Community Management

What are you doing Open Data Day?

What do Buenos Aires, Edmonton, Porto, Prata, Osaka, Bandung, New Haven and Cotonou have in common? Well, there are incredible community organizers leading Open Data Day Events in their cities joining a total of 109 events globally.

As you may know, I am a bit of an addict when it comes to global events. Borders dissolve and mission rises. All of us join to make our communities better. I am not a ‘coder’. As a community organizer, I am throwing my brain at helping people connect and share stories. If I can successfully contribute, so can you. I hope you’ll join your city.

The team at Open Knowledge Foundation has been supporting our local groups community and the wider network. This means we are managing the website, wiki and hosting a few online events. I’m specifically curating the wiki alongside our incredible helpful community volunteer, Mita Williams.

Dave Eaves, one of the founders of Open Data Day, and I have hosted two Google Hangouts to connect the community:

Round 1 – What is Open Data Day

This 30 minute hangout explained the roots of Open Data Day (ODD14), Dave explained the core goals and we talked about types of events along with some event planning tips.

Round 2 – What are you Doing Open Data Day

This 45 minute hangout featured participants from around the world sharing their stories about what they will be doing Open Data Day. We grappled with some tech signup issues, but folks managed to get connected both in writing and in person.

Here’s one fantastic example:

Ome Mejabi: “We are lighting up Ilorin, Nigeria at the University of Ilorin campus with Unilorin ODDC Data Hack Event coming up on February 22nd, 2014 to coincide with the 2014 international Open Data Day. Details for the event.

ODDC is acronym for “Researching the emerging impact of Open Data in Developing Countries”, a World Wide Web Foundation/IDRC funded research project.”

What am I doing Open Data Day?

My Open Data Day is actually a 3 – day weekend.

The Toronto Open Data team has invited me to join their Problem Curation Roundtable. I’d provide some input for challenge leaders.

Then, I go to Washington, DC to join the School of Data Nigeria Extractives team. We will look into contracts, datasets and, hopefully, find data on which Canadian companies are active in Nigeria.

I wish I could be in 3 places at one and join Canada’s first Open Data Summit hosted by our friends in BC.

The Canadian Open Data Recognition Awards

These awards are to recognize outstanding work of an individual or an organization in the area of open data in Canada.

Three categories have been identified. They are:

Open Data Innovation Award
To recognize innovation in open data, whether with respect to policy, implementation, or use of open data.

Open Data Community Award
To recognize a significant contribution to strengthening the open data community, whether through outreach, education, commentary or otherwise.

Open Data Social Justice Award
To recognize the use of open data to increase social justice and community wellness.

We are accepting nominations until Midnight Feb 13, 2014 Pacific Time.
Please submit your nominations for the 2014 Canadian Open Data Recognition Awards using this form.

24Jan

Sticky Ideas

….And then we broke out the sticky notes to make ideas dance. We all have been there. You are in a room, your feet itch, and your mind is waiting: If only we could just break out the sticky notes to collect, flush and organize our thoughts. It is so second nature to any event I run and any event I participate. My mind goes to the technique. How can we make a world of bright people across disciplines sing like a choir on mission? Well, for those of us who have participated in Aspiration Tech events, we are in the “sticky way“. I like to call us Gunnerites. We are the converted who use this methodology to help each other move forward.

Gunner is a friend and mentor. I’ve had the awesome honour to participate and learn in his events for over 4 years. Each time I glean another strategy or technique to add to my toolkit. When I think about the rooms I’ve been in from Mark Surman’s house to the World Bank to a Fort on the coast of Lamu (Kenya), I reflect on how Gunner helped large and small rooms of people get to the heart of conversations and ideas. He does it modestly and with such adept skill that you often don’t realize the hand of excellent execution. The results truly highlight the value of participatory sharing for learning and events.

Yesterday I had the honour of participating in an idea charrette at Stanford University. My role as a Board Member of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap was to provide insight into real world data ethics challenges that Crisismappers face. We used this methodology to help a very diverse room get cracking on great ideas. Thanks Lucy and Gunner.

******
Aspiration Tech and the engine room are hosting a Responsible Data Forum. You should go if you are in the SF area. And, if you are looking to join a great team of folks who make a huge difference in many non-profits, do apply for a Communications role at Aspiration.

(Photos from events: Ushahidi team meeting, Lamu (Kenya) (January 2013) and Data Charrette, Stanford University (January 2014))

21Jan

Every interaction is a gift

When I think of value in Tech 4 good communities or any other community / network, the core value I rest my mind on is: every interaction is a gift. This means every map edit on OpenStreetMap, every commit on github repo, every edit to translation set, every event organized/attended and every voice on a community hangout or mailing list. As community and programme managers, we aim to help people get involved. This is a one by one – very personal connection. This is especially true for those of in the Digital Humanitarian Network (umbrella of communities) or Crisismappers Network and more. These communities exist by the hub and spoke model. Each of us believes (to some degree) that we are incrementally changing the pace of humanitarian aid by connecting and sharing.

A few years ago (way before I changed up my career and volunteer paths to Tech 4 Good), I became an avid reader of Chris Brogan and his frequent co-writer, Julien Smith. At first it was to learn better marketing skills for my tech job at Tucows Inc., but soon I realized that I had virtually met people who understood the qualities and growth paths of people like us. Trust Agents really highlighted this for me.

Anyone who has ever gotten a “here’s a link I thought you might like” or “I’d Like to introduce you to x” email from me knows that I live by Chris’s network simple formula:

Be helpful + meet helpful people + connect really helpful people = potential for future amazingness.

Chris has a weekly newsletter (selly sell: subscribe for it). It is my Sunday cup of coffee to really consider our craft. This week his post really resonated with me. With his permission, I am quoting the simple formula and some key guidelines. Happy building.

BUILD A HELPFUL NETWORK

(Chris Brogan)

1.) Be open to connecting with anyone. You never know.

2.) When introducing others, ask first privately if you can make the introduction (lots of times, people introduce me to others that I can’t much help, for instance).

3.) Upon meeting someone new, think of ways you can help them. I promise this is MUCH more useful than thinking of ways they can help you.

4.) Set calendar reminders or ANY other method to keep in touch with people on a semi regular basis. Cold networks don’t help.

5.) Connect great people in your network together. It’s always greater than the sum of the separate parts.

(Photo taken in Venice, Italy by moi)

Thanks for Sharing, Chris.

6Jan

Powering up a global community

Global communities and collaboration are often duck-taped together. There is no one set way to do real-time collaboration for community development. Add to the often cited request of some open source communities to only use open source tools.

As a community leader, I have a few priorities:

Share
Connect: build community, often with a human touch (Video, picture)
Reach: activate the curious, invite new participants
Document
Remix

Add to this: we want to morph time and space which means content/events that can be translated and recorded across timezones and potentially in multiple formats. Tall order.

What’s in the toolkit?

Rings (Lamu 2013)

Over the last few years, I’ve been a toolkit consumer, user and creator. At Ushahidi, we wrote and remixed the Ushahidi toolkits. These were shared almost every day via PDF/slideshare. A few months of that and I decided to make wiki pages of each of the key pages of the original toolkits. This was followed by creating new advanced toolkit pages: Data Cleaning Guidelines or the whole Ushahidi Kenya Elections Toolkits. We made the toolkits active and remixable for the community. Anyone with an account can edit the community wiki.

There are many toolkits examples in the ICT4D ether. Recently, I had the pleasure to review an upcoming Nesta Toolkit. They will be announcing the updated toolkits in the spring. See a previous version of this: Nesta’s Open Workshop.

More and more, we are looking for templates and best practices. Often tookits are just kludges for ideas. I think we need to look at them in a lean kanban sort of way. What can we keep? What do we remix? What assumptions or biases do toolkits make?

Will it ring?

After a number of notes on the OKF Mailing lists about which tools people should use for tasks, I promised to think about tools and workflow. The tool suggestion lists provided are fairly generic for many different types of jobs. There was talk about not using Google Forms for community surveys but to use: LimeSurvey or Libresoft. References were given to this stunning list of Open Source Alternatives. Another comment mentioned the Tactical Tech guide for alternatives.

Global Community Toolkit – a draft

I think we need to be very realistic about which tools a community manager needs to use in the global space. Some of the open source tools are excellent, some of them are missing key components such as reach. How can we get the next 1000 or 1 million people engaged in open source projects. If your community doesn’t use it, will they if you do? This is a juggle. We, those who work in technology, assume that our favourite tools have a low barrier to entry. If our goal is to use the best open source technology to connect the global community, then I think there are a few core tools missing. It is a tradeoff. Use the best tools to reach your current community while building a new community network or test new tools. Sometimes testing with community is a great idea. But this assumes that people want to learn yet another new tool just to learn or do stuff. My list:

Tool /Task Type	Example
Blogs	WordPress, Drupal, Joomla*, tumblr, medium
Video	Vimeo, Youtube, Miro*
Social Media	Twitter, Facebook, G+
Collaborative storytelling	cover it live, storify, scribble live
IRC
Video Editing/Translation	Webmaker, Amara
Hangouts	G+ Hangout
Audio	Mumble*, skype
Document sharing	Google Documents, Dropbox, Slideshare, Scribd
Collaborative Writing	Hackpad, Etherpad*
Wiki	Mediawiki, Atlassian

KEY: * = OS software

This makes my Community Manager toolkit a little over half OS software. I did not include browser (always Firefox), project management (Basecamp) or mail (which is gmail), but you get the picture. What will ring with the community but incorporate global community engagement and open source tools?

Google Hangouts is one of the best community tools to connect global folks to ideas and each other. Last year I hosted a BRCK G+ hangout which now has over 2000 views. This is small potatoes for some communities. Ubuntu and Mozilla are both great open source communities with great G+ Hangout engagement.

I find Hackpad much easier to use because you can connect a series of collaborative documents. I’ve used versions of etherpad since 2010 and am a fan (especially considering the OS piece.) But with Google Apps for Business and the ability to easily collaborate on massive documentation, I remain at a loss on how to use other options.

Now, I realize that some folks don’t approve of using Google products. I understand and have read many of the articles on NSA. I juggle this with “tools that are easy to use with the global community” and the fact that Google is open of the biggest contributors and supporters of Open Source. Google Summer of Code has infused many a small tech for good project.

Wish list

Top on my open source tools for Community Management wish list are: Video Hangouts and Document sharing. If you can make these tools usable and open source, I will happily try it out.

(Footnote: Last month on the Open Knowledge Foundation Community Hangout we started a list of tools for community building. Feel free to remix and add: OKFN Community Building Tool Directory)

27Nov

Vikhovnia and Community

My cousin died after a long illness. It has sent me into a small tailspin. Love. Family. RIP Lawrence. You are all in my thoughts. I miss you.

There is this beautiful Ukrainian word:“Vikhovnia.” It means : all of the teaching/teachers/upbringing. Or as it means to me: all my heartfelt teachers.

Yesterday I managed to stay at work simply because it meant that I could attend a team lunch in London (UK). Truly, I am so incredibly far from my small Saskatchewan town in Canada. Sometimes I realize that I am so focused on “global community” because of my upbringing. We all want to be connected and part of a community, and, we have had many teachers. I’ve always mourned in large groups, because I come from a large small town family. I’m thankful for my temporary ‘city’ /’community’ family, but I’ m homesick and in culture shock.

About Lawrence: he was my cousin and potentially my ‘uncle’ based on our lives. My Dad had 11 siblings, so age differences means that family lines are simply blurred. Lawrence married my older vibrant cousin Laurie, but I’ve known him as my cousin and felt him to be like an ‘ uncle’. One of my favourite memories of him was the ‘short pants Ukrainian dance’ that he and the Uncles did at my cousins’ (Rhonda and Ron) wedding. This is a modified Ukrainian country dance. Imagine your uncles and cousins rolling up their suit pants to dance old style : kicking and etc. Actually, all my favourite memories are of Lawrence dancing, including his spins on the various floors with cousin Laurie. All day I have various flashbacks of years of happy dancing of Lawrence and Laurie. What a great way to be remembered! May we all dance through life with joy.

Last year my Auntie Elsie passed away. She was the most incredible happy storyteller and event planner. Seriously, she taught me to live in joy and make people smile- focus on making a great experience from food to mood to hosting. Every event I run, I channel my all my teachers, including Auntie Eva and Auntie Elsie.

I feel incredibly rich to have known such great people. So, I ask you: who are your teachers? Vikhovnia.

12Nov

Why we volunteer #YolandaPH

My spare time has been handed over to #YolandaPH response via the Digital Humanitarian Network. We are working in sprints on images and information (Tweets) to help sift data. This is all being added to map.

You can participate too

The Humantarian OpenStreetMap Team and the whole OSM community are mapping infrastructure. It is amazing to observe. More on their efforts.

Quick observations and Why we Volunteer:

Diggz from Geeks without Bounds said it well: WE, the open mapping and volunteer community, have a lot to learn and re-learn. Those of us involved in the Haiti online response are already having flashbacks about duplication and confusion. It is bound to happen but it has improved some.

The tools still need work, but the purpose is clear: We know that together if we collaborate we may be able to help information and decisions.

I am seeing many many tweets asking for money. Some are legitimate, trusted organizations. Some are really unknown. I’ve seen people trying to sell stuff and say that they will give a percentage to aid. I’ve seen people offer to add their ‘brand’ to things. But, the overwhelming parts are the folks who have family there. Then, the pictures. All we can do is focus on our tasks.

Our community takes care of each other. We check in about rest, food and health. We welcome new people. We are all learning as we go.

All of us feel guilty for having jobs, personal needs and less time. I feel guilty posting this summary. But, I know that I need to tell what is happening. For us, we volunteer because we want to help in what we know we can do from our couches, our late night hub spaces and around the globe. We do this because we know that we can help. And, that our very small part might help a responder or a family know more details. We do this because we want to help those people.

Some examples of communication and tools:

My dashboard: Skype, IRC and Micromappers (add to this tons of tabs)

An example of the Micromapper tool using Crowdcrafting software. This was incubated as part of the OKFN Labs.(my employer)

Why does Crisismapping matter for Open Data?

Crisismapping inspired me to work in Open Data. The world needs it to make better decisions in crisis and beyond. This means using open data and open collaboration.

In times of crisis (see the Yolanda response) we all seek every type of open data set we can. We have governments, civil society, private sector and individuals all working together or in parallel. While the volunteering is very busy, I see it as the future for how we can get people to care about open data in sprints on any topic.

Back to it

22Oct

Global Community: the road to learning

For the past 3 years, I have focused on building global community via maps, hacks and data. The journey has introduced me to a number of communities plus I’ve been fortunate to lead efforts in a few great spaces.

For the past month, I’ve been head down at Open Knowledge Foundation working on the Open Data Partnership for Development project as well as learning all about Open Knowledge Foundations’ communities and networks. We have the amazing opportunity to activate everything from open data to open government to open science to open glam (galleries, libraries, archives and museums.) Having library training background, I’ve always thought that the Internet opens up large borderless communities, much like the old Mechanics Institutes*. It gives us a chance to connect with fellow leaders and support the unusual suspects who want to use new technologies to disrupt and activate change.

(Stools by Ai WeiWei)

Some might consider it a tall order to involve citizens and technology to activate change. I see it as an art. What if we looked at it differently? Many of us are focusing on building stuff and showing the potential of opening data, creating apps and convening at hackathons/sprints. Others are focused on analyzing our methods. Great! We need to have real-time analysis/research in all our projects. Giving evidence and showing impact is mandatory as we move forward. ABC: Always be communicating/changing. Some folks make a career out of highlighting the faults in the old systems and faults in attempts to use new technology to see the world and the information overload in a new way. Also, great. The truth is: None of us are getting it right, yet. But, we are trying.

Meeting, Making and Showing

In the next month, I am going on a whirlwind of meeting, making and showing. Each of these spaces involve communities of folks trying to use policy, information, maps, hacks, data and more to open up our world. It is a huge privilege to participate and learn. I’ll try to post some ‘Dispatches’ as I have done at previous events:

1. Mozilla Festival – London, UK October 25-27, 2013.
MozFest is a home for me. I’ve attended each of the fests including its predecessor (Drumbeat). Imagine rooms full of brilliance in everything from Open Hardware to Open News to Open Internet. My brain and heart will burst with happiness in seeing old friends and digging into learning while making stuff. There are few events that are this interactive. The Open Knowledge Team will be hosting a few sessions (Building collaboration across the open space and a Data Expedition)

2. Open Government Partnership Summit – London, UK October 29 – November 1, 2013
The OGP summit connects governments and civil society communities to discuss policy and demonstrate the latest actions by country, topic and movement. The Open Data Partnership for Development is focused on helping connect governments and civil society folks. My goal will be to meet others on this journey and see how I can help support their efforts. As well, the Open Knowledge Foundation team will be supporting the Civil Society Day.

3. International Conference of Crisis Mappers – Nairobi, Kenya November 18 – 22, 2013
The Crisis Mappers community is one of the most amazing ones that I’ve encountered. Each of us from business to open source to government and academic want to learn the best ways to use data, mobiles, informatics and maps to aid crisis response. We will meet for a week of training, ignite talks and collaboration/simulation. The opportunity to do this in Kenya is amazing. My heart remains in East Africa. Ushahidi was born there and has inspired so many of us to consider how citizens can and should be involved in the conversation. I’ll be running a full day training session with 4 tracks: Maps, data, mobile and knowledge. There are many community leaders helping out, including my colleague Michael Bauer of the School of Data.

I am really look forward to involving more people in each of these communities.

Here’s to amazing building and making. I am more than certain that the next weeks will shape the coming year and far beyond!

*On Mechanic’s Institutes: I had a membership at the Atwater Mechanic’s Institute in Montreal, Canada. I loved that I could use a library and get training. It is the way forward: we need to train a digital network of new leaders to use the power of technical skills to tell stories and use data/software to activate new ideas/change in their communities.

9Oct

Social Sculpture: According to What?

Ai WeiWei’s According to What? exhibition and Forever Bicycles exhibition are both currently showing in my home town. As I contemplate community development, I find myself profoundly influenced by his art and thoughts.

In the book, Ai WeiWei speaks he considers our online world a Social Sculpture. Often I like to think of online communities like digital small towns on a large map. With this, I think of open source like my local childhood credit union or CO-OP grocery. Imagine my joy when I moved to Quebec to find the Caisse Populaire network. Really, it struck me that my prairie childhood was not dissimilar to that of a Quebecois, it was just local language, local knowledge and local culture. His writing left me wondering: Are there really molds of ‘Social Sculpture’ or is it hopefully organic? Do we sculpt online or does it sculpt us? Is there a difference? Be.

Community Values

How can the values and creativity of art be used to inspire our work? What values do we want/need to build great community? What is the glue?

Last year a number of Digital Volunteers got together to write a Community Code of Conduct. I took this and remixed it for Ushahidi.

Some of the core values that I have learned from my time in open source communities:

Do your research, don’t duplicate efforts, build on OS values
Welcome. Collaborate and build community first
Be kind and open to new ideas, perspectives
Be ready to change or pivot, because your community will change you
There are many definitions and activities (versions) of “open”.
Coining Global: Mission first, not gold rush mentality. Be participatory, there is enough space and work to do for all of us
Be a member of your small digital town

As they say in tech: MORE IS MOAR. What have you learned? What are your core values? How can we collectively open up our worlds and be true?

What I’m reading:
The Future of Open Systems Solutions, Now (Stephen Kovats, UNESCO) (PDF)
Treat Data as Code
Managing People

12Sep

The Welcome Committee

Communities can be beautiful. We thrive on location and/or common interests. Whether we reside in a small town in northern Canada or in a small digital space, we need community. Maybe I just want my small town upbringing to exist online, but I’ve been thinking about how to help people have a better community journey.

Are we open enough to new people and new ideas? Does your community have a welcoming community? Have you built paths to help folks get started?

(Giraffe Center, Nairobi January 2013)

In the past two weeks, I have heard from two separate people about two different communities with a wall of “you don’t know, you aren’t right and you should just figure it out”. I listened intently to both new community member inputs about their experiences. And, in those talks, I referred to David Eaves Django talk about how communities keep people. If you are a community member, a manager or an upcoming leader in an open source world, this is a must listen to understand how we can improve.

Welcoming Committee Components

My parents recently moved into their new home. What they will remember most about this day (besides the joy of a new start), is the neighbour who stopped by to say “Hi” and say, “hey, if you need anything, I’m over here.” What a difference that made to a big change and something new! How can we make these experiences in our digital spaces?

Here are some of the things I’ve implemented:

Owner: Community Leader, Manager or Designate: Who is watching for new members?
Offer: Give a welcome email, an irc/skype ping introduction with some getting started places
Follow-up: Try to followup and watch for their questions
Mentor: Ask fellow community members to mentor and support

What about communities that are ad hoc with anonymous users? I think we need to think about how to build those welcoming committees and manage the terse ‘leader’ ‘in the know’ response. Open Source communities need new idea and people. If it is only the usual suspects, how can we be global and grow?

I’m going to keep thinking about the “welcoming committee” idea. No doubt, there is not a cookie cutter formula, but we can and must do better. To the folks who shared their stories, thank you.

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