Track 4: Joining the F/OSS Community or Using F/OSS Tools
From Asia Source 3
Contents |
[edit] Building FOSS communities and Using FOSS Tools
[edit] Overall Strategy
Introduce participants to FOSS communities.
FOSS is all about community. AS3 aims to bring seasoned FOSS developers into the camp and allow cross-pollination of ideas and techniques. Case studies will be shared from at least three projects. The track will focus on tools, organization and strategies for community building. The track will provide participants with an actual in depth working of successful FOSS projects, that may allow them to participate or setup their own.
[edit] 5 Outcomes
- Identify challenges and needs from participants
- Case studies of existing FOSS communities: the good, the bad and the ugly
- Participating in existing communities
- Discover tools and technologies, methods and processes to facilitate communities and participate in the
- Establish communities, starting communities, building and sustaining communities
[edit] Other objectives
- Participants and facilitators getting to know each other on a first name basis
- Continue with interaction after camp with camp participants
- Have fun!!!
[edit] Day-by-day Notes
- Day 1 (November 7)
- Day 2 (November 8)
- Day 3 (November 9)
- Day 4 (November 10)
- Day 5 (November 11)
- Day 6 (November 12)
[edit] Agenda
| Day | Session | Outcome | Skill | Tool | Exercise |
| Day 1 Forming Seeding | Session 1 | - Intros and getting to know participants and interests - Online communities: both FOSS and others. - Issues of a community - Community life-cycle - Who are our co-facilitators ? | - Learning to understand online (FOSS) communities - Identify need for a community - Identify issues in communities - Learn about community life cycle | Paper! and (internet if possible) | - Get to know participants and their communities - Communities/Network drawing - List Favourite communities and reasons for them - Community Lifecycle (forming, storming, norming, performing,de-forming,mourning) |
| Session 2 | Identify 5 scenarios for communities Create a common community scenario | Basic infrastructure requirement of a community | Setting up CMS: Elgg | - Breakout: Identify a community and characteristics - Go and create your profile on Elgg ! | |
| Day 2 Storming Growing | Session 3 | Asynchronous communication: basics of mailing lists | Mailing Lists Mailing list ethics Managing and moderation | Mailings Lists Mail server Google lists and groups | - Role playing: spam and flamewars - What makes a good/bad email message => give a concrete task ! |
| Session 4 | Forums and discussion boards | Different uses, conventions between forum and mailing list Etiquette | Discussions, Forums PHPBB | ||
| Day 3 Norming Developing | Session 5 | Real time communication Core team communication | Chat : IRC Setting up IRC meetings Role playing | Chatting, IRC DimDim | - Setting up a real time meeting and brainstorming - Role playing |
| Session 6 | Identifying & evaluating FOSS projects | Discover projects on repositories, evaluating a FOSS project | Sourceforge, Launchpad |
-Evaluation criteria -Capabilities and functionality matrix | |
| Day 4 Performing Harvesting | Session 7 | Broadcasting and spreading the word | Broadcasting and documentation : Blog, Wiki, Buzzing, .... | Blogging (microblogging), Wiki: Mediawiki, Wordpress | |
| Session 8 | |||||
| Day 5 De-forming Closing | Session 9 | From social network to community | Learn about mission, goals and strategy for a community. Community management: threats, flamewars, poison members, spam | Case: OpenEvsys | - Create a community mission statement (mission, oppurtunities, areas of collaboration, skills, ...) |
| Session 10 | |||||
[edit] Day by day schedule
| Day | Time | Item |
| Day 1 | ||
| 4.00 - 4.10 | Welcome, ice-breaker | |
| 4.10-4.20 |
| |
| 4.20-4.50 |
| |
| 4.50-5.00 |
| |
| 5.00-5.10 | Community life cycle discussion and different types of communities | |
| 5.10-5.20 | Wrap up | |
| 5.20-5.40 | Coffee Break | |
| 5.45-5.50 | Ice breaker/ | |
| 5.50-6.10 | Breakout (6 groups): Identify a community and its characteristics | |
| 6.10-6.20 | Report back on breakout, discussion | |
| 6.20-6.45 | Introduction to Elgg Hands on registration on Elgg Setup individual profiles on Elgg | |
| 6.45-7.00 | Wrap up, feedback, discussions | |
| Day 2 | ||
| 9.30-9.50 | Ice Breaker/Opening | |
| 9.50-10.20 |
| |
| 10.20-10.50 | Managing and moderating mailing lists Breakout: Role playing, moderation, spam | |
| 10.50-11.00 | Wrap-up | |
| 11.00 -11.25 | Break | |
| 11.25-11.30 | Ice breaker | |
| 11.30-12.00 | Discussion on difference between forums and mailing lists Breakout: Setting up forums, forum topics | |
| 12 | ||
[edit] Exercises
- Create a community mission statement (mission, oppurtunities, areas of collaboration, skills, ...)
- Learn to brainstorm online (idea : use IRC)
- Learn to evaluate a FOSS project: community, stability, functionality, create a functionality matrix
- Learn to create a community (OpenEvsys: suggest a structure for the project, identify technologies and tools for the project as breakout sessions)
[edit] Exercise 1: Identifying communities: Network diagram
- Breakout 1: draw a map of communities participants are involved in
- Discussion: why they like the communities, what are their characteristics
- Breakout 2: Identify a community scenario: draw/explain a scenario community and its characteristics (e.g: a
- Discussion: Pick and choose 6 sample communities to be used in the track
- Breakout 3: Working with Elgg: Participants registed on Elgg and create a profile
[edit] Exercise 3: Learn to evaluate a FOSS project =
- Breakout 1: what criteria is important to evaluate a FOSS project
- Discussion: evaluation criteria
- Breakout 2: evaluate FOSS projects for the given domain based on the above criteria (Internet reqd)
- (backup if no Internet): TBD
[edit] Goals
- Evaluate a FOSS project for your organization
- Evaluate community of the FOSS project
- Your requirements and project functionality: functionality matrix
- Comparison matrix with other FOSS projects
- Evaluating codebase and quality: release versions, ohloh
- Support options
- Flexibility
[edit] Exercise 2: Working with communication tools
- IRC => organise an IRC chat to discuss a topic
- Forums => setup a forum and have a forum discussion
- Mailing list => use the track 4 mailing list for all communication (push certain communication only there)
- Wiki => all information from from sessions needs to go on the wiki
- Blog => setup a internal camp blog
- Meeting Planner => Doodle?
- Web conferencing => DimDim?
[edit] Icebreakers
- Name game: associate your first name with the name of an animal: everyone repeats it
- Interviews and introduction: interview the person next to you for 2 mins, and introduce him, vice versa
[edit] Skill
- Learn to understand a communities structure
- Learn to mentor, lead a team, ... (idea : appoint a team leader that is in charge of organising communications on different resources on a per day basis)
[edit] Hard skills
Community skills can be divided into following main categories
- planning
- communicating
- processes
- workflow and tools
- building buzz
[edit] Skills : Working with development tools
- Code repositories (technical) => Sourceforge, Launchpad, Tigris, freshmeat
- Version control (technical) => SVN, Bazaar (depending on participants)
- Bug and issue tracker (technical) => Trac, bugzilla
[edit] Skills: Identifying Open Source software
- Introduce FOSS repositories: Sourceforge, Launchpad, Tigris, Codehaus, freshmeat
- Capabilities/functionality matrix
[edit] Skills : Working with marketing (buzz) tool, promoting your community
- Ohloh
- Sourceforge
- Freshmeat
- Google (with good SEO strategy of course)
- Mailing list
