February 2015

Etherpad for notes: http://piratepad.net/4uv5gbdCAW

Theme: Community Building and Working Teams

The past years of collaboration have been amazing, and we want to continue in 2015 with a fresh focus on our Global Community. In 2011 we hit the global stage with an overwhelming response from the world. See Blog Post on 4 year review - http://opensourceecology.org/ose-4-year-review/. Through that process we have learned a great deal about managing a lot of moving parts and people. Like any organization, growth can be good, but also challenging when experiencing rapid growth. Now that we have finally slowed down from an overflow of Extreme Build workshops and interns, we are regrouping to develop our organization to absorb all the energy that is coming to us. We need your involvement and support. This month we have begun forming Working Teams.

The main desirable outcomes for this year revolve around improving our development method drastically - including clear entry points for involving new and existing contributors - and doing a final release of the CEB Press. Read more about our plans for the CEB Press Distributive Enterprise - http://opensourceecology.org/open-source-hardware-enterprise-model-distributive-enterprise/.

As we shift to build community for inceasing the rate of completing the GVCS - we are starting a number of Working Teams. These are: Development Method Working Team - to refine the development method to make our documentation useful, forkable, and able to be built upon. Graphics Working Team - to develop a pattern language of icons related to open hardware development. Community Development Working Team - to attract, train, and involve existing and new contributors. IT/Web Working Team - to reorganize the forum and wiki to handle a larger amount of traffic for the long term. Business Strategy Working Team - to develop revenue-generating enterprise models that OSE developers can use to support development.

I am excited to be speaking at the Permaculture Voices Conference next week, and I aim to come back having begun an Agriculture Working Group - with the goal of developing a replicable enterprise model for an open source CSA operation.