to
be inspired and engaged personally so that they feel valued. Local
groups are more inspiring and engaging, are more capable of raising
the money, and can hold up a sustained workflow since there is more
pride and personal accountability. Instead of just throwing
everything into a kitty we could have a local approach to fund
individual prototypes through the members, their friends and familys,
or events. These local events could also fuel membership.
I think the "Join" page
should change to reflect this. Maybe we could use meetup.com or have
team locations on the crowdmap in a visable way on "Join"
page. Here are some potential ideas for guidelines:
starting a local chapter
how the meetings would go
coordinated projects with the
larger group
a place to put meeting minutes
guides for presentations and
discussions
Presentations on contributing to
the wiki
Fundraising planning and events
This would also be a good way to
roll-out documentation and explaining videos as people would prepare
summaries of their work for meetings. It would also be a great way to
recruit people and give a greater security that their investment was
going to be used effectively since they personally know the people
they are giving money too. It would also be a great way to bring in
more press, bring in non-technical people, documenters, and introduce
people to practical ways they can contribute if they are at an entry
level. It would also bring more technical people since they could see
tangible results, have a following, and be truly thrust into
leadership positions.
Potential problems could be deciding
what to talk about at meetings. I suppose they could start
informally. Just for lunch maybe. People could talk about what they
hope to achieve, what their experience is, if they have made any
contributions. Then gradually they could picks projects of interest
and get resources to work on it or makes reports that could be added
to the wiki. They could then start pulling people in and have
fundraising efforts.
Some expanding on this idea may be
neccesary.
I am not advocating splintering, but I
generally agree with Dawg. A lot of the projects that contribute to
OSE are independently funded. A lot the work that has been done was
just added to the project or expanded on (Solar Fire, RepRap,
etc...). What I am proposing is local chapters under the OSE banner,
so that they are easy for new members to find and participate in but
with more autonomy than is being planned.
Looking at the plans
for OSE Europe, I would be better off raising and handling its own
money with its own leadership. It is not wise to require all members
to become True Fans (but rather encourage them to), to have Marcin
de-facto leader until GVSC is complete, or have all donations
channeled through the main branch. This kind of hierarchy will cause
a lot bottlenecks and kill momentum when the people who are affected
are not in direct contact with the arbitrator.
This has the potential to create too
much bad blood and thereby lose potential collaborators as you lower
sense of ownership especially those who are not highly-technically
proficient or completely self-motivated. We will not be able to
engage people properly or hold them accountable to do their work if
they feel they feel expendable.
The process will always affect the
product. This project needs as many implementations and ideas as
people are willing to put out there. If they can raise the money to
make their design, they should and still be able to call themselves
OSE. It doesn't have to be arbitarily accepted, but it should make it
into the wiki so others can benefit.
Having all the tools in one place is
all well and fine, but it is shortsighted because it doesn't address
the process of creating a community. How will the first community run
if people feel like they are just living on someone else's land, if
they don't feel like they are being listened to.
While Ive only been part of this community a very short while, I thought I would give my imput on enthusiasm. I find that formyself, to maintain my enthusiasm about something external to myself there needs to be a steady or regular stream of inspiring or enthusiasm generating stimuli. This usually comes in the form of updates, photos or videos about whatever has drawn my iinterest. I am much more likely to donate money or time to something that seems to be moving forward on a day to day basis than something that seems to inch forward month by month. So for me, regular updates (photo or video if possible) are nessesary to maintain enthusiasm.
Harnessing this enthusiasm once it has been generated is tricky. It is mainly a personal thing and while some people may feel empowered to danate money, many others will be inspired to do something physical about it. The former will obviously help out with the GVCS in terms of finance, but the latter might not so much. Living in a small town in central Ontario I can say I will not be volenteering to build anything in person where OSE is based. And chances are I would not have the finances required to start to build one of the GVCS machines at all. Even with a group of 10-12 people it would not likely be financially viable to build one of the machines from the groud up with all the required testing and prototyping.
What I CAN do with my enthusiasm is to begin an open source project that is within my means, while drawing inspiration from OSE and the developement of the GVCS. In turn I can update the community and perhaps inspire others with this project. In time when I can connect with other locally we may decide as a group to persue a facet of the GVCS.
Anyways, that is just a bit of insight into my mind at least regarding enthusiasm. You may take it as you will :)
Peace!
~Danial
I completely understand a desire to withhold resources. It makes sense to want to see some history of experience on the subject of development if not actual proven expertise, before allocating money to the project.
Given the expense of hardware projects, you can't accept the same percentage of failures as you can with software projects. It also makes sense for OSE to be wary of even a single expensive failure at this early stage. The only hope for a project this large and novel to succeed is if it can satisfy the skeptics at every stage, the first few being the most important. Most people, particularly most of the engineers and accountants who are so important to this project, are going to assume it will fail. OSE needs accountants because it needs money and it needs engineers because it needs machines. Neither of those groups are known for their desire to take risks. They're going to carefully analyze what OSE produces; going over it with a fine-toothed-comb looking for evidence of malice and/or incompetence. If they find a hint of either, they won't support OSE, and without resources like money and expertise it willl die.
...and that's not even touching on the idea that the two groups most important to OSE's effectiveness are likely to be threatened by that success.
So, that being the case, I completely understand the approach of collecting donations and then hiring experts to produce the promised results. If I had 100K, and OSE asked for it, I probably wouldn't belive them if they said a hoard of unaccountable, untrained volunteers could produce a universal power supply (a vision that has elluded well-funded experts for some time).
But that doesn't mean the rest of us can't keep trying to find a way to organize an open source hardware project that is a little more 2.0 than just buying the required experts time and releasing whatever they produce under a creative commons license.
Personally, I think either a program or a suit of programs is going to have to be at the center of any solution. The only reason open source even exists as a philosophy is that people used shared programs to collaborate over the internet. We need a hardware design program.
I agree with Mark -- Matt has some great ideas. If Marcin is calling for people to step forward as project managers, maybe he would be supportive at this time for someone to be the point of contact for newbies? I agree with a lot of folks here that there's people-energy that could be mined.
- Lisa
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