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
  • Something meets this standard when the way the thing is described requires no additional information. It is the smallest indivisible unit of a machine.
  • In practice, this goal is achieved when a part or step is so simple that a mere title or illustration is sufficient to fabricate or execute it.
  • For example: a picture of part A and part B held together with matching bolt holes lined up with a title like "bolt together" is self-evident. It requires no additional explanation. On the other hand, a picture of a fully assembled machine would not be self-evident. Additionally, a picture of the bolt first going through part A, then through part B, would probably be unnecessary.
  • This standard is not objective; it requires a bit of an intuitive touch...or a lot of feedback. The distributed collaboration process is designed to maximize feedback so that intuition is unnecessary.

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.