OpenKollab Project Matching

1. OpenKollab Catalyzing Strategic Confluence Suresh Fernando Founder suresh@radical- inclusion.com

2. What is OpenKollab? Why Build OpenKollab?

3. “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow!” • Linus’ Law

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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

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

9. Context Why the timing is right for OK

10. The Cultural Shift: societal • Peer Production: distributed infrastructure – communication between network nodes • Crowdsourcing: accessing intelligence of masses - nodes • Agility: ie. „agile software development‟ – iterative process…dialogue • 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’

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

12. 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!

13. OK Goals

14. OK Goals [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! That‟s either brilliantly ambitious or insane!

15. 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 Is Better Effective Social Change doing, opportunities for increased efficiencyServed By Large Scale are lost. Coordination and Mobilization Around Common Objectives

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

17. 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

18. 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?

19. Project Matching

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

21. 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

22. Project Matching Company A Company B Goal: fight global warming Goal: fight global warming Need: marketing support Need: strong developers Offer: strong developers Offer: marketing support

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

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

25. So Why Both A Manual And „Automated‟ Process? - Hybrid We don‟t 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

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

27. Hierarchical Goals and Project Visibility

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

29. 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: PROJECT PERSONAL · ONTOLOGY ONTOLOGY Mission Age Goals Sex Leader Height Team Interests Milestones Hobbies Note that Visible Personal Ontologies are a recent phenomena. Why not Visible Project Ontologies?

30. Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems Rolling Out the OK Platform and Process

31. What Is An Ecosystem? Climate Change Forestr Ocean y s Project 1 Project 1 Project 2 Project 2 Project 3 Project 3 Land Use Generally Project 1 Project 2 connected via Project 3 communication s systems

32. Connecting Ecosystems? What are the points of Climate confluen Chang Meta ce? e Gov Human Rights

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

34. The OpenKollab Model

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

36. 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?

37. OK Revenue Possibilities  Conference Services  Consulting  Software Development  Software Productization

38. The OK Community of Practice

39. 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

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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.

43. OK Processes and Models

44. OK Communications Structure  Listserv  IRC Chat Space

45. How OK can help to end the Arab/Israeli Crisis! Perception of No Direct No Real Time Conflict Difference Experience Interaction Possibility of Note: most state sanctioned False Information killing does not occur AND Build OK Absence of within ones community Experience Platform of Similarity Realize we don’t 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

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

47. Community Formation Coordinated Collaboration Action