On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Eugene Eric Kim eekim@blueoxen.comwrote:
We'll start seeding Meta with what we know (and probably quite a bit of what we don't) today, and I'll look forward to reading other people's thoughts.
That will be great.
There's a tradeoff between starting with a blank slate and the need to re-establish a community and a set of norms. My gut tells me that a blank slate is better for this project, but I'm open to other feedback.
Can you say more about your gut feelings here? What is the tradeoff specifically, and the purpose of the blank slate? (how would the first hundred pages be populated, for instance?) I am particularly concerned that the planning discussions not be launched only in english, or expected to be in english with sporadic other communication... and Meta is likely the best place to get hundreds of translators watching new pages and updates.
Please take my Chandler calendar with a grain of salt. We're just getting started, and it's incomplete. My main task right now is listening, and that hasn't necessarily been articulated on my calendar.
Cool, and many thanks for sharing your calendar! We should all do that. I was wondering about versioning - a pity it's not supported. A wiki list and bugzilla project should work as well. Someone just needs to write the eek-chand-to-wiki script :)
The best way existing community members can help with this process is to engage, be patient, and be open. It's a bit easier for me, because I'm not a complete outsider, and I've been part of the Wiki community for a long time.
Our community isn't limited to editors. Everyone involved in the strategic planning process, including the BS team, are community members -- presumably that's part of why they got involved with such a non-traditional effort. But if people don't see themselves as part of the community - don't communicate the way the community does with one another b/c they feel like outsiders - it's harder to collaborate.
For others, wrapping their heads around transparency and large-scale engagement might be a bit of a shock to their system.
Understand that this is a learning process for _all_ of us,
Absolutely.
and embrace this as a learning process for yourselves as well.
It's not 'us' and 'you'... we're all trying to get a grip on an interesting and wholly unsolved problem, with lots of information, processes, and ideas to internalize.
I would like to learn a great many things - about what BS does as an organization, what strategic planning processes are like (in variety, scope, and detail), what the Foundation (with the institutional experience in its staff) thinks makes for a good roadmap and timeline for different phases of dicsussion and planning, how to differentiate between short, medium and long-term planning within a fixed timeframe, what organizations BS or others consider similar enough that one should take lessons from their own historical strategic planning processes.
The editing community has one advantage over the rest of the community : the scalability of their work, knowledge, and ideas. They collaborate with one another in their daily work and debate in a way that allows others to engage them instantly and simply, without waiting for specific meeting times, polished drafts, or sporadic private interactions. I hope this is one of the first lessons shared.
SJ