Tools and Resources
(and badges!)
Or
How to encourage participation in Evergreen II
Grace Dunbar
Vice President, Equinox Software
grace@esilibrary.com
Previously, on "How to encourage participation in Evergreen"...
Recognize your Barriers to Entry
- Insular Jargon
- (Perl, CSS, C Store, Cron job, MARC, LCSH, Git)
- Fear of not fitting in to the "clique"
- (I'm not one of the cool kids)
- But mostly, we...
- don't think we're qualified
- don't want to be wrong
- don't want to look stupid if we're wrong
- don't have TIME
- Choose something small
- Choose something that the team has a passion for
- Build a local team
- Get together in person!
To Do:
- Collaborate
-
Embrace (Polite) Contention
- It's okay to disagree! (In fact, it's actually helpful.)
- Compromise
Great Teams...
Open Source Communities succeed based on involvement from all levels of users.
Without it the project will ultimately fail.
Community participation and time is critical.
What can my organization do?
Be intentional about committing resources.
- create opportunity/space
- show up
- listen
- set aside dedicated time
- reward involvement
Allow for wild ideas and failure, after all, you're rewarding involvement, not success... right?
- You'd be amazed at what people will do for a T-shirt.
- Kudos and karma.
- Cookies! Pizza!
- Buttons, Stickers, Swag, Tchotchkes
- BADGES!
How to show appreciation.
And, finally, never underestimate the power of a kind word.
Moving on...
Let's Talk Tools
What do you need?
- A space to share ideas?
- A place to chat?
- A space to vote on ideas?
- A place to sketch up UI interfaces?
- A place to write & track requirements/responses?
- A place to report bugs/problems?
- A tool for tracking time/effort?
- A tool for writing documentation?
- A way to track participation?
So. Many. Options.
- IRC
- Wiki
- Moodle
- Trello
- Lighthouse
- Asana
- Jira
- Balsamiq
- etc. etc.
Barriers to entry
(Do we sense a theme?)
- Evaluate your needs - overkill is worse than nothing.
- Is it easy to learn/understand/use?
- Is it easy to access?
- Who is in "charge"?
- What are the "rules"?
- Is it interoperable?
Trello http://trello.com
Asana http://app.asana.com
Tick Tick http://ticktick.com
Transparent tools for task management
Transparent tools for development / bug tracking
Launchpad http://launchpad.net
Lighthouse http://lighthouseapp.net
Balsamiq https://balsamiq.com
The Ten Commandments
- Every idea has merit, but not every idea has equal merit
- Disagree if you disagree
- Software is not meant to solve political problems
- Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick 2.
- Consensus is not the same as unanimity
- Someone needs to be in charge
- Have deadlines
- Focus on outcomes
- Don't sweat the small stuff
- Be kind
Case study
Audience participation...
now's the time to run.
BADGES
Badgecraft for making and distributing badges.
PicMonkey for editing photos/creating badges.
grace@esilibrary.com
Encouraging Participation in Evergreen II: Tools and Resources (and badges!)
By Grace Dunbar
