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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.

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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)

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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.

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Building A Non-Technical Community Around the OSF and the Goals

- June 11, 2015 in Center of Open Science, OSF, Planet

This is old, unpublished news/post that I never got around to posting for some reason…

In the last week of March, I started to think about how the Open Science Framework (OSF) can foster a non-technical community.  At first, I thought about only of  advocacy and teaching of the scientific process.  But after the response from Brian Nosek (reply #2) of how scientists don’t know how to get on board using it, the idea of community generated use-cases/case studies came to light.  That thread can be found here.

I wrote a mission statement and started a project for Undergrad researchers (and their PI) usage of OSF.

Anyone can join in to help either through the threads or through the frame work project itself.

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Applying The Concept Of Membership To OKFN

- May 11, 2015 in OKFN, Planet

Because I started my Online volunteering in Ubuntu Community, that means that is part of the Open Source community and there is something that I had a feeling that I worked towards (along with other things, of course).  That something is the concept of membership.  It’s the benefits of being recognized for significant, sustained, continued, credibility, the seriousness, and the commitment of my contributions rather than the tangle perks the Ubuntu membership gives me.

To my knowledge, the Open Source Foundation and other Linux distro communities (GNOME and KDE are two).   But for awhile, my thoughts of this concept moved onto the Open Knowledge Foundation Network (OKFN).  To me, OKFN is the meta-community of everything that is not Open Source (A.K.A working groups).  Open Science, Open Data, Open Access, and Open Economy are a few examples.  While I don’t know how many people are active within the working groups, I feel a concept of the membership could help the OKFN working groups.

My idea for this is, since most of the working groups are non-developers code-wise, that there can be a board for two timeslots to judge applicants.  Also, there is should be IRC meeting for questions and cheering during the meeting rather then using a mailing list.    I have no ideas what the perks could be.

I don’t know how well this idea could go within/for the OKFN but it’s still a possibility.

 

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Introducing “The Sense of Openness”

- April 24, 2015 in Blog Related, News, Planet, Ubuntu

As I said in this post, I renamed “The Ubuntu Sense”, to (drum roll please) to “The Sense of Openness”. I started with voluteering in the Ubuntu in July 2013 and within six months, I recieved my Ubuntu Memebership. But I started to extend invoulment into Open Science, since I’m a biologist. I noticed that I started to post/talk about non-Ubuntu things on my everything-Ubuntu-related blog and decided to open up a “new” (I imported my old one) one that emcompasses everything that is Open * related. Also, I’m keeping the “sense” theme.

To accomplish this, before exporting the old content from the old blog, I organized the categories into six main ones (that may change, as I have some that I’m not sure of) and within the categories, I have sub-categories that relate to the groups that I’m in (Ubuntu Women in Ubuntu and Center of Open Science in Open Science are two examples). This will allow me to only use categories for RSS feeds for the Planets in order to stay on topic.

Also, I broke down my “About” page into three pages, one that explains who I am, one for FOSS, and one for Open Science.  These pages will explain what the topic is, what groups that I am in, and what roles, that I take up, in those groups are.  These pages will act like my “resume” because I want to show the world what I have done within the communities and my skills, as it’s scattered around the web.

I want to thank Rafael Laguna for creating me the logos (wordless and with words) below:

logo2 logo

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