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
Goals[edit | edit source]
- 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."
Strategic plan[edit | edit source]
- These are my own thoughts - feel free to edit, but we need a separate place to do this collaboratively.
Who participates in the planning?
A:Vision and mission - do we all own this?
- Mission statement needs: A verb, a target population, and an outcome that implies something to measure, in eight words or less. Bypasses the input-output-outcomes stuff and with a simple question: "How would I best know if I'm fulfilling my mission?" Which leads to the question: If you could measure only one thing, what would it be? The Eight-Word Mission Statement
Value proposition for participants - like Hub Melbourne?
- Connecting with people who have a similar interests and passions
- Learning
- Contribute
Using models:
- FAR - Flexible, Adaptive, Resilient
- Model -> Strategy -> Try it -> repeat
Community strategy:
- Meta level:
- Name -> Connect -> Nourish -> Illuminate
- There needs to be a reason they do it here rather than doing it somewhere else.
- Recruit -> Welcome -> Guide & help connect -> Support & affirm -> Co-learn
- Recruit: A:SL
- Welcome: Intern who offers initial suggestions, welcome template with links to start off.
- Guide and help connect: Brief survey for new users
Support and affirm: vibrant community - mailing list, forums, regular chats
Project support (acting as a "project startup" platform:
- What's the problem you want to solve?
- What would the minimum possible solution look like?
- What resources would you need?
Content strategy:
- What's our error tolerance?
- "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer." - attributed to Ward Cunningham.
Strategy and how-to[edit | edit source]
yellow = higher priority
| 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 |
|
| Sense of community | Boost interaction between Appropedians | Online events |
|
| 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. Update, Aug 2012: some regular hanging out is happening (Danny B., Tahnok, sometimes Chriswaterguy) and we've had our first monthly chat. Done!
Next: promote the IRC chat to friendly people, incl John Vandenberg, Sonia. Template:Do this
|
| Sense of community | Boost interaction between Appropedians | Facilitate local connections | Participate in local forums/networks?
|
| Sense of community | Communication between community members, especially those with similar areas of interest | Brainstorm (break out ideas in following rows) |
|
| Sense of community | Communication between community members, especially those with similar areas of interest | Create an Appropedia forum |
|
| Community development | Internships | Mini internships | Me to advertise Template:Do this |
| Team development | Internships | Existing internships | * Me to follow up Template:Do this
|
| Visibility | SEO | Interlinking with Greenlivingpedia, Akvopedia & other friendly wikis | * Communications intern, confirming the collaboration (& ensuring there's someone on our side to follow through
|
| Visibility | SEO | Wikilinking and categorizing within Appropedia |
|
| 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...) |
|
| 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.
|
| 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. --> tech interns. Template:Do this |
| 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 -> high level task for communications interns -> recruit. Template:Do this |
| 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:
|
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:
Communications strategy[edit | edit source]
- Communications - update on blog, monthly chat, plans for newsletter, printable materials. + Permies forum, [Q&A site, Lonny].
- Writing and storytelling ideas; Katerva "nominee report" & Tim Rayner's help. Recruit/hire a storyteller. (Comms interns and other inspired people in our community?)
- Newsletter: faltering starts (#News and updates, Appropedia:The Appropedia Update/next & old rough notes at Appropedia:Newsletter/Upcoming). Newsletter/update for active community/team and for public.
- Communications strategy? Focus on the PR blitz first? Work hard on clear material with a clear use case, then broadcast (social media, & contact e.g. 500 academics, & 500 in the media) & have more people come to us.
- Catchy content. See http://www.digitalgreen.org/
- Note hypothetical Greens ad
Blog strategy:
- Create a blog which is followed and high profile in its own right. See Michel's example - noting that he spends 2 hrs per day on social media, and posts often (2 posts per day?) but more curated than original content.
- Can we post 4 interesting things weekly? 7 things?
- Content:
- IM Interviews - our community, supporters, success stories...
- People & projects that support our own vision (even if they're not supporting Appropedia directly). These could be tiny posts, curated or "About" page excerpts. E.g. PLOTS - "a community which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible “Do-It-Yourself” techniques, Public Laboratory creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment."
- News: every announcement, every interesting bit of news, goes to the comms person managing the blog.
- Appropedia updates - tech, board... (not to much of this - & keep it interesting)
- Community updates - projects and events
- New pages - chunks
- Highlighted pages - chunks. How do we identify these? Rating extension? Reviews by a class in critical reading?
- IM Interviews - our community, supporters, success stories...
- Who can contribute items, and how? It's a lot of work for one person to hunt for material, but if Lonny is putting things on StumbleUpon and Joshua, Curt and/or Andrew (and/or other awesome Appropedians or EWBers) are bookmarking somewhere else, we're starting to get enough ideas to make a great blog.
- Method - comms person follows the various accounts, and/or contributors have a bookmarklet for adding to a shared Appropedia bookmark service, and/or we have an agreed bookmark for "Appropedic" items. (Can I see people's likes or +1's for Appropedia pages?)
- Items without a suitable link, or where the person doesn't want to share it publicly themselves, can be added to a list in Trello (or whatever task management tool we use).
Jon Minchin[edit | edit source]
M. Sustainable and Emergency Architecture - would like to get us involved in that world. (Work with Jon & a comms intern on this, work with university -> recruit Template:Do this
More than a fan, an advocate. Links with academia, UNICEF... partner unis in Spain:
- business and design school http://www.elisava.net/ca
- working with specialist in sustainability?
- http://www.masteremergencyarchitecture.com/ (where Jon studied)
- Erasmus Mundus http://www.mundus-urbano.eu/
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.
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.
Pending issues[edit | edit source]
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:
|
| Networking | Wikimania | submit travel grant applications; Lonny, me... |
| Service learning | Documentation internships |
|
| Service learning | Travel internships |
|
| Content development | Content permission |
|
| 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. |
Mini internships[edit | edit source]
| 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.)"
|
| 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.:
|
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 |
Board meetings[edit | edit source]
Upcoming[edit | edit source]
December 2012 meeting[edit | edit source]
Deal with (delegate, forward)[edit | edit source]
Inter-org communication. A weak idea, often tried without success, is creating a new platform - an extra thing for people to use. Other ideas:
- A social media tool with hashtags or similar, and persistent posts (StatusNet, maybe a Planet? Yammer is nice, but proprietary, costs money. Later on: maybe Friendica/Red or Diaspora) which has value for the broader strategy of each org. Say, StatusNet, on-posting to Twitter, where each org has a low volume account for significant updates of interest to partners - could be Identi.ca (using a group or groups, but spam can be an issue) or dedicated StatusNet site with moderated account creation.
November 2012 meeting[edit | edit source]
Past meetings[edit | edit source]
October 2012 meeting[edit | edit source]
Prep[edit | edit source]
- Attention:
- Media (Lonny)
- Katerva "nominee report" submitted - by Chris, Tim Rayner, Lonny. Victoria was very positive.
- Conversations about collaboration and licensing:
- with other orgs: Practical Action, TransAid
- esp EWB-Australia - Nick's ideas; joint internships - give them our outline by... (September 2012?); EWB Challenge reports, and supporting internships.
- with other wikis:
- Permaculture.info merge; Vinay's wiki merging in (symbolic significance and some SEO value)
- Desertec, Practical Plants... any success reaching out to Howtopedia?) What a partnership looks like when we remain as separate wikis. Update on Greenlivingpedia, energypedia,
- Projects wanting to use Appropedia:
- Create a project using Appropedia: LINGO (Leave It In The Ground)... possibly TransAid.
- Use Appropedia as the wiki, embedding editable pages on their own site: How, On Earth, Architecture In Development ("Re-connecting local architectural knowledge to global sustainable development")
- Community: Expanding the core team:
- Talk about active contributors
- Advisory board/Foundation membership.
- Invite someone from outside the Foundation to make a report at meetings.
- Interns and volunteers
- Strategy:
- Targets. Where do we want to be in 1 year, and in 2 years?
- communications
- funding - crowdfunding plans
- expanded service learning program, including internships
- admin & planning. How do we prioritize tasks? How do we know what's happening with old tasks? (E.g. development work with Amgine; partner banner, various tech requests.)
- content expansion. Is there a way we could get to 1000 new pages per month, by early 2013? Major expansion of SL & porting... what else?
- Task management - getting stuff done and working in sync
- Communications:
- Blog, Newsletter, A:IRC, printable materials (business cards, brochures/leaflets/large cards), forums (Q&A, Permies), nice landing pages.
- Legal: Do we need the separation that the WMF has?
- Personal commitments. (I have less time, we're all busy.)
Agenda items September 2012 meeting[edit | edit source]
[Have ready: Ap EWB internships notes; knowledge hubs notes (Nick)]
EWB Challenge[edit | edit source]
Conversation with Jenny from EWB-Australia. These ideas to be taken by Jenny to the EWB Challenge team in Australia & the UK.
The best first year group reports in engineering are selected by universities, who send their best few reports to EWB. 27 universities with 8000 students, in Australia & NZ, yielding 80 reports. Now 30 universities in the UK.
Each report is PDF format, at least 30 pages, usually 50-80 pages.
We discussed how we could present them on Appropedia:
- EWB and partners to vet the reports. These are already the top reports, so quality is expected to be high.
- Ask the selected students to start a page, giving them a link to start the page with boilerplate, including:
- {{ewb challenge finalist}} notice, including disclaimer, and the logo of EWB and the university.
- A "draft" notice (to be removed when reviewed).
- Questions to help the student make a clear & helpful page. (Just putting their abstract on would be the minimum effort.)
- Where to place a link to the full version on the EWB website.
- How to add an image, if they wish. (Link it from the start page.)
Let universities know that any submission may be placed on Appropedia in the same way. Set up a different start page and a {{ewb challenge submission}} template.
- An EWB intern to help get the pages together - preferably with wiki experience.
- Somewhere for the PDF files to be hosted...
- Should these be vetted, or is a clear disclaimer enough?
Desired outcomes:
- Reports in a more accessible form - in particular for EWB's community partners, and making them publicly accessible.
- Attention for the students, engineering programs, universities and EWB.
- Exposure (by students, academia and EWB) to Appropedia.
Other EWB notes[edit | edit source]
EWB:
- EWB Australia: Challenges of creating a Knowledge Hub. I spoke with Nick - interested in working with Appropedia.
- He's interested in getting EWB people contributing to a common resource. I'm thinking fact-checking, curating & approval, and gap-filling within articles. Do some jams?
- EWB-A - Nick: strategic knowledge collaboration group; & "it would be great to establish some form of Australasia & Pacific Knowledge for Development Alliance". (I'm not sure what this means - organizations things aren't my forte.)
- EWB-NZ? UK?
- An authoritative go-to place for appropriate technology. Build on Appropedia wiki, collaborating with EWB Aus+NZ+UK (+...?) then curate? Curated authoritative documents (fact-sheets) could be a good hook for partners.
- EWB Australia: EWB Challenge (design comp) getting a lot of traction with universities. Looking at going international.
- EWB-UK?
- (This is a communications task, just mentioning here.) Other country organizations - contact when we have something inspirational put together (updated site and fundraiser/awareness campaign)
- EWB-US - any contacts?
- EWB-I - any recent contact? Prospects?
- Other? Esp Canada, very active.
- Equivalent orgs - ESW, Architects Without Borders...
News and updates[edit | edit source]
- Intern program update
- Intern progress. Tech progress (CAPTCHA...); communication internships.
- Humanitarian Engineering conference - caught up with Andrew, met Tony Marjoram & Tim Jarvis
- Permies forum?
Minor news - tools for editors (things to put in a newsletter):
- {{subst:no ads}}
- {{welcome2}} - automatically adds your signature without needing to put your username as an argument - {{welcome|YourUserName}} - and there are minor tweaks to the wording.
Attention for Appropedia in media & reports[edit | edit source]
Most/all of these are from Lonny:
- Report from Endeva for GIZ (marked March 2012; not yet released as of Aug 2012?)
- The Practivistas Dominicana Program (e.g. http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/dominican-and-american-students-build-school-waste-products-and-concrete.html and http://web.archive.org/web/20121116194154/http://www.unibe.edu.do:80/Noticias.asp?ID=885) [Appropedia was a main part of the curriculum and general sharing]
- First annual sustainable construction conference in DR (http://web.archive.org/web/20171009003821/https://noticiassin.com/2012/07/expertos-debaten-en-rd-sobre-construccion-sostenible/ and http://web.archive.org/web/20120821205521/http://blogs.appropedia.org/2012/07/05/sustainable-cosntruction-dr/) [appropedia was very prominently presented]
- A week long intensive in North Carolina on greening the campus - wise water (http://www.ashevillage.org/get-involved/courses-workshops/water-management-workshop/) [Appropedia was used every day and the teachers were all so excited to learn about it and use it]
- Flock House in New York (http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120718/dumbo/artist-lives-futuristic-pod-for-flock-house-project) [The projects are written up on Appropedia]
- Poe Park Presentation on Flock House and Dominican Program - http://web.archive.org/web/20121219031655/http://www.nycgovparks.org:80/parks/poepark/events/2012/07/27/flock-house-and-a-dominican-schoolroom-local-resources-for-building-resilient-homes-schoolrooms-and-communities
To-dos[edit | edit source]
Update on to-dos from previous meeting - my tasks:
- 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?)
- Cat re interns - busy. Note mini internships instead. Done! - no reply but have talked with other people.
Things I'm working on (stalled for a long time):
- Fundraiser with StartSomeGood
- Intern application form
- UN volunteers (progress...)
Other to-dos, of interest to me:
- GIL MOU,
- Tech Awards application
- Kiswahili - & any progress on languages in general? Sam Perry,
- Kili
- 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
Think about:
- My GIL “3 takeaways”
- Community strategy
Strategy[edit | edit source]
- The problem with moderate success. [Not obvious to others that they should collaborate closely; not getting a lot of mindshare, not having the impact we want, yet.) Ways to make a quantum leap...?
Prep for a strategy discussion:
- 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?
Communications and fundraising[edit | edit source]
Permaculture engagement:
- Permaculture.info merge.
Inspiration:
- 30-second video: Greens ad. (Hypothetical political ad on Australian television's "Gruen Nation")
Work with storytellers.
Legal/administrative[edit | edit source]
- License discussions with Practical Action and TransAid
- Do we in the Foundation need to be careful of editing the wiki, lest we compromise our "safe harbor", under wikipedia:Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act? This seems to be the Wikimedia Foundation's approach.
- Foundation membership and/or advisory board, and/or "advisory community"?
Collaboration[edit | edit source]
Websites:
- EmpowerID (Lonny)
- How do we work with:
- Other wikis (including those whose focus area is a subset of ours) & other related website projects? E.g. Practical Plants (see their friendly message to Appropedia), Greenlivingpedia, Desertec wiki, GrassRoots Wiki, energypedia, TTP, Green Wiki... more. (Focus areas; consider SEO - linking to each other, indexing each other's content with brief summary pages?; relationship & community issues. Work with communication interns on this?)
- Forums, E.g. Permies,
- Projects using the Appropedia wiki - Locally Delicious, Localpedia, How, on Earth. Invitation to TransAid.
- Recent conversations: Practical Action, TransAid, Desertec, Permies, permaculture people re permaculture.info's wikidump.
Academic:
- UNE, Canberra.
- What's a nice professional looking brochure, and online "brochure" style page, to direct people to? [[Portal:Service learning] as part of it.
- What about our alma maters?
Aid programs:
- Inspire Centre and Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). They are still in discussion as of 10 August 2012 - we're waiting on news.
Tech-level integration:
- What's the status of the cross-site banner?
See also notes from early in the year, below (& personal notes, #BoD).
Publicity and fundraising[edit | edit source]
- Do we have a strategy?
- E.g. make a decent, very clear PR and contact 500 academics, 500 in the media...
- Publicity or communications team?
- Funding team? Mailing list
Early 2012[edit | edit source]
Notes from meeting prep, beginning of Feb 2012.
Challenges[edit | edit source]
- 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?
Previous meetings[edit | edit source]
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
- We're connected with 350.org through COTW & WiserEarth