volunteering to spread the Joomla EDU good news

[Paul Orwig]

Hi all,

I had a chat today with Javier Gomez, who I had earlier connected to
Jon and Rob about the EDU initiative. Javier is excited to try and
help work with you all and his Latin American university contacts.

Javier said you all were working on a document about your plans, and
that gave me an idea:

If you guys can give me some good specific updates about your goals
and plans, current status and accomplishments, and how others can get
involved, I would be happy to talk to others about the Joomla EDU
initiative when the opportunity presents itself. As of now, here are
some of the upcoming events and conferences where I have been invited
to participate:

* JoomlaDay New England (end of March)
* JoomlaDay Netherlands (end of April)
* CMS Expo (Chicago-early May)
* JandBeyond (Germany-mid May)
* JoomlaDay Poland (September)
* Joomla World Conference (California-November)

If you guys can help me put together a presentation about this, I
would be happy to speak about it whenever I get that opportunity.

Thanks,

paul

[Jonathan Neubauer]

Hi Paul!

I did have a great call with Javier today, excited about some of the things we can do together!

Per our discussion today, Javier recommended (and I concur) that we put together a document that he can send to OSM board members prior to your April meeting, at which he will try to put this on the agenda to discuss with the OSM board.  This document will be a synopsis of our overall mission, as well as short term goals, long term goals, and action items to reach our short term goals by the end of the year.

After that, the goal is to solidify a team to really start pushing forward on the short term goals, and post an announcement to joomla.org, potentially followed with some sort of article in the JCM.

One of our first short-term goals (goals to reach by the end of the year) is to have a sort of "International University/EDU Day" for Joomla!, with multiple workshops for students in multiple universities around the world.

I'd love to have a presentation (whether we did it, or, depending on what you guys prefer, if you want to speak for us) at the World Conference to present this initiative in person to as many Joomla! "influentials" and community members/leaders as possible.

As soon as I get this document in a little better shape I'll send it over, would greatly appreciate your input :)

[Paul Orwig]

Thanks Jon, that all sounds great.

I'd be happy to talk about this in a session at the JoomlaDay Netherlands on April 20 and 21 if you all think that's a good idea and something could be ready for a presentation by then. Do you think that's a good idea, or is that pushing for too much too soon?

As far as the Joomla World Conference goes, I think it would be great to have this initiative get some good exposure there. My preference would be for you and Rob and anyone else who's doing the real work to stand up and talk at that event.

Thanks again,

paul

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[Techbot]

Hi guys,
great to see the progress. Sorry I've been out of the loop the past few weeks, I've just completed one contract and have started a new one. Meanwhile I'm now teaching in an all-girls college on Monday evenings as well as the coder dojos on Saturdays and Adult Education on Tuesdays.

While I think we could easily get a presentation ready for April, I believe one of the things we need to focus on, is what do the universities require?

What is their focus?
How do we enter the universities on their terms?

Teaching adults and kids has provided me with insights I would not have expected and I would assume the same will happen with third level education.

I believe that we need to focus on what is the unique selling points of Joomla  in terms of education. I don't think a university will be that pushed by a CMS. Wordpress and Drupal have made inroads here that we cannot compete with and should not even try. But a CMS that is also a platform, that has huge potential.

What I have found so far is, as stated before, Linked Open Data is a major focus in academia and government and I think we should use this knowledge. I hope that we can discuss this with lecturers and academics before we complete the presentations.

Rob

[Techbot]

Hi All again,

@Paul wow that's some itinerary!!

I was hoping to organise a Joomla!day for Ireland in Sept with Microsoft. I'm not convinced we are ready yet, but we'll see.

I re-posted my initial ideas to this google group for a presentation as some of the details got lost (I think).

I will discuss all of this with Bernie Goldbach (lecturer at Limerick Institute) and see what advise he can offer from the universities perspective.

and lastly I am a confident speaker so will be happy to give a talk where/when possible.

Rob

[Jonathan Neubauer]

Rob,
Great points - especially the questions about what do universities need, that's something I've been working to find out since the beginning, since it's important that what we focus on will actually be effective.

If you have a moment in the next couple days, ping me on Skype, I'd love to chat, catch up on the progress and ideas that we've been talking about in the last week here, and brainstorm some steps to answer these questions and move forward effectively!  I think it'd be great if, at some point, we could actively collaborate with the various professors that we've connected with on some of these questions.

[Paul Orwig]

Hi all,

Thanks Jon and Rob for your responses here. I think there would be two main goals if I speak about this at some upcoming events:

1. Get some contacts in more universities who may be interested in participating. That may help you get an answer to the question of  "What do universities want?"
   
2. Recruit some more volunteers who want to join you and help work in this area.

I need to give the JoomlaDay Netherlands organizers an answer pretty quick about what topics I want to speak on (that conference is April 21-22). So if possible, please confirm if you want me to talk about this at the JoomlaDay Netherlands, and if so, can you help give me more information to prepare for that talk.

Regards,

paul

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[Jonathan Neubauer]

Maybe it's just me being cautious, wanting to underpromise and overdeliver, but, as much as I am trying to push this forward, I'd like to hold off just a smidge on the publicity.

One of the things we discussed with Javier is the idea of a "proof of concept" - some easy task/function that has readily viewable results that can be used as a springboard for getting volunteers, showing people that we're really moving forward.  The idea we discussed for that was relatively simple, host small workshops introducing students to Joomla! at universities or colleges.  Each event is a small undertaking, not hard to do, but if we can get 3-5 on the same day, we can make it a big event internationally.

What do you guys think?

Paul, I know you're super busy, but I think we've got some momentum building here with the enthusiasm and ideas Javier is bringing for moving these forward, maybe it would be good for us to connect sometime and talk about what we think a reasonable roadmap for us is for the next year?  We've started working on this, but I'd like to get everyones ideas!

[Paul Orwig]

Jon,

I think part of the trick with publicity in an initiative like this is to anticipate what your biggest needs will be in the next few months, and then go ahead and start getting the word out now regarding those upcoming needs, because of the expectation that it will take a while to find those contacts and recruit those volunteer resources. Also, you never know where the ideal volunteer or university pilot program candidate is out there. The more places you cast the net, the better your chances are of catching a fish.

Would it be helpful to start bringing in more volunteers to help develop the proof of concept? Would it be helpful to to start identifying universities who might be interested in those small workshops, along with volunteers who would be interested to lead them?

I think those could be appropriate publicity messages for this stage of your process. When you get further along the publicity message can continue to change to match where you're at. But you all are driving this initiative, and if you all decide don't want me to talk about this at these upcoming events, of course I will respect that.

Jon, I'm happy to make time to talk about this more at your convenience. This is an important initiative and I want to support it however I can.

Thanks,

paul

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[Jonathan Neubauer]

Hi Paul,

My apologies for the late response.

Very good points here - and I agree.

I'd love to have our ideas and goals presented in as many venues as possible.

The presentation we're working on right now is more for interacting with educational institutions, not the Joomla! community - but if you'd like us to put together some material for that purpose, just let me know!

Thanks again for your support!

[Paul Orwig]

Hi Jon,

No worries, thanks for responding. I had to commit to a topic for JoomlaDay Netherlands before you responded, so I gave them a different topic. But I am also giving the keynote speech for that event, and if you and the rest of the EDU team can give me a few points to mention about this initiative, I'll be happy to include it in my keynote.

I'm thinking the points could be pretty high level such as:

• A very brief overview of this initiative's goals
  
• A summary of work currently underway and a estimate for when the first pilot programs might be ready
• If it's not premature, an invitation for how to follow up with someone on the EDU team if they have university contacts, or if they want to help with the work that's currently underway.
  

If the EDU team could put something like that into a Google doc in the next week or two, I can be sure to include that in my keynote speech for JoomlaDay Netherlands on April 21. If you want to add more details while you're at it, then maybe that could form the basis for a more lengthy PR push at other upcoming Joomla events.

Thanks again,

paul

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[Jonathan Neubauer]

That sounds great!

I'll definitely get that information over to you.