OuiShare Talents - mapping the skills and interests of the OuiShare community

Thanks everyone for the input, I'm glad to hear so many of you like this approach!

@maud1 sounds very good, proposal created!

@jocelynibarra your help would be super valuable in defining the taxonomy part, I hope you participate in that! And also in helping to communicate the benefits to potential stakeholders (connectors, members, perhaps also people outside OuiShare?), it depends a bit on how we want to use this.

Grat job @juhomakkonen, thank you for the summary and the proposal :-) And thumbs up for the team who worked on it during the ummit ;-) I commented on the spreadsheet, but I think we need to add "domains of activity", to narrow down the expertise if we are more focused on certain dimensions. For example I know for myself I'm developing an expertise on collaborative food systems, it's a bit more specific than collaborative consumption. But it could be "mobility", "public policies", "urban development", etc. So we should add maybe a "domain of expertise" colum maybe for people who have some more specific zones of expertise... Or else we should allow people to add searchable tags to their areas of expertise to precise it. If someone looks for a specific talent, that will make his job easier I guess also.

hey everyone, I'm really sorry for joining the discussion so late since I have been offline, and am super happy to see this idea moving forward @juhomakkonen !

I do have a comment in regards to the choice of the tool for implementing this:

In the past two years, we've collectively decided on making a significant amount of website updates, though with slow progress, and therefore have invested a proportionally high amount of our funds in website development in comparison to some other areas. Until now, when I asked Connectors and talked to people more involved in the project like @auli and @jocelyn about which features we wanted to add to the website, there has been agreement that our aim was to create rich profiles for all our members that would enable people to connect more with each other and find other members based on organization, skills, interests etc.

This has been part of our "plan" since we started working on the project 2 years ago, which is why we decided in September 2014 to
1) add the database of all members to the website
2) Add search features and clickable tags, in which we just invested 2440 € via the participatory budget.

Users also can already be attributed to projects, events and communities they are part of.(>> See the full report on new website features)

Now I understand that Sharetribe would be a quick and easy solution to implement the OuiShare talents idea, however, please keep in mind: the reason we decided to invest in adding the database and further profile improvements to our website was because we had the aim to add more features to them in the future (just like this idea). So unless we plan to add more features on the website itself, I do not see why it makes any sense to have (+ 3 000 )member profiles on it, because people cannot actually do anything with them.

In conclusion, before we make a final decision on going for the Sharetribe option, I think it is important we reflect on past decisions we've made and answer the following questions:

• How do we expect people to use the OuiShare website? Is it our aim to direct all our traffic to one website that aggregates everything, or are we ok with having separate platforms for different functions?
• What should we do with the current member database? If we don't want to invest in adding further features, should we get rid of it?
• Do we generally want to develop the website further and invest more time and money in it?

These questions have been open for a while and I admit it has been quite challenging for me and Auli to bring them to the attention of everyone and understand the wishes and needs of the community in this respect. So hopefully this is a concrete case that will enable us to advance on discussing these questions together!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hi @francesca ,

Thanks so much for adding your valuable input! It was indeed the right call to block this decision before those topics have been discussed through.

The work @auli and others have done with the website is simply amazing! Building a huge project like this with such a small budget is a super impressive endeavor. I think that in the ideal world this is by far the best possible destination for this talent mapping initiative. When you build things from scratch, you get them to work exactly the way you want, and no off-the-shelf tool can offer that.

My only concern is whether the plan for the website is simply too ambitious. OuiShare doesn't have a big global budget, and building a website that maps everything, from events to communities to projects to members, together in a dynamic way, so all the members can sign up and edit this information - that's really really difficult to do well, even with a large budget. Many traditional corporations spend millions on their intra- & extranet projects with similar ambitions, and still it's quite common that those sites become deserts only used by a fraction of the employees. I think the reason for that is really often that one website simply tries to do too much, and serve too many different audiences. This is of course perfectly understandable - it's tempting to think that "it would make so much sense if you could do everything through the same platform!" However, my personal belief is that this trend is on its way out, and instead we're moving more towards "distributed intranets" - basically collections of tools that each do one specific thing really well. That explains the recent tremendous rise of enterprise SaaS tools.

I'll take another example from OuiShare context. We've been discussing the OuiShare Academy project with @elenadenaro @berniejmitchell @davidwe Chris and some others and concluded that there are actually three separate things under the umbrella of the Academy. One of them is the Talent project - which clearly is something lots of different people around OuiShare have been thinking about and working on at different times - the other is a project for sharing files (to replace the current Google Drive approach) and the third is an online education program similar to the mooc built by the Spanish team. Initially the idea was to build a platform that would have all these under the same roof, but after some discussions we concluded they should actually be treated as three separate entities. And those entities are all quite big already - the Spanish mooc tech platform alone cost €8k and the team felt they were not completely happy about it.

The challenge with any website is communicating the value proposition. If I visit a website and it's not clear to me from the beginning what the value is that I'm getting from that website, it's unlikely I will use it. The challenge with websites that do multiple things and serve multiple audiences is that there's no single value proposition, but many - and it becomes impossible to communicate those effectively.

In OuiShare's specific situation, there are lots of different potential user audiences, and the budget is limited. In that scenario in particular, I'd probably opt for choosing the "network of separate tools" instead of "one tool that does it all". It does have its downsides too - at the Summit many people also expressed their frustrations towards having all the different communication tools like Loomio, Slack, Google Drive, Facebook groups, main website, and so on. It does require coordination effort. However, I still believe that effort takes less work than the effort of trying to solve the issues by building a custom tool to solve all these challenges.

The role of the OuiShare website could perhaps be to be the one source that connects all the other tools in the network. For this purpose, it doesn't need to be super dynamic or have lots of fancy stuff - a bunch of more static pages, updated via a simple CMS, could be enough.

So, my take on the three questions you posed:
- The role of the website could be to link all the different OuiShare initiatives and tools together by the simplest of tools available in the web - hyperlinks. It could be the first source where to send someone new to OuiShare. It would be as low tech as possible, due to budget constraints.
- The reality is that it does seem to me that the current member db and the Sharetribe site easily become duplicates. I'd say we should make a decision: either keep the current member db and invest into it (and get rid of the Sharetribe site) or use the Sharetribe site and downplay the current member db. I'm fine with both options. This can be tested in a lean way though: we could keep the member db in website but use Sharetribe for a few months, and then see if the Sharetribe road is the way to go, or whether we should get back to the original member db plan after all.
- I think it still makes sense to invest money in the website, even if member db wouldn't be part of it in the future. Instead of adding features, I'd invest in working on the communication part - clarifying the role of the website, its value proposition and the way things are presented, and also communicating its role to the community. This can be a lot of work and that work should not be underestimated.

Now, I know it's easy for me to say something like this, as I haven't been involved with the current website so far, so I'm not at all emotionally attached to it. For those people who are, I know that this strategy could feel like all the work spent building it would be wasted. I don't see it that way. It's been an important learning experience, and has helped us understand where we want to go. It's natural evolution: you build something, it serves a purpose, and then you improve based on what you learned. I also think that the money and time spent so far should be treated as "sunk costs" - spending money or time on something shouldn't justify continuing to do that.

However, I'm also fine with moving forward with the current member database. After all, that approach definitely has many pros also, like was mentioned in the original starting post of the thread - it allows more flexibility in terms of custom development, the data is already there, it has some features Sharetribe doesn't, etc. And starting from scratch now with Sharetribe could reveal some hidden issues in the future that we just can't yet think of, since this is such a new idea.

Perhaps this proposal should be reformatted, since it really might be about deciding whether to focus on developing the current member db or use Sharetribe for storing that data instead, at least in the short term (say, next 6 months). Presented that way, the outcome of the vote might be way different than what it initially was. I also recognize that while I try to be as objective as I can, it might be difficult to me to write this proposal in a credible, objective way, without showing any bias towards Sharetribe. I can do it still, but it might be better if someone else did.

I agree @juhomakkonen proposal regarding leaving the role of the website for what is OS + links to different tools for different actions taking into account that every visitor have different needs:
- Being updated about our topics: link to Magazine´s
- Learning about our project: link to every project website
- Learning about our events going on: link to local OS fan pages from we create local events that then are post on the local groups
- Becoming a member: link to sharetribe

And also, I agree that we should invest a bit in communication as what we are is not clear enough in our current website, based on the thousand of inputs from newcomers.

Hi everyone,

sorry that I post here only now - but as said in the HO with @berniejmitchell, @juhomakkonen & @elenadenaro I really appreciate all the work that has been done during the summit and now of course also after - as e.g. the wonderful prototype which
makes it quite comprehensible how this will look like. I think this is also what it makes it really appealing to me - this is something we
could start right away. Taking into account @francesca ´s comments I am not sure whether it has to be an "either / or" solution - while of course I am tech-wise
in this case far away from knowledgeable I am wondering whether it wouldnt be possible to somehow aggregate data from various sources and display it the way needed?!

What I am definitely convinced is, that using something like the MVP built on Sharetribe will definitely help to get insights on what works, what doesnt and what is needed by the community. So what about limiting the users in the coming months e.g. to connectors only (similar to the "lean approach" that Juho suggests)? Playing around with a DB of 3k members is not a good idea at this stage IMHO. Also when framing it around where to store data, it could get political as well (storing under umbrella of commercial entity or the non-profit?).

Hard for me to write a sound proposal currently - maybe an idea comes up the following hours. I am happy though that this proposal revealed some issues that need a solution :)

NUMBER ONE - websites and platforms are a BEAST of a project so we should not underestimate what it takes to build and maintain one, especially one like OuiShare.

My 10 cents...
I am live on the web and I LOVE OuiShare - BUT - I only use ouishare.net site to send people to the magazine and events, even then I will often send them the event URL rather than the OuiShare one or a blog.

I am sorry - but the OuiShare profile part of the website does not work for me, adding details or searching it is painful and I think this job is better done on Sharetribe - we could add a link for our OuiShare profiles?

• If budget was not a question - making a killer member database on the ouishare.net would be great.

• I set up my Profile in 6 mins https://ouishare-talent.sharetribe.com/en/listings/213023-bernie-j-mitchell on the Sharetribe and connected with other people fast.

• RE: numbers - Always Always Always - 3000k people does not mean "we have' that many. I would guess 100 people MAX is invested in OuiShare (notice I said 'guess')

• Using the Sharetribe platform as an experiment until the next summit would be my suggestion - then we have ONLY wasted six months not time, budget and everything else. The web team can focus on something else on ouishare.net

Warning: This next bit might annoy you.... (and I was not at the summit)
Working on the Sharetribe talent thing could be something to REALLY get the connectors community connected - I can't help thinking if we focused on each other for a bit and connected our work and projects the whole OuiShare "thing" would benefit in the long run.

Communication, flow of information and engagement is an issue in OuiShare and I think this would help us understand that problem better.

What do you think?

cc @juhomakkonen @francesca @elenadenaro @elenadenaro @davidwe @thomasdonnebrink @francescocarollo