Documentation: Dropbox Paper
By ‘open source’ I mean a wide range of commons projects - free software, open source hardware, open education, open data, and also project-based communities like Edgeryders.
by ‘participation’, I don’t just mean writing code or engineering - rather I mean everything from advising to promotion to documentation to giving feedback, translating, coordinating… anyone who is part of a community and who works in some way to improve and grow an open source project.
by ‘motivation’ I mean non-monetary motivations - people contribute to open source for many reasons: self-improvement, being part of a community, helping others, solving a specific need/problem they may have, some use their open source contributions as a portfolio, to show their range of abilities and history of quality work, etc, etc, etc…
There are already many existing studies on motivations in the open source world, both software and hardware, and we can draw upon these in this session.
But what I am primarily interested in is:
- how we can optimise our communities and projects with these motivations in mind - what are the ideal conditions to produce these desired effects?
- how we can promote these benefits to others to encourage more participation in the commons.
This is not a ‘how can I trick people into working for free?’ session, it’s more ‘how can I understand the motivations and goals of potential and current contributors and find where my project’s goals can align with them?’
Who is this session for?
Primarily for people who help coordinate and manage communities of volunteers and contributors around commons projects, but it’s a chance for anybody involved in commons-based projects to share their experience and take back ideas to spread around their community.
What should we aim to get out of it:
-a deeper understanding of what motivates contributors and how we can help provide that motivation.
-specific strategies for 3-4 case studies
in regards to contributor motivation,
what can be improved?
what new techniques can be tried?
what are some guidelines to keep in mind?
Basic Format:
- short introduction
- guided group discussion
- separate into groups to focus on case studies
- reconvene
(Hand image designed by Stephen Borengasser from the Noun Project.)
Date: 2014-10-24 12:30:00 - 2014-10-24 12:30:00, Europe/Berlin Time.