Open Everything Hollyhock Reportage

Some great reportage from the Open Everything Hollyhock retreat popped up online this week. If you really want to get a sense of what it was about, check out the Duane’s World Open Everything episode. I couldn’t embed it, but you can see it here.

This is the first of two parts from Duane Nickull’s show. It set’s the tone by showing the trip to Hollyhock, frames this issue with a teaser view of the speedgeeks and offers an interview with Hollyhock’s Joel Solomon. It also includes DW’s regular ‘code and tunes’ feature.

Also online this week, Julia Watson from Communicopia offered some reflections on her blog. Here’s a snippet description of the ‘leading open projects’ session from the event:

Executive coach Jeff Balin led a session on open leadership at the event.  He sees open leaders as those that find the intersection between idealism and practicality.  There is a healthy tension between the two.  Traditional thinking would set the two as opposites but Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and JFK were all leaders that found a way to make their ideals practical.  Open leaders see themselves not as top down authoritative decision makers but as facilitators to a discussion.  They aren’t threatened by divergent views but welcome differences as a way to represent the whole picture.

There is still more coming from the Hollyhock event, including a second Duane’s World eposide and a full collection of video speed geeks. I’ll post when these come online.

Constellation model in OSBR

Over the summer, Tonya and I published an article in Singapore’s Social Space journal about the constellation governance model used by the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Environmental Health. This is a way of organizing NGO partnerships in small clusters — or constellations — based around interest, skill and passion. Obviously, some similarities there to how many open source projects work.

The people at the Open Source Business Review picked up on this and asked to republish the article with an open source spin. It’s out today. Here’s the abstract:

The constellation model was developed by and for the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and the Environment. The model offers an innovative approach to organizing collaborative efforts in the social mission sector and shares various elements of the open source model. It emphasizes self-organizing and concrete action within a network of partner organizations working on a common issue.

Constellations are self-organizing action teams that operate within the broader strategic vision of a partnership. These constellations are outwardly focused, placing their attention on creating value for those in the external environment rather than on the partnership itself. While serious effort is invested into core partnership governance and management, most of the energy is devoted to the decision making, resources and collaborative effort required to create social value. The constellations drive and define the partnership.

The constellation model emerged from a deep understanding of the power of networks and peer production. Leadership rotates fluidly amongst partners, with each partner having the freedom to head up a constellation and to participate in constellations that carry out activities that are of more peripheral interest. The Internet provided the platform, the partner network enabled the expertise to align itself, and the goal of reducing chemical exposure in children kept the energy flowing.

Building on seven years of experience, this article provides an overview of the constellation model, discusses the results from the CPCHE, and identifies similarities and differences between the constellation and open source models.

This issue of Open Source Business Review is all about the intersection of open source and social innovation. Some interesting stuff, including a piece on the OLPC as educational innovation and something on the McConnell Foundation’s approach to community engagement.

Welcome wagon gratitude, and early to-do list

It’s only three days in, and I feel very much at home here in the Mozilla Toronto office. The welcome has been awesome. Office IRC even more fun than what I left behind at Shuttleworth. Whiteboard-assisted lunch adjudication. Emergent over consumption of espresso. All very good things. I’m very grateful for the friendly welcome wagon.

My Mozilla Toronto office colleagues wave at the blogosphere

Most of this week is focused on learning curve, checking in with people and figuring out early priorities. The main things on my immediate to-do list include:

• Get up to speed calls with Frank, David, Gerv and Zak
• Set up and figure out how Mozilla tech stuff works — IRC, phone, etc.
• Talk to Tristan Nitot about Barcelona MozCamp, and Moz Europe in general
• Preparation for Foundation board meeting in early October
• Planning for Foundation All Hands, happening end of October in Mountain View
• Work with Seneca people on possible Teaching Open Source track at FSOSS
• Lots of background reading, especially legal and financial stuff
• Ubuntu-ize new Thinkpad (if it ever arrives)
• A ton and a half of talking to people and asking questions

The learning curve side of all this is fun, and intense. I’d been warned. Extra thanks to Frank and David who have already spent a ton of time helping me understand the deep ins-and-outs of what the Foundation is already working on. And, to Connor and Johnathan here in Toronto for useful answers about Mozilla lore and history.

In the next few weeks, my to-do list will start to include some bigger picture things, including deeper thinking on new Foundation programs and pitching in on Mitchell’s 2010 goals effort. Also, I’m hoping to to meet with a good number of folks in Mountain View for early conversations. I’m going to be there from October 6 -9. If you’re there and want to connect, please let me know.

Evolving Shuttleworth theory of change

One of the first things that I took on in my Shuttleworth open philanthropy gig was to help the team develop a ‘theory of change‘. The aim was two-fold: create a simple compass to guide internal decisions and develop a tool to help the rest of the world understand what we’re up to. Basically, we wanted a snapshot of how our collective brain works as a team.

Well, that was 18 months ago. We’ve had at least two all staffs, a dozen small group chats and countless online conversations since. And we’ve produced many iterations, at least one of which I have blogged about here. Not surprising. That’s how strategic planning-y things often go, especially when they are intentionally open ended like this one.

What is surprising was how useful all of this conversation has been in aligning our everyday thinking. Words that we didn’t have before — words we invented for the theory of change — have become a part of everyday thinking and decision making in the office. And, things we’ve believed in for a long time, like transparency and open licensing, have actually become a more real part of our work. Which, in the end, was probably the point.

As I leave the Foundation (last day today), I promised to do one more iteration based on recent conversations. It looks like this [big version] …

The aim was to simplify as much as possible, just showing the essence. Also, there are lots of changes to some of the core language we are using.

Also, I agreed to write up a series of notes describing each element on the theory of change with a little more detail. I’ve done this as a (pretty ugly) slide deck …

In the near future, our designer Eugene Badenhorst will soon take a shot at making the above diagram real pretty and then doing a small booklet based on the slides.

In the meantime, I highly encourage you to start adding thoughts into the mix, especially if you work closely with the Shuttleworth Foundation. Are we on the right track? If we aren’t, what’s missing? If we are, how close is our theory to our practice? Where do we need to work harder? Where are we full of it?

The idea is that this snapshot of our collective brain will continue to evolve, even after the pretty design. Getting feedback — good and bad –  from people who work with us is a critical part of this. Leave comments here, or send mail to Steve Song (the new lead on this), Helen and I.

Open Sourcing Cambodia

I love meeting practical people working hard to implement big dreams. Noy Shoung is one of those people. He’s trying to infuse open source into how Cambodians enter the computing age. And he’s making some headway.

Noy is the Deputy Secretary General (In Charge of Human Capacity Building and Free/Open Source Software) at National ICT Development Authority (NiDA). Cool title to have. And, one that is hard earned. Noy’s built up a team inside NiDA to localize open source desktop apps into Khmer (a language too small to be interesting to Microsoft), build up open source development skills amongst young people (still early days on this one) and train end users on Linux, Open Office and Firefox (20,000 people and counting). He’s also the major champion behind Khmer OS, a localized OpenSuse distribution.

What’s interesting is that Noy’s headway is built on very practical foundations: most Cambodians don’t speak English, especially outside Phnom Penh. KhmerOS and related applications are the fastest route to computer skills for these people. And, these people want computer skills. So, Noy’s small army of 45 public servants is training people up, with most of the training happening in provinces and smaller cities. He’s also offering training to university students — most of whom show up without ever having used a computer — who can’t afford to go to private computer tutoring schools.

Noy’s next step is to localize Ubuntu and update some of the existing apps (there have been some problems with Suse KhmerOS). He also plans expand the developer and sysadmin tech training that he offers jointly with universities. And, he’s in the midst of updating the government’s FOSS Master Plan. If there are any folks out there reading this who have deep tech skills that they want to share to help with this effort, Noy has put out an open ended invite. It’s a fun and important thing to pitch into.

Open Everything Singapore

Good — but different — Open Everything in Singapore yesterday. We had about half local NGOs, half local social entrepreneurs and a very small smattering of the usual software / open content / open edu crowd.

The speedgeeks seemed like the big highlight for most people. Personally, I really enjoyed listening in on Gary Kwong as he answered questions about how the Mozilla community works and what’s going on with Chrome. Andrew Lowenthal’s wide ranging ‘open source for NGOs‘ talk and Giorgos Cheliotis overview of Creative Commons licensing were also great. These presentations dropped people fast and deep into basic open source thinking, which was what they wanted.

There was also a nice open philanthropy thread of sorts. Rich Fuchs talked about social hacking the internal knowledge management systems at IDRC. With his work on ‘rolling PCR’s‘, Rich helped IDRC move from a traditional ‘fill in this form’ internal learning processes to an approach that is much more oriented to conversation and interaction (with podcasts and cool unconferency events rolled in for good measure). I also peppered in a few of the simple things we tried at telecentre.org and Shuttleworth, including replacing most internal reporting with public blogging.

All in all, an interesting event. Very useful in terms of a bridge from ‘open everything’ thinking into the mainstream NGO and social entreprenuership world. We need more of that. Thanks to Caroline, Sharifah and everyone the Lien Centre for making it all happen. And three cheers to Heidi at Ford Foundation who may just starting blogging about her grantmaking. May the force be with you.

Inspired in Phnom Penh

Hanging with Samoeun Sothyro last week left me inspired and hopeful. Sothyro is is the communications manager at a small environmental NGO in Phnom Penh. He’s also the guy charged with building an online knowledge sharing network amongst IDRC-backed research organizations in Cambodia. These are groups working on everything from natural resource management to human rights law to community internet access.

It’s not an easy gig. Sothyro and I met with about 15 of these orgs early this year. While they all had vision and excitement about swapping information, most also felt succeeding online wasn’t going to be easy. In the months since these meetings, Sothyro has rallied support and convinced people they get there if they just focus on simple things.

One of the big barriers in Cambodia remains good, affordable Internet access — even in Phnom Penh. A basic, shared access 1 megabit office connection is $US1200+ a month. This is slower than my cable modem in Toronto and 20 times the price. Along with some colleagues, Sothyro has started talking to ISPs about getting deep discounts if all the members of his buy as a block. I joined him on a few ISP meetings while in Cambodia last week, and it looks like the idea may get traction. If it does, it’s an immediate ‘let’s use the internet more’ win for the research network partners.

Sothyro also wants to create a very simple, bloggish site that shows people it’s not such a big deal to post their own content. He showed me a MS Word mockup. As I was giving him feedback, I showed the new telecentre.org Ning site. A light bulb went on. He had the mockup working on Ning — in both English and Khmer! — in 24 hours. He then rolled it out to partners at a meeting we were both at, making it way easier for people to give feedback. It also showed them that swapping their own information online isn’t going to be that hard. [side niggle with Ning: We found another site that had done Ning Khmer interface translation but could build off what they'd done. The Ning people should make it way easier to share and leverage other people's localizations.]

Why was I inspired? Because here’s a guy in a place where people are skeptical about the possibility of getting stuff done on online (and with good reason), and he’s just running ahead and doing it with passion. It’s energizing to be around people like this and see them move. Go, Sothyro! And lemme know if you need any help along the way.

PS. This is the last trip I will be doing for IDRC for quite a long while, I suspect. End of an era. Strange.

Open Hollyhocked: Hearts, Minds and Snowballs

Almost in Phnom Penh, and Open Everything Hollyhock is world away. But a wonderful world it was. Thirty five passionate, generous and smart people gathered amidst the trees and mountains of British Columbia to rap about the art, science and spirit of ‘open’. It was a great week of sparks and insights, building enough momentum that the Open Everything snowball may now be slowly rolling downhill.

Like the Web of Change events that inspired it, the Open Everything retreat was a real mix of head and heart. On the head side, we took a number of runs at asking ‘what’s open?’ and mapping different open domains (lots of good docs about this on the wiki). We also did the now-traditional speedgeek showcasing open projects in areas as diverse as software, education, philanthropy and sustainable housing (videos coming soon). On the heart side, we had an open leadership session (find your inner purpose and follow it) led by Jeff Balin and p2p coaching session under the banner ‘personal board of directors’.

This head / heart mix led to some pretty deep people connections. As Zak said: people didn’t have their game face on, and that meant you could go further than at a traditional conference. This was especially impressive given the diversity of participants. Old open source hands. Serious social change grantmakers looking to loop open into their practice. Open standards activists. People inventing the new domain of open eduction. Change agents trying to promote open collaborative practices in big institutions. Idea hackers and social innovators. Despite the diversity, it felt like a room filled with kindred spirits.

My deepest personal light bulb was around ‘what is open?’. Listening to people talk, it was clear that there are a couple of rough clusters that we’re talking about — values (sharing, transparency, the commons), things (software, songs, textbooks) and processes (creation, management, learning). We trow ‘open’ at all of these things. Yet, what open means is likely a bit different for each, especially if you want to ‘test’ whether something is open or not. I am going to go through the wiki notes and post something bigger on this in the next week or so.

Thanks (again!) to everyone who made this amazing event happen! There certainly will be a next time. A number of people including Danese, Duane, Erika, Helen, Jeff and Zaheda have already expressed interest in shaping future events — the annual retreat (I will stay involved), local events (I’ll likely do fewer of these in future) and possibly something specific on open leadership (a new idea that emerged at Hollyhock). If there are others that want to help drive events or evolve the wiki content, jump in and let everyone know. Let’s see if we can get this open everything snowball rolling.

Summit Reflections: Community, Education and More Mozillians

Meeting 400 passionate and accomplished Mozillians at the Firefox+ Summit this summer deepened my conviction that Mozilla is about much more than just software: it’s a community committed to making sure participation and openness remain baked into the everyday experience of using the internet. The people I met at the Summit have made this big idea a reality. And, as Mitchell posted earlier today, this community has a great deal more to contribute to the open internet. The best is yet to come.

Hopefully, some of this ‘yet to come’ can be sparked by re-focusing and re-energizing the Mozilla Foundation. At the Summit, about 40 people gathered in a Foundation 2.0 session. I’ve finally got around to posting notes on this session on the Mozilla wiki. Typing up the notes reinforced three ‘what the Foundation needs to be doing’ themes that have been spinning around in my mind for the past month:

1. Community health. I am not sure if ‘community health’ is the right term or not, but it’s clear that people are looking to the Foundation to help connect dots and fill gaps amongst the various communities that make up Mozilla. I agree that the Foundation should step up to the plate on this, although I still wonder where we’ll be able to add the most value and make the most difference. David Boswell has a post up on this today, which will hopefully generate a good pool of ideas to draw from.

2. Education. I’ve posted before about open source education. People seem excited about this area, especially efforts that bring energetic students who want to both learn and contribute into the Mozilla community. The challenge is figuring out how to do this well beyond existing experiments like the courses at Seneca. At the Summit, a number of people expressed an interest in digging into this question and helping to find people who might run Mozilla-related courses. Also, MoMo volunteer Gary Kwong actually has gone ahead set up a new course in Singapore. There is momentum and energy here. As as a way to move things along, the Foundation should probably gather potential ‘Mozilla educators’ over the coming months — could be FTF or could be virtual — to hammer out some concrete ideas for action in this area.

3. Reaching out to (a few million) more Mozillians. There was also considerable support at the Summit for deeper engagement with the 200 million people who use Mozilla products. Some people talked about this as movement building. Others talked about outreach. The theme was the same: find ways to encourage people excited about Mozilla products to also get excited about our values … and then give them ways to participate and belong. As with education, the challenge now is one of defining concrete action. There were suggestions related to ‘a user bill of rights for data’ and also around the existing Mozilla Manifesto. It will be important for the Foundation to define a modest and achievable in this area soon, and then just try it out.

When typing up the notes, I was also stumble across a suggestion to dig into Mozilla’s role as a public benefit organization that mashes up non-profit and business strategies:

We should align with other key ‘social enterprises‘ that are synergistic with Mozilla’s values as a way to increase the web of participation, community alignment and consistent voice.

This may not be a major theme, but I do think it’s interesting and important. I had a good chat with John Lilly in Whistler about doing some sort of tech social enterprise summit over the coming year — an event that would bring together people like Mozilla, Participatory Culture Foundation and others using a social enterprise approach to keep the internet open.

While my head is down finishing work for Shuttleworth and others, I have to admit that all the ‘what Mozilla Foundation can do’ questions keep bouncing into my conciousness. I figured I should post just to snapshot my current thinking. I can’t wait to dig into all of this full time at the end of September.

PS. Thanks fot Kev Needham for the great Summit shot under CC license.