Frances Bell

Community Building and Open Source Development Workshop


20 October 2008, 10:00 - 16:00
Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN


Building and maintaining a community of users and contributors is key to creating a successful open source development project. This OSS Watch workshop will be particularly suitable for software developers, project managers and principal investigators in UK higher and further education institutions who plan to employ open development practices in planning, managing and further developing their projects beyond the initial funding grant.

The workshop will examine what open source development is and how open source communities are created and sustained. It will highlight management and governance structures common in these projects, and discuss common problems that prevent open communities from emerging and collaborating successfully.

Programme:

- 09:30 - 10:00 Registration
- 10:00 - 10:10 Welcome
- 10:10 - 10:50 What is Open Development?
- 10:50 - 11:30 The Power of Community-Led Software Development
- 11:30 - 11:45 Break
- 11:45 - 12:30 Barriers to Community
- 12:30 - 13:15 Lunch
- 13:15 - 15:15 Afternoon strands (break into two groups, attendees may choose one or the other)
- Tools and Processes in Open Source Projects (Developers and Project Managers)
- Project Governance (Project Managers and Principal Investigators)

- 15:15 - 15:30 Break
- 15:30 - 16:00 The Road Ahead

Lunch and refreshments will be provided, and travel expenses will be reimbursed by the organizers.

The workshop is free to UK higher and further education, but registration is required. For further information and to register please visit:

http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/2008-10-20/programme.xml.

Url corrected - thanks Visvanath for pointing out error.

You are right Seppo (but I think that's how everyone spelled it), and that adds another category:
Someone to post about the spelling of the topic

Thanks for that post Deneka. People helping other in forums are visible, but when Moodle.org members help community groups, this is fun but definitely less visible. Like assessment, measurement of forum presence may focus on what we can measure rather than what we are trying to achieve.

Thanks for the clarification Martin. My reading of the requirements for becoming a Moodle Partner interpreted the requirement of forum contributions as being ongoing for consultants. I hadn't seen this as ridiculous. Obviously I don't know the details but I had somehow imagined that partners contributed financially and in kind to development of Moodle, composed of software, testing, requirements, support, etc.
In any case, I appreciate the effective presence of Moodle Partners on the forums (they certainly add to the mix of experiences), and especially their good grace in answering my question. I am glad to be somewhere where such questions can be asked.

Fair points Ray about tracker and financial contributions(also AT's points about who is in company). It may just be that this needs to be clarified on the web site that currently says "For consultant services, you should be an active, useful participant in the Moodle.org forums." I don't think that this a community-defined measurement.
I didn't really understand what you said about business owners (clients?) and partners.
What I do know is that I am perfectly happy with the Moodle Partner I use (pteppic.net) for hosting. The Moodle partner moniker was a factor in initial choice but my satisfaction rests on current service.