Appropedia talk:Measurable outcomes

Chriswaterguy's priorities in outcomes

Here are the suggestion goals, prioritized. It was hard to do as they're all good, and i could easily rearrange them again... but here is my first take on these priorities:

get at least 5 university courses on 3 different continents to integrate Appropedia into their course assignments. Adds content, sometimes of very high quality, enlarges the network, brings new people into the community, improves the diversity - including linguistic diversity.
during the year of 2009, double the number of articles on our site - Having a comprehensive knowledge base is a big part - the main part - of our reason for being. I'm actually aiming higher than double, but the principle is good. See Appropedia:Finding content, Category:Appropedia content development
publish a weekly newsletter - We plan to put out at least a monthly newsletter to start. I think we could maybe go fortnightly later, but I wouldn't want to make it more frequent unless we had a lot more resources. This is largely a means, a way to help build the network and community to achieve the other ends, so it's a bit hard to put it in here.
during the year of 2009, have at least N articles passed through this <insert link here> peer review and revision process, and at the end of 2009 have a published (lulu!) book of the best of those articles - or all of them, depending on the value of N. Developing a quality subset of pages, and demonstrating that we have that, will be powerful both for the value of Appropedia, and for the perception of it. It would also be an example of leadership in the wikisphere.
every month, have 2 press-ready stories of actual developing-world deployments of technologies described on our wiki, and try to get them into mainstream and not-so-mainstream media
be recognized as the leaders and go-to people for peer-produced appropriate technology information on the internet, and have appropedia leaders (as individuals) cited in at least 3 print publications as such. "Be recognized" is great, and I had this at number one. But specifically print publications... very nice, but not sure how indicative it is; more interested in focus on community than on individuals; and it depends which publication, e.g. NY Times being about 10,000 times better than a small local paper.
engage a group (or groups) of international development students to design and deploy instruments to measure Appropedia's impacts, as a research project for them to learn with; be able to publish preliminary status reports from at least 3 groups by October '09. Having concrete benchmarks could really help us focus, and maybe figure out what works.
partner with at least 10 appropriate tech conferences/summits/camps by serving as their documentation/ideas repository (as in IDDS) as well as the focal point for all their online backchannels/comunications (offer subsidiary services like twitter tag tutoring - or better yet, identi.ca - social network setup, mailing list hosting...) Great - getting the idea out there that Appropedia is the place to collaborate and share info on all projects in this space.
hold at least 6 appropedia content sprints, one on each non-Antarctican continent. Content, great... it's less specific than say the idea of documenting tech conferences, and we haven't made much progress doing these in the past (hard to get commitment, though that will change as Appropedia gets bigger and more exciting) so I feel there needs to be something to actually bring people together.
set up and deploy an appropriate technology community mentorship program, in 3-month rounds (first round northern summer '09, complete at least 2 rounds before the end of the year. This looks really valuable, but it's not something I'm focused on, and I think it's less directly relevant to our mission than the other suggestions.
have at least 2 dozen contributors to planet appropedia, with at least 5 substantial posts per week. Would be nice, and a source of content, and happy to solicit contributions, but not sure how it directly impacts on our mission.

--Chriswaterguy 15:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Mchua's top 3

I think the three of these would work well together as manageable goals for the 2009 year. The rest of the things I'd put on a "not to do" or "we'll think about it again in 6 months" list so that the top 3 can really be a focus. Mchua 15:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

get at least 5 university courses on 3 different continents to integrate Appropedia into their course assignments.
engage a group (or groups) of international development students to design and deploy instruments to measure Appropedia's impacts, as a research project for them to learn with; be able to publish preliminary status reports from at least 3 groups by October '09.
during the year of 2009, have at least N articles passed through this <insert link here> peer review and revision process, and at the end of 2009 have a published (lulu!) book of the best of those articles - or all of them, depending on the value of N. Developing a quality subset of pages, and demonstrating that we have that, will be powerful both for the value of Appropedia, and for the perception of it. It would also be an example of leadership in the wikisphere.

Curt's thoughts

I finally took a fair look at the article. Fabulous! As I look at the list, they all look good, but some are clearly more ambitious than others, and strike me like 2 year goals instead of one year goals. Also, there are a few cases where I can see a strong interdependency. That is, achieving one initiative would be a great stepping stone toward achieving another initiative.

Another thought that came up is the symmetrical nature of some initiatives. That is, pushing for deployment of some of the projects is good (getting article into field implementation). But also, documenting existing projects that have been missed would also be great (getting field implementation into article). This provides a kind of "self proving" validation, of course. The first case falls under the deployment initiative, and the second falls (I think) under the "continental content sprint." And achieving either or both of these would provide fantastic content for a book :-).

I'm going to review this list each day for a couple of days and see which ideas grow on me. I want the obvious combo of good likelihood of success, combined with huge impact. That's all :-).

Thank you, Mel and Chris, for getting this ball rolling! CurtB 13:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

David's Thoughts

This is great. I agree with Mchua that we should focus on a subset of goals. For each of these (3 sounds good) goals we can brainstorm a list of action steps we can take to achieve these goals. Then break down each action step into 1 or 2 hour assignments that we can easily fit into our schedules. Then ask the core group of Appropedians to dedicate some number of hours per week and give them their assignments.

So a good 2 hour assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to vote on your picks for the top goals and then brainstorm a list of action steps we can take to achieve them.

My favorites - my reasoning - brainstorm of assignments

Monthly Newsletter - increases community and is a mechanism of encouraging people to become active editors

Write a newsletter article
Compile articles into coherent newsletter draft
Edit and polish newsletter draft
Manage list of subscribers
Advertise the newsletter (ask bloggers/twitters/facebooks to mention it, ask your friends if they would like to be added, mention it on your blog)

Partner with Appropriate tech conferences - has very well defined action steps and will increase our name recognition among active AT people)

This is basically the idea behind the OSN network
Develop conference organizing manuals
Google search for planned conferences and try to get to know the organizers on a personal level - ask them what they are having problems with and then write a manual here on appropedia addressing that problem.
Brainstorm services we can provide to small conferences to motivate them to collaborate with us

Appropedia content sprints - these are good because it motivates people to produce content for Appropedia

Whatever our agreed upon top list of goals becomes (even if none of my picks are included, I promise to support those goals with at least 2 hours of work per week.

This all strikes me as a little ambitious, but either I believe that if we appropedians can get behind this, we can really get something done. --David.reber 23:08, 16 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]