Community Council/collaboration in the OOo-community

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Community council project

1 Title: case studies of work and lessons for collaboration in the OpenOffice.org community

Short title: Collaboration in the OOo-Community

1.A Short description

This project is a joint effort of OpenOffice.org community members to understand how they experienced situations with good and bad cooperation, and what lessons we can learn to work together more effectively and with more fun.

1.B Background

This project is born from the experience that the branding group had early 2010. The branding group went through a period of discussions and experiments where the constraints of the effort were not well defined. At different stages it was not clearly enough communicated by the trademark holder initiating the effort, what the expected outcome of a discussion or work could be. This led to disappointments for volunteers as well as full-time sponsored project members that could have been avoided. In this project 'Collaboration in the OOo-Community', we'll work together with people involved in the branding effort and in other cases to understand how they experienced it and what lessons we all can learn. (For details on the initial mention of the idea see <council log>)

1.C Team

• Stefan Taxhet
• Cor Nouws
• (feel free to contact us)

1.D Steps

I. find cases (either positive or negative) that we can investigate;

• ask people directly, and also mail to discuss@OOo
• collect information about similar efforts in the past

II. prioritize cases we can use;

III. interview participants

• prepare questions
• invite people engaged in different roles in selected cases for an interview;
• run interviews (1)
• assure (inform and explain) people that this effort is about learning, processes, and not about their personal participation;
• follow privacy policies
• when necessary, interview people for a second time, to really understand what were the essential details in the process;

IV. prepare a report from the information

• ensure anonymity
• gives a summary of the answers
• defines things to be learned
• defines means(2) to apply the recommended changes/activities
• prepare an evaluation after 8 months and after 14 months;

V. discuss this report with

• Community Council
• management involved
• people interviewed
• active members in the community

VI. publish final report

• educate results
• introduce recommended improvements / activities

1) Has to be prepared, script, questionaire, interview face to face or by mail / phone, circumstantial/depending on situation, if we know people well, … so to be decided during the work

2) Possible ideas checklists, training, ...

Version 1.0/ Date 2010-09-03/ By Cor Nouws/Stefan Taxhet