I propose to be team leader!
Andrius Kulikauskas
Zachary Berke, John Brennan and I spoke today (or did our best) about
the Social Entrepreneur API. I share my thoughts.
Zachary flew into London for a conference where he's presenting the
Wine.com mobile application his company developed (in three weeks!)
http://exygy.com John, Zach and I talked for a bit on Skype but the
connection was sketchy. Then I talked with John and Zach separately
(actually, for some time on two lines, so that both could hear me, but
not each other, as it turned out).
Is it possible for us to work together? to invest in each other? We're
coming from different situations.
Zach is a serial entrepreneur with a background in computer science and
a passion for scientific data including computational neuroscience.
http://exygy.com/about/team/ As a volunteer, he's bridged the digital
divide. He was a program director for The Dream Program, helping youth
achieve their dreams, which is relevant for my own "economy of dreams".
I'm very interested to learn and share our dreams for our lives and
that's a foundation for working together, such as here:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams
I only learned the above about Zach later. From our call, I understood
that he doesn't have any incentive to share work. He leads a "shop" and
this work would go to somebody working for him, I imagine, somebody with
even less incentive to work together in the long run. He would have to
bill by the hour. Even with a discount, at market rates that would be
less than 20 hours for $1,000. He doesn't know himself how involved the
project might be. I don't know of any incentive he might have to do any
work for free, to deliver anything more than requested, to invest in
teaching others, to cover for their faults or fix their mistakes, to
have anything but a business relationship. He wants the budget to be
larger rather than smaller. His concern is that if the project becomes
small, then it becomes not worthwhile. In any case, he wouldn't be
present, except as needed.
John is a web designer who won the Social Actions "Change the Web
Challenge" for his social actions map http://www.janisb.com/blog/ He's
since then started a social venture My Action Map
http://myactionmap.org This is his primary interest and a basis for
working together. I imagine, for example, that he might develop Social
Entrepreneur API interfaces or widgets which someday he might use as
elements for his action maps. John is interested to work together and I
am, too. In terms of working together, I doubt that it could be as
equals, from a leadership point of view, for the following reasons, from
what I gather from his website and our brief exchanges:
* John was 20 minutes late for our call. I had to call him to remind
him to join us. John's blog has a 5 month gap after the day he won his
prize, whereas usually such prizes are an opportunity to be more
visible. I think that John works alone and is outside the flow of
working on team projects.
* John speaks about the solutions from a technology point of view. He
knows more technologies than I do, but I don't think they are relevant
here. I have a bias for lightweight solutions which are simple to code,
to customize, to deploy. This bias is from my experience of my needs as
an online community organizer. Yesterday I coded and showed a solution
which, from my perspective, has "solved the problem" for the interface
and what remains is simply to expose the output to stylesheets and craft
the desired stylesheets. All one has to do then is upload the PHP file
and the desired stylesheet and the search interface will work.
Christine, Peter, I propose that you choose me to be team leader for
this project, the search interface and the two widgets. I would take
ultimate responsibility for the deliverables and work to include other
developers as well.
I propose the following approach. Our work would be in the Public
Domain and we would keep sharing our work-in-progress and helping each
other. Interested developers (from among John, Zach and me) would start
by working for free, contributing a day's worth of working code. (I've
already contributed a half day and would contribute a half day more
before we start.) This is to filter out developers who are primarily
interested in making money and have no personal interest in the
interface or widgets that might justify or amplify their participation
otherwise. Developers thereby also make clear what they want to do, and
what they can do useful, if anything. If you're impressed by the
developer's work, then send them $500, make sure they have your feedback
what you value or want, and encourage them to work further. Let them
keep working and let each other know when you think they've given you
another $500 of value. We can work in increments of $1,000 if that's
easier. I'm happy to earn the same as John or Zach and happy to help
mediate to make clear the value of each of our work.
In practice, Zach isn't a developer but is offering his shop. I don't
think that can make for a shared open culture. I suggest we bring
together developers without middlemen.
Neither John nor Zach nor I knew what you meant by widget. What I think
you mean is a simple application that might adorn a Facebook page, Ning
page or other such.
John would prefer to work on the search interface. I'm happy to build
two widgets. I would also finish work on my PHP file so that it exposes
the data to CSS. I propose that John create CSS stylesheets to organize
and display the data in the various ways you want. This is tedious work
and it would be great if he might do that. I could do all the rest.
If John is willing to do that, then I propose we work as above and you
pay us $1,000 each. If John isn't interested, then I propose to do all
the work for $2,000. In either case, I take responsibility for all of
the deliverables so that your final payment of $500 to me will be when
you are satisfied.
I am also interested to support John's interests in action maps.
Since 1998, I have invested myself enormously to foster such an
economy. This work would be a great encouragement of my approach. I
have a real interest to develop these tools with my own network's needs
in mind as well. I imagine this might be a step towards future work
together. Such income is very helpful for me, but I'm also interested
to include others and make the most of the resources that you can
provide, working as above. We may not earn much, but we will yet be
clear, who wants to do what and why, and that we truly want to work
together.
I'm excited that you might consider and accept my proposal.
Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
m...@ms.lt
+370 699 30003
skype: minciusodas