10 ideas to revitalize the ProM project
Tim Rayner
Hey ProMsters,
The activity on the lists in the past week has made it clear that ProM is not dead. We've been licking our wounds and catching our breath, stretching out sore muscles. The question running about the group is: what's next?
However we move (and we will move - soon!), it is clear that we can't proceed as before. First off, we need to do away with the idea of ProM-as-marathon: a long long (long) collaborative exercise, charted in advance by someone or other's vision, divided into phases that we must monotonously move through. That's not fun. And if it's not fun, why would anyone participate? Face it - we're here because it empowers us, individually and collectively. The challenge before us is to identify a way of working together that produces personal rewards while maximizing the collective benefit. That's the way to work up a collective head of creative steam. That's how we swarm.
Following Michael's lead, I want to suggest that we orient our future work about focused collaborative workparties, or open work groups (OWGs). OWGs need to be fun and productive. I say: why not organize them like games?
Here are some suggestions for how we might ‘gamify’ our approach to working together. See what you think.
1. Each OWG would be focussed on a specific challenge. The objective of the OWG would be to fulfil that challenge within a set time period (say 2 hours max).
2. This opens the possibility of multiple OWGs working in competition (this is not something that we could consider at present, but it’s something worth thinking about).
3. The OWGs would operate with a loosely structured timeframe. There'd be time for greeting and coordination at the start, and time for reviewing results at the end.
4. There would be various different roles assigned to participants in OWGs. We'd standardize at least some of these roles. There would need to be an facilitator of some sort to communicate between different members of the group and keep things on track. We might also assign scribe duties to one or more individuals, their task being to report on what different participants are doing in a central space.
5. One important question is: where/how do we host the OWGs? Once each OWG gets started, participants would head off in various directions to complete their work tasks. But we'd need a central space for people to start from and return to. Does anyone have any suggestions for venues?
6. We could consider using LiveStream as part of the OWGs. This would require some technical expertise – it could be more hassle than it is worth. On the other hand, it could add an exciting ‘live’ dimension to the work, adding to the sense of the event.
7. Each OWG would contribute to the development of the greater ProM system. We wouldn’t want to try to map out exactly how each work group would contribute – rather, we’d get stuck in to small achievable tasks, see what we can pull off, and build on it. Agile development in action, my friends! A benefit of this approach is that we'd be able to dispense with a step-by-step master plan to building ProM - we could simply start with a few OWGs and see what we can complete, then go from there.
8. As is our wont, we’d think of the OWGs as 'living ProM'. This would alter the ProM concept. ProM would remain a matching system, but we'd now be taking a different approach to matching. Perhaps the idea would be that the matching side of ProM would be a preliminary to participating in ProM-style OWGs. So in participating in the OWGs, and figuring out how they best work, we'd be collectively developing the central feature of ProM: OWGs. Just a thought – what do you think?
9. I'd like to encouraging the gaming enthusiasts among us to think about how we could formalize the OWG approach, i.e., to 'gamify' it. If we could figure out how to gamify a successful OWG model – well, we’d definitely be onto something!
10. Finally, we all should try to identify and
invite people
to the OWGs who we think might be interested and more importantly
useful. The
aim is to grow participation with each OWG event.
There you have it - 10 suggestions towards a
new revivified ProM. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is
to fill this list with thoughts, criticisms, witticisms, haikus,
irregular insights, and tracts of genius in order to turn these
suggestions into a dynamic model for living ProM.
Are you with me? Your time starts now.
Tim
Chris Watkins
Can I request that replies go to the ProM list only? (cc-...@googlegroups.com)
Thanks
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