Team building for FLOSS projects

Presentation by James Michael Dupont at the Mozilla Balkans Meetup 2012

Transcript

1. Team Building for FLOSS projects my personal experiences
2. Dependancy Graph Input : People Process : Goals Teambuilding and Fundraising Motivation and Attitude Education and Training Output: Productive Work on FLOSS projects
3. Goals The project goals are the key item to define and to gather resources around. The final goal is to have productive work on FLOSS projects being done. There are many steps to get there, but the first step that I see is to find new people who will be able to help. Understandable Goals and good plans are important for that, because many people will ask "what can I do?"
4. What can I do? help organize events! It sounds silly, but recruiting people for events is much easier to recruit programmers!
5. Event Work Writing of mails and documents • Fundraising/Sponsoring • finding Speakers/Experts • Taxis/Shuttel/Transport • Hotels/Couching • Airlines/Cars/Bus Travel • Food/Coffee/Tea/Water • Conference Room • Internet • Amenities/Cooling • Security
6. Public events are a good way to get people involved. Good marketing and promotion is key to getting people to come. The types of events that make sense are : 1. FLOSSTALKs :Talks from technical speakers, in person guest visitors, online talks. 2. Release Parties 3. Hackathons 4. Conferences Public Events
7. Mandate and Mission goals Wikipedia : "In politics, a mandate is the authority granted by a constituency to act as its representative.[1]" The mandate of local group is to pursue its objective and goals. There are many other groups whose mandates overlap. Flossk has a unique mandate to promote these things in kosovo and because of it's local mandate it is much easier for local groups to support it. It is also volunteer and locally organized.
8. Fundraising 1. grants based on mission statement from NGO and gov agencies. 2. projects for other groups from volunteers 3. advertising for speakers, companies that send speakers or giving services, and media companies, related companies, goverment agencies. 4. Fundraising events, raffel, auctions, collection donations, 5. Merchandising, teeshirts, pens,
9. Fundraising 2 • thrift stores, selling old pcs • create and sell flossk cookbook, flossk handbooks • do projects for osm and mapping • conduct workshops and training session • make training dvd for sale • sell tickets for workshops • multilevel membership, free entrance to event or all annual events and recognition • continually be searching for donors
10. Fundraising 3 board members should find x amount of money per year. create an office, or get offices, hacklab get people who are dedicated to writing grants applications and project proposals. sharing costs with other organizations
11. Board of Directors Each event should have a board of responsible, well known people to oversee the events and important decisions, this gives credibility when it comes to fundraising.
12. Merchandising Buttons, Stickets, Coffeecups, Mousepads Teeshirts Books Videos on DVD
13. Partnerships Working with other groups who are trying to help people. Open source projects, Aid Agencies,
14. Marketing Websites Social Media Email Campaigns, personal Emails Xing/Linked In, Street by street/Building by Building Age Groups, Skill Groups (Lawyers, Marktings, Software, Web) User Groups (Schools, Businesses, NGOs, GOV, Projects,
15. Press Work Press release Contact to newspapers, online websites facebook groups, xing, linked in, twitter mailing lists, skype, meetings, irc, Target groups : NGOS, Gov Agencies, Schools, Open source projects
16. FLOSSTALKs Arianit Dobroshi the flossk president started the "FLOSSKTALK" series, which are small talks, about once a month, held at the unicef kosovo innovation labs, or other places. The flossktalks are with one speaker, in person on online, even prerecorded, but with the person online available for questions and guidance. The have 20-30 people attending and are a great way to motivate people to get into some technology.
17. What can people do? • Translate • Taking Pictures/Writing Articles / Mapping Streets • Promoting/Organizing Events/Tables • Work on websites • Graphic Arts/Design • Core contributors/Writing code • Marketing/Social Media • Recruiting • Training/Documents • Fundraising/Proposals/Oversight
18. Core Bug Reports Feature Requests Committing Patches, Reviewing code, Interfaces to other projects, Blog Posts Build systems Asking/Answering Questions Wiki work
19. Ideas? Community Building Insecurity Schools Projects/
20. Rewards Publicity Social Status Food Travel Merchandise Contacts and friends Training/Workshops/Courses Certification Needs being filled
21. Plan=Software? Planning is needed to deal with new people. Need to interview people, measure skills, match needs and wants. Training program. These steps can be automated.
22. Waves of Events Waves of events, with large and small events
23. Philosophy If it aint broke, dont fix it. It is not about me Volunteer not Paid, Work time and Free Time Survival Mental Imprints Age of Recruits Local actors, not internationals Capacity Building Interfacing and Interconnecting