Re: Another collaboration metaphor: "Online dating" for people, projects, and organizations

[Suresh Fernando]

This would be the ProM ¨Project...

See this presentation and the description of the project and structure here.

We are scheduled to present our work at Contact..

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 9:52 PM, Curtis Faith <cur...@worldhouse.org> wrote:

PR,

The online dating metaphor is a good one.

On Apr 22, 2011, at 10:43 PM, Poor Richard wrote:

> All across society people are trying to figure out how to collaborate more effectively. There is open collaboration R&D in progress in academia, education, science, medicine, information and communication technology, political activism, climate change activism, environmental activism, etc.
>
> The latest metaphor I have seen for open collaboration is the "online dating" metaphor. The object is to promote "hooking up" between people, projects and organizations.
>
> The top level ontology/taxonomy required is about the same across all disciplines and use-cases. Roughly: people/groups/organizations, projects/problems/issues, capabilities/resources/needs. Within some or all of these top-level categories there are already well-developed sub-ontologies/taxonomies.
>
> In most cases the needs that must be met by open collaboration tools are also the same across all issue and use domains.
>
> It may not be a bad thing for dozens or even hundreds of groups to be working independently on solving essentially the same problem. However, it would be a shame if many of the groups failed to appreciate the universality of the problem and failed to design their solutions with multiple use-cases in mind, so that in the end we are faced with comparing and choosing between apples, oranges, and green persimmons.

Good point. I believe it is really important to come up with one tool that could be used in a very wide variety of instances. This is a challenge but certainly within the skills of this group.

Ideally, we'd find some kindred spirits out there and build something to help them collaborate, and use it ourselves, and iterate until we had a solid design before spreading it out past the initial group. If so we'd need to find a sufficiently diverse set of problems so the use cases would be a good spread.

- Curtis

--
Suresh Fernando
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-------ProM: Climate Change Project Matching System------
Project Description: http://cotw.cc/wiki/Project_Matching
To Join: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/cc-pms
Workstreams: http://cotw.cc/wiki/CC-PMS_etherpad_index

[Suresh Fernando]

Venessa - understood.


Poor Richard, Curtis et al... You will note that in the following I make no reference to technological challenges.... The problem of collaboration on a mass scale is a human problem... The impediment to coordinating activity such that we can work together to bring about massive social change involves figuring out how to get leaders and visionaries to work together... that is the real problem.

The work presented represents the result of the efforts of a number of people in the ProM group over the course of the last couple of months as well as work that preceded this that included the efforts of others including Sam Rose, Michel Bauwens, Matt Cooperidder, Paul Hartzog, Tav and Sofia Bustamante during 2009 in the context of OpenKollab. I initially documented my ideas on Project matching in this presentation. Furthermore I am sure that the idea of project matching is also not unique just to these people but is representative of ideas of others of whom I am not aware.

A quick perusal of the threads in the Prom Google Group will reveal that some issues have arisen regarding the source of said ideas, leadership in the group, process by which the group should be managed, the balance between structure and emergence, the appropriateness of the dating metaphor, the pace of activity etc.

Hence, at this time, there is no clear direction with respect to how advance these ideas relating to project matching that are captured by the dating analogy.

Since this is an open project everyone is free to work on these ideas, so please let us know if you think this is a worthy project that serve the larger interests of the various sub-projects associated Next Net and Contact... if so we can take the various lessons that we have all learned related to the challenges of open collaboration and attempt to reconstitute the process.

CHALLENGES
In the course of my ongoing attempts to advance the development of a project matching system in an open collaboration environment two specific sets of problems have arisen:

1. The Project Matching Problem
2. The Open Project Problem
   

The Project Matching Problem
As is evidenced by, among other things, the energy and activity in the Next Net and Contact Google Groups, there are many bright people with bright ideas that are working on problems that appear to have potential synergy and for whom a matching mechanism that is described by these concept documents might be relevant. If we are to make this system work, we need to figure out the secret sauce, so to speak, which requires that we come to understand what metadata about projects should be represented in an open space such that this metadata can be used to connect projects. This is not a trivial problem. This also requires that we identify a process to figure this out... also not a trivial problem.

The Open Project Problem
An even less trivial problem, I have come to realize, is exactly how to organize a virtually distributed group of people in such a way as to align their activity around finding the solution to a particular problem. This needs to be resolved for two reasons:

1. We cannot solve The Project Matching Problem in advance of solving the Open Project Problem (at least not in a distributed environment in the absence of financial incentives).
2. Even if we solve The Project Matching Problem, projects that are matched will not be able to effectively collaborate in open environments if we cannot solve the Open Project Problem.
   

Some of the challenges relating to the Open Project Problem are:

Aligning Intentions: even to the extent to which people have an intuition that they are aligned, people bring different agendas and perspectives to open projects. Since there is no financial incentives to participation in open projects, engagement in the projects requires that people feel that their own personal requirements are satisfied. This leads to challenges in terms of actually coordinating activity around specific tasks.

Defining the Boundaries of Open Projects: one of the more interesting features of Open Projects is that people get involved in such projects even if they have no interest in the substance or focus of the project! I surmise that this has something to do with virtual culture, and the nature of those that are interested in email conversations and participation in email lists. My experience is that sufficient activity, energy and ideas is enough to generate perceived momentum and lots of discussion but this cannot be mistaken for focused activity, Hence there needs to be some consideration relating to what aspects of open environments need to be closed. There needs to be an Intake Process.

The Importance of the Social Dimension: Of great importance in environments where there is no financial motivation for people to participate in projects is consideration for other reasons that people get involved in projects. One important feature is the social relations that are formed. Since this is so, there will always be a tension between those that have a clearly defined project objectives and those that are involved for, or prioritize higher, the need for social relations within virtual contexts. Some people may in fact be involved in Open Project primarily to form social relations.

Defining Process: the balance between structure and emergence: A related problem is the complexity associated with defining processes within Open Project environments. There is a natural tension between those that have clear intentions or goals and those that are more focused on the social dimension. This makes the formulation of, as well as the commitment to, process a complex issue.

Leadership and Governance: Of course all of the above makes the issue of leadership in Open Projects a highly complex one. Since everyone needs to have a stake in the formation of an idea (the idea itself needs to be generated collaboratively), there is no clear person(s) that should have the privilege or responsibility to lead a project. Leadership itself needs to be emergent. This might sound like an innovative notion but is very difficult to operationalize. Even if it is determined that the process should be a meritocracy, it is not clear how merit should be quantified. What system should we use?

Furthermore, everyone knows that leadership (however defined) is necessary but very few are willing to follow in the absence of non-monetary incentives...


.... there is more to be said, but enough for now....

I look forward to your thoughts...



Suresh