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Where’s Me Support?!

- November 17, 2015 in Open * Communities, Planet, Ubuntu

Over the two (2+) plus years, I started many projects within the Open * communities that I’m apart of. Most of these projects I started were meant to be worked on with two or more people (including me, of course) but I never had luck in getting anyone to work together with me. Okay, once it has succeeded and two (2) or three (3) times, it was close but still failed. That one time when it succeeded happened because I was on the Membership Board where the members had to be committed.

Because many projects meant for collaboration failed that means either that the communities don’t have enough people willing to work with me (or on anything!) (or a time commitment) or I have networking issues. The latter is within my control and the earlier is one of the problems that most of the Open * communities face.

Lacking support and the feeling of not getting things done over these two plus years is making me to lose motivation to volunteer within these communities. In fact, some of this has already affected four teams within the Ubuntu Community: Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Ohio, Ubuntu Leadership Team, and Ubuntu Scientists and no news or any activity is shown. As for others, I’m close in removing myself from the communities, something that I don’t want to do and this is why I wrote this. It’s to answer my question of: Where’s my support?! (“me” in the title, but it’s for the lightheartedness that this post needs) I know of a few that maybe feeling this also.

As a thought, as I wrote this post, is what if I worked on a site that could serve as a volunteer board for projects within the Open * communities. Something like “Find a Task” started by Mozilla (I think) and brought over to the Ubuntu Community by Ian W, but maybe as a Discourse forum or Stack Exchange. The only problem that I will face is, again, support for people who want to post and to read. I had issues getting Open Science groups/bloggers/people to add their blog’s feed to Planet Open Science hosted by OKFN’s Open Science But that might be different if it will have almost all types of Open * movements will be represented. Who knows.

Readers, please don’t worry, as this post is written during the CC election in the Ubuntu Community, it will not affect my will to run for a chair. In fact, I think, being in the CC could help me to learn to deal with this issue if others are facing this but they are afraid to talk about in public.

I really, really don’t want to leave any of the Open Communities because of lack of support and I hope some of you can understand and help me. I would like your feedback/comments/advice on this one.

Thank you.

P.S. If this sounded like a rant, sorry, I had to get it out.

Open * Communities Mindmap

- October 20, 2015 in Open * Communities, Planet

As a brainstorm today (and also for my research), I created a insanely large, almost impossible to read/follow mindmap mapping what is there in the Open * communities and hopefully what should/could be focused on when developing communities:

Open_CommunitiesMindMap

I broke up the sub-items with each major item by Open Source and Non-Open Source.  To me, I think there is some difference in those two communities in how are things are done and what is the focus.

There are two things that I forgot on this map:

  • Meta Documentation (under tools for both Open Source and Non-Open Source)
  • Barrier to Entry (under problems for both)

Starting Research: Looking at Building A Successful Non-Technical Open * Community

- September 14, 2015 in Communites, News, Open * Communities, Open Science Framework, Planet, Reseach, Update

After a bunch of unsuccessful attempts of trying to get some sort of project going within a Open Science community, I decided to start research on how to build a successful non-technical Open * community.  I’m aware that could be just be a matter of time commitment but I still think it be worth it to learn how to build one.

I started a public project on the Open Science Framework.  Most of my work done (so far) is in the wiki of the Project.  Right now, this plan is the one that I will follow.   At the moment, it looks like that I will be focusing on the things that I learned/used/experienced from the Ubuntu Community, but it may expend into other topics.

I’m also planning to use Open Undergrad Research Foundation (OpenURF) to set up a experiment to see which tools are needed and how to use them.  But that will be later as the sever guy haven’t e-mail me back.

I will be using my blog for updates.

Afterthought: I really think it may be just be a matter of time commitment or not enough drivers.  If that is the case, then I will start new research on how to fix that, if possible.