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Catalyzing Strategic Confluence OpenKollab

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Why Build OpenKollab? What is OpenKollab?

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Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow! Linus Law

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To get you thinking Would enough eyeballs make the problem of climate change shallow? How about global conflict. Global economic inequity.

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What We Will Talk About Today What is Strategic Confluence? Context What Is OK? OK Goals Project Matching Execution: Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems The OK Model The OK Community of Practice

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Catalyzing Strategic Confluence Philosophically speaking Confluence: a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point the flowing together of two or more streams Generally we think of confluence as something that emerges; as a natural process that occurs under certain conditions. We might envision a flock of birds. At times their flight paths might seem chaotic, but in time they will coordinate their actions and act in concert; their intentions aligning Strategic Confluence: What distinguishes strategic confluence is that we, as agents have an intention to create confluence; an intention to bring about the alignment of intentions and harmony that then results.

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Strategic Confluence Practically speaking 1. Scalable Open Collaboration Environment Low barrier to entry 2. Community of Practice people and projects 3. Technology Solution: Platform or Distributed Infrastructure that Matches Projects 4. Processes and Models Drive and support collaboration, governance etc. Create Infrastructure That Will Enable Mass Coordination and Mobilization around large scale social problems

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Another Perspective Somebodys Theory of Needs! A Person Love Work Friends Dating Sites Social Networking ??? No Open Space killer app to connect people on basis of work synergy WHY? No one has solve the Open Group Collaboration Problem!

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Why the timing is right for OK Context

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The Cultural Shift: societal Peer Production: distributed infrastructure communication between network nodes Crowdsourcing: accessing intelligence of masses - nodes Agility: ie. agile software development iterative processdialogue BarCamps: commitment to openness Chaordic Organizational structures: non-hierarchical Top Down vs. Bottom Up Information Categorization: ie. Tagging vs. pre- determined categories Citizen Journalism: power at the network nodes Communities of Practice: learning as a social enterprise based on dialogue and the the ease of communication and information flow Copyleft: Creative Commons share-alike licensing Reflects Transition from Centralization to Decentralization From Closed to Open

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Communications Infrastructure Cultural Shift Cultural Shift Parallels And Is Interdependent With Transformation of Communications Infrastructure Time patterns contribute to cultural patterns This relationship is due to the fact that communications patterns contribute to cultural patterns

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A Historical Inflection Point Provides Context for Massive Social Change Technological Transformation towards a decentralized P2P architecture General social media trends toward real time connectivity Cultural Transformation: towards Openness Global Consciousness Internet Problems That Require Global Coordination: climate change Demonstrated Failure of Western Institutions: capitalism most recently Consciousness of responsibility for climate change Therefore leads to transition from emphasis on individuality to community There is a greater consciousness that the status quo need not be so!

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OK Goals

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[OK_SUP]: Catalyze Strategic Confluence [OK_ SUB_1]: Aggregate 1,000,000 projects on platform [OK_ SUB_1]: Connect 100,000,000 people on platform Wow! Thats either brilliantly ambitious or insane!

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Why connect 1,000,000 projects? Practically Speaking Market Fragmentation/Redundancy: There are many different, but related projects that could create critical mass and leverage by collaborating Inefficient Deployment of Resources: Financial and human capital resources are scarce and therefore efficiency considerations are paramount. Inefficiency of Mission Alignment: Due to lack of visibility into what other groups with similar objectives are doing, opportunities for increased efficiency are lost. Effective Social Change Is Better Served By Large Scale Coordination and Mobilization Around Common Objectives

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How does OK connect 1,000,000 projects? Gather Project Information Focus on Scalability Match Project Information Provide Infrastructure to support Collaborative Dialogue

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How Does OK Gather Project Information? 1. Define a basic ontology/meta-data structure 1. Goals, needs, resources 2. Provide standardized input forms (relative to ontology) and standardized syntax for distributed input (via Twitter, Facebook) 3. Focus on penetrating Ecosystems

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Focus on Scalability To scale the process, four things have to happen: 1. Ease of Entry for End User Natural Language Input 2. Project Visibility Natural Language Input 3. Platform Must Add Value must link projects! Semantic Matching 4. Organizational Scalability: OK and Projects What is the model?

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Project Matching

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Objective Of Matching Process Create dialogue between proximally related organizations about collaboration possibilities

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How Do How You Identify Projects That Are Proximally Related? Gather Meta Data about projects that will support linking them to each other First Approximation Super/Sub-Ordinate Goals Needs/Offers

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Goal: fight global warming Need: marketing support Offer: strong developers Company ACompany B Goal: fight global warming Need: strong developers Offer: marketing support Project Matching

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Goal: fight global warming Need: marketing support Offers: strong developers Company ACompany B Goal: fight climate change Need: strong programmers Offers: marketing support Problem: Semantic Ambiguity Semantic Ambiguity

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Identify Relations/ Matches Revealed By Platform Identify Meta-Data Discrepancies Make Project Ontology Assumptions Gather Project Data (ontology + qualitative) Identify Manual Matches Modify Project Ontology Assumptions Project Mapping/Matching A Hybrid Process Goals Needs Resources Commence Collaborative Dialogue

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So Why Both A Manual And Automated Process? - Hybrid We dont know what meta-data about projects is actually necessary in order to drive collaboration Need an iterative process to learn what works Project data needs to be authenticated Problem with WiserEarth, for example Technology platform must be developed on top of existing real world relationship ie. Facebook

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Collaborative Dialogue Process OK Community Helps to Drive Collaboration 1. Make time and process commitment 2. Set up chat spaces 3. Set up information spaces: wiki, Google group etc, 4. Coordinate regular open collaboration sessions 5. Provide expert facilitation Deploy Resources of OK Community Define Process

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Hierarchical Goals and Project Visibility

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Understanding Hierarchical Goal Structures !sup catalyzing strategic confluence !sub1 1,000,000 projects on platform !sub1 100,000,000 people on platform !sub 2 build Openkollab strategic confluence platform !sub 2 build community of practice !sub 3 build team !sub 3 build project roadmaps !sub 3 identify subprojects T1T1 T2T2 T3T3 Hierarchical Goals are Temporally Sequenced and Force Projects to Think in a Certain Way

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How Do You Make Projects Visible? Represent the Project in a way that makes it visible OK.SUB.2.2: 'Developing a Technology Platform to Support Catalyzing Strategic Confluence'. This would be associated with the following project structure: Mission Goals Leader Team Milestones Age Sex Height Interests Hobbies PROJECT ONTOLOGYPERSONAL ONTOLOGY Note that Visible Personal Ontologies are a recent phenomena. Why not Visible Project Ontologies?

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Rolling Out the OK Platform and Process Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems

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Forestry Project 1 Project 2 Project 3 Land Use Project 1 Project 2 Project 3 Oceans Project 1 Project 2 Project 3 Climate Change Generally connected via communications systems What Is An Ecosystem?

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Climate Change Human Rights Meta Gov What are the points of confluence? Connecting Ecosystems?

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Test for Ontology Alignment Via Platform Test for Ontology Alignment Manually Identify Collaboration Opportunities Identify Ecosystems Build Community Platform for Ecosystem Gather Project Ontology Data Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems The Process Commence Collaborative Dialogue Strategy: Develop Conference Ecosystem Platform Service Offering i.e. target climate change

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The OpenKollab Model

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Organizational Structure Founders - OKco Active Members Members Will have formal legal structure

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Issues We Are Working Through How do you balance an open environment with the leadership requirement that is necessary to drive projects? For-Profit or Not-for-Profit Should we stipulate all profits be reinvested? What implication does this have for equity/quasi-equity funders? How do we a compensate structure pre-financing? How do we structure a compensation structure that will serve to scale participation?

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OK Revenue Possibilities Conference Services Consulting Software Development Software Productization

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The OK Community of Practice

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What is OK community of practice? Governed by common intention: to drive collaboration Committed to learning together: what is necessary to drive collaboration Committed to developing a common linguistic framework Committed to developing an internal, reputation based, economic system Committed to developing processes and models to support collaboration Operate as an Open Collaboration Space

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The Importance Of a Common Language Proper discussion/discourse requires Shared Terms of Reference At this time there is no standardized Collaboration Language Note, for example that a semantic framework for social interaction has evolved; lol, lmao, brb. The meaning of terms is contextual Baseball Domain: home-run, triple-play Project Domain: Super-ordinate goal, project, intention Mitigates Semantic Ambiguity Problem

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How Do You Develop a Common Language? Hybrid: Top-Down and Bottom-Up approach Top Down: introduce set of terms and definitions Bottom Up: allow community to collaborative modify terms and definitions Formal Syntax: develop formal syntax ie. Tent

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The OK Reputation Based Economic System At least at the outset, what is available for exchange is our time and labour. The return is the garnering of reputation Reputation has currency in the real world.

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OK Processes and Models

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OK Communications Structure Listserv IRC Chat Space

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Realize we dont need to kill each other Leaders realize we are all alike are human Provides Real Time Experience of Each Other Create Generation of Leaders Connected on OK Platform How OK can help to end the Arab/Israeli Crisis! Conflict Perception of Difference No Real Time Interaction No Direct Experience Possibility of False Information AND Absence of Experience of Similarity Note: most state sanctioned killing does not occur within ones community Build OK Platform

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Organization Client Partner Support: Financing, Volunteers Services Layer Service Delivery Layer Support Layer Enterprise Ecosystems Needs/Resource Synergy An ecosystem is a system whose members benefit from each other's participation via symbiotic relationships. All organizations have other organizations that they work with regularly. These organizations form a set of natural relationships; an Ecosystem

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Community Formation Coordinated Action Collaboration