[foundation-board] an interesting potential coordinator

Fri Sep 3 11:13:43 UTC 2010

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 2:57 AM, Jo Walsh <metazool at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/08/2010 14:34, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>>
>> I would also be keen to distinguish between core management functions
>> for paid projects and strategic/operational/day-to-day stuff. So
>> project coordinator would be responsible for projects where we have a
>> specific budget, deliverable, deadline. For other projects, events and
>> activities (e.g. Open Shakespeare, Is It Open?, ...?), I'd be seen to
>> see devolution of responsibility to Working Groups and Project Leads
>> (reporting to Coord Group) ASAP. Trick for all of us will be to do
>> this transition well and strike the balance properly.
>
> Jonny, I absolutely disagree here. I think the difference between funded and
> unfunded projects is synthetic and is not organisationally helpful. CKAN
> began as a volunteer project and was for a long time.
> *All* OKF projects deserve funding.

Agreed! The purpose of this heuristic distinction was mainly regarding
the budget/schedule reporting *requirements* from funders. I.e.
dedicated central assistance with doing administrative tasks that we
shouldn't have to rely on community to do. I.e. if we handed over all
admin tasks for LOD2 or WDMMG to the coord list, I'm pretty sure they
wouldn't get done? A dedicated project manager could help with this
kind of stuff. Especially given your own comments on getting response
from coord list (it takes time!).

> Please, all of you, get over this "reporting". It is just writing
> documentation, working in public as much as possible. This is standard
> practise for JISC projects, this is not unreasonable to expect.
> Collecting documentation together, having simple standards, that help new
> people coming to projects understand and engage.

For the record, I am hard-coded to try to make sure that with nearly
everything I do (with the exception of discussions about funding,
sponsorship, backing and forthing with venues, etc) results in one of
the following:

  * a new person signed up to a public OKF list, preferably
introducing themselves
  * a blog post
  * an action item which is documented on a public list, or the output
of which is documented on a public list

When I speak with anyone on a call I *always* ask for one of the
above. (Sometimes when people write they say 'Jonathan asked me to
...' sometimes not.) E.g. with a new CKAN instance I say 'write to
ckan-discuss with a request'. I have been urging Friedrich to lead a
monthly public call on CKAN. I have started a list of instances
(http://ckan.okfnpad.org/instances). I have repeatedly suggested that
as much as possible is linked to from main CKAN site.

> I don't understand what you mean by devolution of responsibility.

I/we still:

  * do list maintenance
  * contact/invite people to WGs/projects
  * solicit for guest blog posts in different domains
  * pursue funding opportunities
  * talk at events
  * ...

In my mind WG/project leads should do this. We are slowly getting
there. Greg organises WG science call. The EU Open Data group is now
running without me. Daniel and Friedrich are increasingly able to
represent OKF at events. A major benchmark will be when e.g. Jim
Pitman migrates a project to OKF, gets funding, pays some devlopers,
liaises with coord, etc -- and does this all independently.

> Project
> owners already have autonomy. All i am talking about here is minimal
> documentation. Even volunteer projects will benefit from proper public
> documentation about exactly who is working on a project, exactly what the
> goals are, what the common ground is with other projects.

Agreed.

> Only a project leader / project manager can really produce this. A few HOURS
> of work per project for a very large one, if that, to get this done enough
> and produce an overview from. (using Yahoo! Pipes or whatever).

Agreed.

> I know it is late at night but I feel like i am typing into a black hole
> here. Martin, Jordan, Paula, Rufus - do you agree with Ian and Becky that
> OKF needs an Executive Director to report to the Board and manage
> paid/partner projects? Or do you see my point here, that this move is not in
> the spirit of where OKF started, appears to be addressing the problem at the
> wrong level, and is likely to have a negative impact on the rest of the
> community?
>
> I also feel like you're putting cart before horse. Let's hire an ED. Okay,
> let's figure out what they are going to do.
> Look at this task list: http://wiki.okfn.org/coord/tasks
>
> Apart from the sysadmin stuff, your ED could be responsible for most of
> this. Rufus and Jonny are *already* both dropping a lot of stuff on the
> floor trying to cover this task list. Let's look at it and think about
> collective organisational priorities and task dependencies, what the most
> benefit is in hiring someone to do, in time they free up for others, and at
> points where we are letting the community down (such as not responding to
> issues raised in the tracker, flaky infrastructure, poor project
> documentation not encouraging participation, etc)

Jo: I would really like to do more to e.g. populate project sheets for
coord. My hands are giving me a lot of pain and I'm worried damage may
be long-term/permanent. If I can take you up on your offer to help me
type we can do a lot. All it needs is a diary date and some notice.
I've tried to Skype you a few times. I've been travelling a bit and
will continue to travel more in next few months. (Sadly I will only be
home in Berlin for a few weeks in next few months.)

> Please excuse my last mail - travelling and thinking too much, had no right
> to start fucking at you all. This speaks of my frustration but also my
> sincerity about this, i am not deliberately being divisive.
>
>
> jo
> --
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg