[Announce] Snowdrift.coop news: design, conferences, priorities
Hi everyone, I keep putting off posting announcements as we keep having yet a few more things we'd like to get in place, but here's a short summary of significant news: ## Booth at SCaLE last weekend Last weekend, Bryan and I attended the Southern California Linux Expo where Snowdrift.coop had a booth. For the first time, we finally had our new design rolled out, banners, stickers, and even shirts (which need to go out to launch donors now). See this picture an attendee posted: https://twitter.com/ilovegarick/status/691065939832385536 ## New Poster (and blog post) Several volunteers collaborated to create what I found to be the most effective illustration we've yet got to describe the core snowdrift dilemma issues. Read about it and see the results: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/blog/new-poster ## New Research / Feedback We had the first version of some real user feedback via some paper surveys at the conference prepared by Michael Siepmann, the tech-design psychologist: http://techdesignpsych.com Michael has offered valuable perspective and fills a needed niche in user experience research. ## Presentation at FOSDEM this weekend Our new Community Directory, Will "Salt" Hale (who will introduce himself further in a blog post sometime soon) is not only making a difference with managing our infrastructure and our new CiviCRM set up (tool for managing contacts and such), he's also giving an introductory talk on Snowdrift.coop in just a few hours from now at FOSDEM, the largest free/libre/open software conference in Europe. Details: https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/snowdriftcoop_sustainable_funding/ ## New Project Management Direction We just started a new major project management process with new tools and plans thanks to the mentorship and advice of some folks we met last weekend. Charles Wyble of the Free Network Foundation and programmer and general FLO advocate Brian Smith have been coaching us through using OpenProject to sort overall milestones and efforts, create "user stories" and come to better consensus on our priorities and directions. All in all, we've made major progress. Thanks to all the volunteers who have continued their help (more specific folks to acknowledge soon!). We have lots to do, but are on track to tackle our challenges. Please let us know your thoughts, feedback, etc. via other discussion email lists, IRC, on the site… whatever medium you prefer. Thanks for staying connected and interested. Lots more exciting news coming soon! Cheers, Aaron -- Aaron Wolf co-founder, Snowdrift.coop ___ Announce mailing list Announce@lists.snowdrift.coop https://lists.snowdrift.coop/mailman/listinfo/announce
[Snowdrift-announce] LibrePlanet 2016 this weekend and more
Hi all, Stephen Michel, our new Project Manager, will be at LibrePlanet 2016 this weekend! If you're going, see about connecting with him. You can reach him at step...@snowdrift.coop If you're attending, besides just meeting, Stephen will have some stickers, so those of you who are launch sponsors expecting a sticker, see if you can get one from him so we don't otherwise deal with extra mailing! If you haven't become a launch sponsor (someone who donated to our launch prior to us having the pledge mechanism in place), you could get a sticker too by either being super nice to Stephen and showing you'll use the sticker proudly and understand the Snowdrift.coop concept if people ask you about it and/or donate cash to Stephen in person… Anyone not attending who wants to support us still during this phase, see https://snowdrift.coop/donate for details. We are getting closer to launch and need continued help to make it through. That said, we will post some formal news more soon, but in summary: we've pared back the code, refocused on core minimum-viable-product to get this thing launched, we're starting to use some new project management tools based on agile development ideas, and we've embraced Holacracy concepts to define the many roles needed in getting this thing fully working. Stephen has taken leadership on all these things, and it's making a big difference already. Thanks for your continued support and interest. We're going to be seeing further major progress soon. I regret that for family reasons, I won't be at LibrePlanet this year, but so happy that others have stepped up. Have a good time everyone who's going! Cheers, Aaron -- Aaron Wolf co-founder, Snowdrift.coop signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Announce mailing list Announce@lists.snowdrift.coop https://lists.snowdrift.coop/mailman/listinfo/announce
[Snowdrift-announce] Snowdrift.coop status update
A general update about the status of Snowdrift.coop: Snowdrift.coop recently engaged in a full-blown utilization of Holacracy (http://www.holacracy.org/) for our internal working structure, see https://git.snowdrift.coop/sd/governance One of our most dedicated volunteers, Stephen Michel, has spear-headed that and helped put that all together. Holacracy is about how to set responsibilities and authorities and work together to get things done. It's not democracy focused exactly and is not appropriate for the fundamental policies and governance that would be the Board and Bylaws. Holacracy has parallels but is more for who has what roles in the working team. We still need to finalize our bylaws (anyone interested in helping us with this valuable project of finalizing our multi-stakeholder platform-co-op bylaws as an optimal model, we'd love the help). I have a new (and first) kid, and that's taken my energy away from this for a bit, but I'm part-way through getting to the next stage of bylaws draft (we're at about 3rd draft I'd say). This weekend, we have a table at Linuxfest Northwest (but I'm not there). We have a new Community Director: https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/blog/new-community-director and he's at LFNW along with our lead developer. We switched our planning to more agile/scrum style and using a new tool for that at https://tree.taiga.io/project/snowdrift/ We also moved the wiki stuff to a new subdirectory: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/ We also are getting toward being done with a code reboot, and then we're on track to pushing ahead toward finally operating. Lots to do though still. Thanks for everyone's continued interest. Cheers, Aaron co-founder, Snowdrift.coop signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Announce mailing list Announce@lists.snowdrift.coop https://lists.snowdrift.coop/mailman/listinfo/announce
