Distributed Collaboration

The internet has created a brand new opportunity for people separated by distance, but united by goals, to work together. The "distributed collaboration" idea has a strong element of assumed volunteerism in it. Professionals, united by a fiduciary responsibility (and the hierarchy that implies), don't need any help. It is the people who want to help a worthy cause in their spare time that need help.

Volunteers, by definition, are nearly universally unable to produce good work on a regular schedule. They tend to work when they can, or when they feel like it, so they need a system that isn't broken by newbies making mistakes or old-timers disappearing suddenly.

The following process attempts to achieve that goal. Each step is well defined and really only a small part of the process depends on a core team of employees. The rest of the process is a way for volunteers to expand a small piece of crucial work into a diverse array of useful tools.

Concepts

• 'self-evident'

Definitions

Each machine is designed and prototyped by one person or, at most, a small team.

The prototypers "define" the machine. They generate descriptions, sketches, illustrations, CAD, models, etc. Technically, as long as they record everything coherently an experienced fabricator could figure out how to reproduce the machine. This is the bare minimum necessary. Without this material the prototype machine might as well have never been built.

Prototypers have two responsibilities in this distributed collaboration process: 1) They must define the machine in discrete steps, each of which is simple enough to be "self-evident." 2) They must remain available for, and responsive to, requests for additional or rephrased definitions.