[OLPC-Philippines] All-hands online meeting: the backstory

[Mel Chua]

And more. That's all the forwards that I have for the backstory; I'll 
continue by forwarding the current threads to this list. Thanks for 
putting up with the big dump of information to make sense of, and please 
holler if you have any questions about what the heck we were discussing!

Lesson learned: retroactively being radically transparent is very 
difficult, if not impossible. ;) Best to do it from the start.

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 > forward as a core team. We can also work on strengthening our team 
dynamics and synching philosophies, which is pivotal since we will be 
working closely together in the following months.

Here's the crux of it: are we the core team, period - or are we the core 
team *so far*? (If it's the former, then I'd consider myself to not be 
on the "core team" yet, since I don't understand the expectations that 
entails.) Arbitrarily delineating "insiders" and "outsiders" with no 
criteria as to how you progress from one to the other eventually becomes 
an artificial cap on community growth.

[Note: (2) was personal information excluded from this forward. --Mel]

 > (3)    I completely agree with Mel and Cherry regarding “ownership” 
of the OLPC project. Our success will be rooted in our volunteer base. 
However, we need to work on our capacity (or volunteer model) to handle 
inquiries and cultivate our member base – so that we make proper use of 
their time and resource. Our ability to do so will be dependent on the 
framework/model of our organization (We are leaning towards a hybrid of 
Waveplace and OLPC Headquarters. However, there are some nuances that we 
still need to drill into).

Totally! All the more reason to publicly discuss how we're going to 
handle incoming volunteers/requests so that the folks who may be 
volunteering/requesting things from us have a chance to participate.

Mind you, I don't expect many (if any) of them to join in - I think that 
if we're lucky, maybe we'll get 5 observers, 2 of whom might talk at 
some point. But we should give them the option! And publish full logs 
afterwards for the people who couldn't come - we *must* default to 
transparency if we want other people to step up and take their own 
initiatives on this, because *that* is what is going to give us that 
capacity to handle inquiries and cultivate our member base. (I mean, I 
sure don't want to handle all those inquiries and do all that 
cultivation on my own...)

 > (4)    Our core group represents a cross-section of different 
specialists. We are also the most active members despite the waning 
energy and participation throughout the past 2 years. Because of this, I 
think we have already established credibility.

I'll note that much of this credibility has been established through our 
posts on a publicly archived mailing lists. If they don't see what we're 
doing, we get no street cred for it. Publish. ;) Credibility wanes fast 
when you can't see what someone's doing.

 > Lets work on something concrete, present it to the entire group, and 
ask for feedback.

+1. Definitely bring concrete proposals to the meeting! That's a lot of 
what will help it be a good meeting that moves us forward. Present them 
to the folks on this email thread at the same time as the people not yet 
on this email thread get the opportunity to see it - there's no reason 
why I need to see or approve (for example) a proposal from Sandeep 
before anyone else would; we've got no sensitive (or time-sensitive) 
information to be wary of.

 > We can use whatever we produce in this meeting as a springboard for 
open discussions in the future. I am confident that once we take our 
first full-step forward, we will still be in the position to cultivate 
and grow our membership base.

An open meeting *is* our first full-step forward. If that's how we want 
to do this entire thing, that's how we should operate from day 1.

Still posting meeting info to the list in ~24 hours unless I hear direct 
objections otherwise. ;)

--Mel