[wdmmg-discuss] Open Spending call for collaboration?

[Lucy Chambers]

Ok, sorry - I didn't quite phrase that properly, I wasn't looking at
converting people into OKF minions and I completely agree with you,
Friedrich, for the majority of cases!

I just want to make sure that if people, for example, come across the
OKF's work through a project like OpenSpending and are directed to the
Get Involved with OpenSpending, that we don't rule them out for other
projects just because OpenSpending is the first thing they have come
across. I think certain people kind of fall into a grey area and may
just sign up on the OpenSpending get involved link because it is the
first thing they come to.

For example, some of the people who recently came in via the Get
Involved with OpenSpending give comments such as:

"I have worked in the publishing industry as an Art Director for the
last 15 years, and now studying full-time for at the London College of
Communication for a Masters (Design) in Innovation & Creativity in
Industry..."

I would love to direct these people to something involving
OpenSpending but when I sent an email a while back asking whether
anyone needed any design work for OpenSpending - no-one emailed me
back ((. This person doesn't mention OpenSpending at all in their
notes so I don't really know whether they are specifically interested
in OpenSpending or more generally.

So, what I was thinking was:

Have two forms, a general 'get involved form' and a form like Jonathan
suggests for individual projects. I don't know how the links are
currently distributed to the Get Involved forms but if we can control
this, having something like:

Interested in helping to create something similar for your country
[click here]? Interested in learning more about more projects
[okfn.org/projects] by the OKF, then [Get Involved]?

In the general Get Involved form, we ask people a) how they found out
about us - which will give us a guide for the type of things they
might be interested in and b) Attempt to encourage people to tell us
which projects interest them (we do this partially already but hardly
anyone ever fills it out.) by making that field obligatory but
allowing people to write 'open to suggestions' or something.

Then, we could use Jonathan's idea specifically to engage people who
are unquestionably interested in OpenSpending. Adding options to allow
people to say whether they want to code, find data etc...

I just think that giving people this choice would make it easier for
me to point people in the right direction and not lose people who get
stuck in between!

Keen to know what you think ))

Lucy


On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Friedrich Lindenberg
<friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Lucy Chambers <lucy.chambers at okfn.org> wrote:
>> The thing that I am wondering at the moment is if we should have just
>> one general form for 'Get Involved with the OKF' - and replace the
>> 'Get Involved with OpenSpending' form with this one. There are so many
>> volunteer forms and I think some people are just getting lost!
>
> I'd like to disagree - people come to the "get involved" forms because
> they want to contribute to specific efforts (make some colorful
> bubbles) and not because they intend to commit time to OKF as such. We
> should avoid treating them as re-allocateable resources across the
> group, I think - we can always ask them later....
>
> - Friedrich
>



-- 
Lucy Chambers
Community Coordinator
Open Knowledge Foundation
http://okfn.org/
Skype: lucyfediachambers