Liz here is what I want to see before the end of the year from the board before giving up the idea of opening this up, and having the board relinquish control over the project (but not leadership/stewardship).
I want to see an RFP. I have suggested this privately to the board through Nasir and then through Josh MONTHS ago after your requirements have been done. Waiting for the retreat was "nice", but now that is a month already. What I'm MOST concerned with is that the board has shown itself (BTW, as much as when I was a member as with now) of being incapable of leading real initiatives. (please don't force me to go into more detail), Jeff has done all of the current stuff so far on his own w/o much board intervention at all. I suggest we need to foster a similar model. The Board needs to get the heck out of its way and "design ideologies" aside, getting it done is now to me the highest priority. Waiting for "fundraising" feels a tad off to me and the only way we are going to get anywhere is with SERIOUS (K's of $ on the order of $100k) to get this done under the current requirements. BTW, I totally agree w/ you that the infrastructure needs to be blown up. No one knows that better than me, but to be honest, that's actually easy. Personally, I think the board (including my own history) has been high on Web 2.0 cloud stuff that actually in theory can meet our needs, but in reality WON'T. We need to build it all and host it ourselves. Why the board hasn't gotten a dedicated server from which we can just build whatever we like is really a problem for me. W/ a minimal investment in a hosting provider this can be done easily and once done we can become experimenting, coding, exploring, and prototyping. W/o it we are stuck theorizing. I think that "crowdsourcing" is not really the right terminology. What is needed for real is the Open Source. And yes, even DESIGN can be and has been open sourced with success. If any project is "designing for yourself" this one is. And the more "selves" we involve the better the project will be. Transparency of design, process, accountability, costs, decisions, etc. is key for the success of this project, b/c it is going to require so much cultural change in our community (that Jeff already alluded to in his message in this thread). So why the RFP ... Well, if you as the board want to hold onto this (despite the call by members to take ownership and for the board to let go of it), show us that you can move forward. You talk about local groups not getting squat, but that explosion happened on your watch, Liz. The best thing the board has done for local groups is to empower them to not wait for the board. Why not just take the same tact with this project? -- dave On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Elizabeth Bacon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > Dear heavens. > > OK, guys, if we're going to "out" ourselves...I will reveal that I > fundamentally don't believe a crowdsourcing model for DESIGN is even > possible, much less advisable. > > I believe that crowdsourcing can be helpful to garner ideas (e.g. that wepc > thing at the top of this thread), identify requirements or brainstorm > features (e.g. as Will did on the list the other day), and settle on shared > definitions (e.g. wikipedia). > > To me, however, crowdsourcing seems utterly antithetical to the act of > designing. Design involves acts of conscious intention coupled with creative > insight to bring coherence and order to a system. I strongly believe that > design projects must have a strong lead to succeed, both at the design helm > and the project management helm. Nowhere in the modern world can I think of > any example of a group-mind, a crowd, moving towards greater systemic > coherence and order without a strong individual or individuals at the helm > guiding the crowd's thoughts and intentions. > > Now in case you think I'm some "genius design" practitioner, bear in mind > that my core IxD practices were forged at Cooper, a design consultancy that > pioneered the use of personas and two-person teams to achieve design > solutions. I am highly team-oriented, take pains to remove ego yet retain > ingenuity in the design process, and believe that IxD benefits greatly from > collaboration with other skilled practitioners as well as across > disciplines. > > That said, working on design problems and delivering solutions as a small > team is not crowdsourcing. > > Now, we may have a less radical disagreement here than I fear. Nasir > wrote: > > "I like the idea of crowdsourcing the design of this puppy. Suggestions on > how to manage the process? Two challenges I see: > # Of all projects with a self-referential design element, this one kinda > takes the cake :-). > # The temptation/risk of falling into a design-by-committee trap is high > # Being designers, we could iterate and iterate until, like, the end of > days > > If we went with a crowdsourced model for the design, I'd propose going with > the curated-crowdsourcing that Mozilla adopts. They have a public > free-for-all tree, but the features that make it into Firefox, etc. have > been cherry-picked by an architect and integrated into the codebase." > > What Nasir is proposing is NOT crowdsourcing the IxD of the next-generation > IxDA infrastructure, but crowdsourcing feature definitions and perhaps also > brainstorming the way those features manifest in their form & behavior. And > note that he also invokes the importance of having a lead designer to bring > order to the system. > > But here's my HUGE concern if we were to pursue this route. I strongly > believe that IxDA.org needs some serious new infrastructure YESTERDAY. Our > local groups began exploding in March, right after our first conference, and > we haven't done jack squat for them except open up Basecamp projects and > talk about things. Local group websites are now being developed piecemeal -- > and they're all quite wonderful, but totally disconnected from each other & > IxDA Global. Our general membership has also increased radically this year, > and there's extremely little visibility that anybody has into or across this > deep, valuable pool of individuals except for a freaking Mailman query the > list administrators can do of how many subscribers we have! > > Given that the board has already done requirements and feature definition > over the last four months for the IxDA.org features that we want to deliver > in very short order (namely again: 1) richer member profiles; 2) an > event/calendar system; 3) local group micro-sites; 4) tools to help local > group leaders) we'd be throwing ourselves back to the starting line. > Furthermore, I'm quite sure that it would take a least a year from now for > us to arrive at some group-mind agreement, much less achieve the > *development and delivery* of whatever it is we conceived. > > Therefore, I'm highly averse to pursuing a crowdsourcing effort on these > areas from a scheduling perspective. > > I want our organization to get serious about following through on its > intentions by hiring professional development resources to meet our needs. > Presently we are not closed to the option of purchasing a hosted solution, > but are leaning towards an open-source CMS so that IxDA can really own the > platform and give community members ways to further enhance the user > experience. I aim to publish an RFP on these features in November, and we > want to be able to launch solutions by the Interaction 09 conference. Can > anyone seriously argue that these schedule targets are achievable if we were > to pursue a crowdsourcing effort or seek pro-bono development support from > within the open source community? > > Please understand that I am confident that crowdsourcing ideas, > requirements and feature definitions from within this amazing community of > ours could provide us with some extremely innovative and powerful design > concepts. So, let me make a suggestion. Perhaps a more appropriate design > target to harness the great grassroots energy starting to be exhibited here > is around the next generation of our DISCUSSION features. At the IxDA board > retreat, the board identified this important area as nevertheless secondary > to serving the local group and membership-oriented needs listed above. The > infrastructure team also has given far less attention thus far on to how to > bring IxDA.org up to speed in this arena. This design space would also > include providing better tools for members to dynamically share perspectives > & information and self-generate resources for the betterment of the > community. > > So how does that scope sound, Nasir, Dave, Will, al.? Please, do not derail > our current effort. > > Writing in pure agony at envisioning near-term delays, > yours truly, > Liz > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Vice-President, IxDA / www.ixda.org > CDO, Devise / www.devise.com > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > > > -- David Malouf http://synapticburn.com/ http://ixda.org/ http://motorola.com/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... 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