User:Chriswaterguy/Strategy 2012   

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A strategy in case the world doesn't end in 2012 ;-).


Big picture - how to inspire participation?

  • Appropedia to have an impact on grassroots action, policy discussion...
    • This requires high visibility and wide participation. Let's say 100 times the traffic and visibility


Contents

[edit] Goals

  • Participation must be fun.
  • Participation must be social.
  • Appropedia must be perceived to be useful (mainly through actually being useful).
  • There must be a more direct connection between when people share, and getting feedback - more like an email list, where members have some sense of knowing those who read and comment (even if it's limited knowledge and a fraction of readers who wake themselves visible). A sense that "people I know will be reading this."


[edit] Strategy and how-to

yellow = higher priority

How to achieve these goals.
Goal 2nd-level goal Strategy How-to (specific tasks)
Boost participation Easy, fun participation Easy ways to add something to Appropedia and see a result
  • Easy-add category tools
  • Discussion of articles. (Make talk pages more visible - indicate that comments exist on the bottom of a page? List talk pages like in a forum?)
  • WYSIWYG - monitor Wikimedia Foundation's project, see if there's a way of getting a simpler version of the new rich text editor, that does what Appropedia needs, earlier.
Sense of community Boost interaction between Appropedians Online events
  • Editing jam - 6-monthly to start? (Brainstorm first, then check Wikia Day for ideas.)
  • Editing jams on specific topic areas? Work with key contributors in each area, see if they're keen.
  • Regular chats - alternate months, when the jam's not on? More strategic than the jam.
Sense of community Improve/add communication channels Online chatroom/channel Establish #appropedia on IRC Freenode - wikipedia:User:John Vandenberg suggested we could get some Australians hanging in the channel, to help with vandalism when needed, or newbie questions. (This makes sense for people who already have various IRC tabs open.) wikipedia:User:Sonia is interested.
  • Develop an FAQ for the IRC, and/or an FAQ for newbies
Sense of community Boost interaction between Appropedians Facilitate local connections
  • Create ways for people to find other Appropedians. Userboxes? (Not so user-friendly.) Registration questions -> categories or user boxes?
  • When promoting Appropedia service learning, focus on particular cities and regions, so that new Appropedians have more chance of meeting. Start with places that already have some presence by a committed Appropedian, or some other significance. Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Jakarta, Bay Area CA, elsewhere in CA? (Ask Curt/Lonny.) Michigan (where?) Washington DC. Secondary: KL, Singapore,
  • Encourage meetups
Sense of community Communication between community members, especially those with similar areas of interest Brainstorm (break out ideas in following rows)
  • Forum
  • Hashtags
  • Community managers/interns keeping communication channels open
  • Newsletters - specific ones that engage people's passions.
Sense of community Communication between community members, especially those with similar areas of interest Create an Appropedia forum
  • Get DPLForum set up again on Dev.
Community development Internships Mini internships Me to advertise
Team development Internships Existing internships * Me to follow up
  • Lonny re AW
Visibility SEO Interlinking with Greenlivingpedia, Akvopedia & other friendly wikis * Communications intern, confirming the collaboration (& ensuring there's someone on our side to follow through
  • Content intern (search the green dev wikis in their specific area, edit as appropriate)
Visibility SEO Wikilinking and categorizing within Appropedia
  • Tech intern job
  • Generally increasing editing activity
  • Encouraging the wide use of AWB and Pywikipediabot (or similar tools) among responsible editors
Visibility Media attention - all kinds of "media." Work to get covered in news, blogs, radio programs, newsletters describing gimmicks and collaborations, particularly related to the scope of the publication. (E.g. a local paper is likely to report on something involving local students; an urban planning newsletter might describe a collaboration with a Faculty of the Built Environment...)
  • Develop partnerships, projects... watch out for the newsworthy.
  • Create news events - e.g. competitions
  • Develop press releases, & our Appropedia:For the media page, and share with Lifehack/Lifehacker/Treehugger... And Discovery if there's something new.
Content development Expand service learning partnerships Raise awareness of our internships, classroom programs and the benefits of doing work on Appropedia. * Develop good material explaining/publicizing our programs.
  • Interns/volunteers dedicated to a specific task of contacting universities in certain subject areas.
  • Contacting media - especially for education writers, radio programs, as well as those interested in sustainability/internationl development/appropriate technology/open source.
Content development
Usefulness Categorization People and bots adding and fixing categories Have people running category bots; have extensions to make adding categories a nicer and easier process.
Usefulness Help readers to draw intelligent and useful conclusions and make better decisions. Overview of pros and cons on articles Encourage editors to be frank about the weak points as well as the strong points of a given idea; have nice, easy boilerplate or templates for pro/con tables. Note Akvo's pages, e.g. http://www.akvo.org/wiki/index.php/Fossa_Alterna
Usefulness Improve relevance to curricula Identify areas of strength and weakness; Identify types of classes/courses that would benefit from using Appropedia pages as course material. DEPENDS ON:
  • Article rating system (to help narrow down articles)
  • Participation from academics and those with an interest in education, and a knowledge of a particular curriculum.

Strategic actions:

  • Get more people working on Appropedia - volunteer and paid
    • Internship program
    • Funding
  • Some kind of forum
  • Get feedback - do user testing, do weakness analysis and strengths analysis, keep track of concerns.

Specific tasks:

  • Community:

Jon Minchin, M. Sustainable and Emergency Architecture - would like to get us involved in that world.

More than a fan, an advocate. Links with academia, UNICEF... partner unis in Spain:

Do a week course or at least a workshop at the university, involving Appropedia? Lonny? Jon is interested in the AT thing in Spain...

Has a dossier, what they're doing with unis in S America, how the collaboration could work.

Talked about Spanish and Appropedia community.

Vinay, have you seen the Open Source Hardware Statement of Principles and Definition? http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW #OSHW

http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW

EWB?

Networks of philanthropists into social business e.g. http://www.factary.com

Connected to Fab Labs, thinking about relevance for development. Playing a role in Barcelona's urbanism and architecture. Green Fab Lab? In rural setting.

[edit] Pending issues

Needing to be addressed by the Appropedia community:

Area Issue Steps, and who is this relevant to?
Appropedia Foundation Board meeting agreed tasks
Communications Appropedia:Newsletter Intern, but who oversees?
Communications,
Site development 		Forum Lonny & tech team
Service learning Mini internships Me:
  • Define a few internships (personal notes, then run by A:VP). Make learning central.
  • Add to relevant internship pages on Appropedia. (Separate subpages and transclude.)
  • Post to FB; refine based on feedback.
  • Get first ads out on intern & volunteering sites (Engineers Australia, UN online volunteering site)
Networking Wikimania submit travel grant applications; Lonny, me...
Service learning Documentation internships
  • Think of a better name. Local knowledge internships? Organizational knowledge internships?
  • Find funding? (A stipend seems appropriate if they're going on fieldwork.)
    • Ask them to do their own fundraising (could be a deterrent ot otherwise good people?)
    • Fundraising campaign
    • Submit proposal to a foundation.
Service learning Travel internships
  • Depends on: mini internships; service learning class programs.
  • Ask Lonny & Joshua for ideas
  • Think: Where would we find individuals of strong character, willing to travel independently and able to manage their own work? (Probably students who have been through the mini internship and a second stage, or an equivalent with one of our partner academics (e.g. Lonny or Joshua)
Content development Content permission * Write proposal for ATA & similar orgs.
  • Follow up Practical Action. (Me: waiting on response. Call or ping on Skype)
  • Shareable: Attrib page; and start with a page or two by Neal; clarify permissions with other authors either in terms of their agreement, or by contacting the authors directly.
Site development Semantic structure User:Lonny, User:Jason Michael Smithson, me, User:Willd, tech interns.
Publicity Run sessions/workshops in public libraries (they have computers and are always looking for things to run, and would be happy to tie it in with a display of books on being green. Jam sessions for university libraries & geeky communities. People in Australia, Europe, US or other places with good public libraries.


[edit] Mini internships

Internship Mini internship task Subsequent task ideas
Fundraising Make an Appropedia page about grants on sustainability, or development. Esp directories of grants. Identify suitable grants for Appropedia - make a list, with dates where applicable; create draft submissions for one or more grants, and/or draft emails of enquiry.
Communications Promote a page or specific topic area via social media, e.g.:

Or create a page about a "hot topic" currently in the news, or any topic of importance.

* Contact suitable organizations and projects, offering Appropedia as a useful place for information about their work. Start with basic text (e.g. for sites that have decent quality content, invite to "share any story that has significance for sustainability, including sustainable technology. You could make a page about the story on Appropedia, and link to the story on your site. (We don't use "nofollow" so the link has SEO value too.)"
  • Promote the page you created.
  • Find and notify relevant newsletters with information and usable spiel about Appropedia and our programs. (This might not be a great return on effort, but worth a try.)
Content Make an Appropedia page about a topic or project - plan to spend 4-6 hours. * Porting of content that we have permission for, adding attribution notices, and adapting to suitable
Collaboration Work with another organization to clarify a joint project, within your area of knowledge. E.g.:
  • Enviu re design competition (suitable task for a design student)
Continue planning for the joint project or event. (Do not commit to timelines without discussion with your Appropedia mentor)
Collaboration Get Semantic forms set up for permaculture


[edit] Board meetings

Next: Scheduled beginning of Feb 2012.

Prep?

  • What do we want for Appropedia? (Do separately first.)
  • Which are the specific communities we serve? Or interests that we can build a community around?

News:

  • Intern program update
  • Intern progress. Tech progress (CAPTCHA...); communication internships.
  • Humanitarian Engineering conference - caught up with Andrew, met Tony Marjoram & Tim Jarvis
  • Spoke further with EWB-Australia re internships
  • EWB-A - Nick: strategic knowledge collaboration group; & "it would be great to establish some form of Australasia & Pacific Knowledge for Development Alliance"
    • EWB-NZ? UK?

Tasks:

  • Cat re interns - busy. Note mini internships instead.

Challenges:

  • Social media & outreach - need newsletter, need community, make space for people to step up?
  • Have we discuss cross-linking arrangements? Standing offers from 2 green wikis - ~"we have a friends of... section in our toolbar - I'd love to put you in there if there's something similar that you could do for us."; Plus Greenlivingpedia already links us from sidebar.
  • Copyright - still have some ambiguous areas. PA, Locally Delicious book. -> VP re clarifying.
  • International Development Design Summit (IDDS) - are we in touch? Get an intern or two there?
  • Tech development:
    • More action - Wesley's work.
    • BetterMeans seems to be mostly working well for those of us working on tech, but still some issues with having a separate platform - less visibility, some resistance to signing up. Questions about its future; lack of exportability? (for now).
    • What do we need for helping new features move to Live? A process, or just a bigger & more active team with trusted people?

Think about:

  • My GIL “3 takeaways”
  • Community strategy

Update on to-dos from previous meeting:

  • Tweeted about GIL article. Turn into blog post?
  • Send draft dot-point newsletter - Appropedia:The Appropedia Update. (And something about the two-monthly professional-looking newsletter idea. Intern task?)

Others' to-dos, of interest to me:

  • GIL MOU,
  • Tech Awards application
  • Kiswahili - & any progress on languages in general? Sam Perry,
  • technical meeting (When? get tech interns happening first? Talk about finding information, Forum, Server speed
  • brochure
  • intern for Andrew (especially a publicity intern)

Notes to self, think about & followup:

  • Andrew, UNESCO
  • Joel/Lonny re Mitra & patents & licensing for developing world.
  • Journals & papers mentioning Appropedia -> tie in to how Appropedia is being used
  • Notes for GIL:
    • sponsorship of travel interns
    • philanthropy: Appropedia's great value for money, Bottom of the Pyramid
    • green business
    • business & Appropedia


[edit] Previous meetings

Notes for the next meeting (8 Apr 2011)

  • Personal focus
  • Interns & volunteers:
    • process
    • tracking - quick overview (Camilla...)
  • Funding progress
    • Mention of a UK branch?
  • Community:
    • Online community insight: grow people rather than engaging people established in their field. (Learn & grow together like U2 or the Beatles did.)
    • Internships & volunteers
    • Social media & outreach - need newsletter, need community, make space for people to step up?
      • Importance of inefficiency - let people feel like a community. Interact, develop trust & connection.
      • -> Forum, regular chats (monthly?)
  • How we keep track of meetings, notes, tasks, progress. (Google site, or anywhere.)
  • Partnerships
    • WiserEarth content partnership
    • We're connected with 350.org through COTW & WiserEarth
  • Content, & open license evangelism

Personal notes:

  • Bukunetnya K?

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