Communicating Open App

our core offering (graph search across the emerging Giant Global Graph and federated instances of OpenApp)

To me that sounds like quite a change of focus from "a suite of of integrated and open sourced apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising."

Have to admit, whilst I understand the ultimate need for such systems to exist, and that in order to build "a suite of of integrated and open sourced apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising" properly and in a way that scales, such lofty goals inevitably come onto the table, I was kinda hoping this project would be a little less ambitious and a little more pragmatic (like Loomio and Cobudget seem to be).

As a potential user I'm really not too bothered about "graph search across the emerging Giant Global Graph" in the short term. I just want functional tools to use now.

I think part of my fear comes from having known and met lots of tech people over the years who've had very similar goals and have also had a inclination to perfectionism - resulting in very little running code ever actually getting released (at least from an end user perspective), despite oodles of talent.

But maybe the time has indeed finally come for doing things properly? An increasing number of the underlying tools/ libraries needed to build such systems do seem to now exist.

I have a preference for funding to come from entrepreneurs who want to develop apps

Could you elaborate? Do you mean tech entreprenuers who code themselves funding with their time? or time and money? or what? And what about entrepreneurs who want to use (as opposed to develop) apps? Those that see the need for such tools but who don't code themselves. Where do they fit in?

demos of what we believe to be the ‘OpenApp difference’.

What are you thinking of here @simontegg @ahdinosaur? What exactly would such demos demonstrate? Are such demos what you are now working on (alongside "a simple website, some content and better docs and README ")?

Hope all these thoughts and questions are useful somehow! :)

Just to add, I think we need to think about who are audiences are.

From my perspective I can see at least two segments here:

1. People who want to use the tools (who aren't developers and beyond hearing a few nice shiny words like 'open source' and 'decentralised' or 'distributed' don't really care/ understand/ need to know the technical details of how those tools work behind the scenes)

2. Developers who are excited about the challenge of building the tools (who want to know the technical vision and need to know the nitty gritty details).

The communication document @simontegg and @ahdinosaur have been working on seem to be more focussed on group 2. This makes sense in turns of attracting more developers with aligned goals. But I'd argue the the "simple website" and most of the comms would perhaps be better aimed at group 1 with a 'developers' link somewhere for group 2.

Of course, I probably don't need to say this (I note the Loomio site doesn't even have a 'developers' link anywhere on the home page). Just thinking out load really and trying to make sure that all the people who are inspired by Loomio/ Cobudget and “a suite of of integrated and open sourced apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising” remain exited (or get even more excited) when they see the Open Apps website (instead of being immediately turned off by technical stuff they don't really yet understand, e.g. talk of “graph search across the emerging Giant Global Graph”). I mean “graph search across the emerging Giant Global Graph” is incredibly exciting and inspiring to those who grok it, but is completely meaningless to most people.

I think I'm with Simon on this. We have been loosely connected to a planned crowdfunding campaign with Sensorica (the second time this has been planned - the first died aborning). A lot of work. Sceptical that it will be worth the effort.

And the campaign attracts people who are looking for money but may not share enough of the same values to make the collaboration work.

So we look for developers who actually want to collaborate and connect their projects but who are not waiting for money before they do any work.

In other words, assemble the network first, then figure out how to make it financially sustainable. Which might or might not be crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a boost, but is it sustainable? How many times can you crowdfund for the same project?

(But yeah, “graph search across the emerging Giant Global Graph” doesn't turn me on, either...;)

And the campaign attracts people who are looking for money but may not share enough of the same values to make the collaboration work.

To be clear, my idea was to try and help crowdfund money to support the existing aligned developers and designers already working on Loomio, Cobudget and the OpenApp ecosystem, if they deem that useful (as opposed to raising funds to bring additional developers).

This has been a great discussion for surfacing assumptions, thanks everyone.

I agree that talking about the "why" is much more inspiring and more relevant to people in our 'vertical'. @joshuavial's original pitch was about actions (democratic organising) and this is what originally inspired people (including myself) about OpenApp.

I think these are useful appealing narratives and I'm open to including these in OpenApp comms material. What I'm unsure about how these connect to OpenApp's marketing strategy in particular. Does OpenApp need to appeal to users? Do Linux and MySQL need to appeal to users? Most people do not know what these are yet they are highly successful FOSS projects.

Delving deeper, Loomio is a cultural play, not a tech play. It cultural/action offering is collaborative decision-making. Loomio has uptake in groups that already get collaboration. However, these groups usually have 0 or small budgets. An important class of client are organisations that don't yet get collaboration but would like to. They sometimes become paying clients of Loomio's and pay for consulting work where Loomio helps facilitate a shift to more collaboration in the organisation. This requires a deep commitment on behalf of the org for it to work. For loomio, this is "high touch" consulting work and is difficult to scale.

Early on, we've talked about Holocracy orgs as potential clients of OpenApp. Holocracy isn't democratic but it implements some useful ideas. Holocracy is averse to consensus and more about delegation than collaboration. If the OpenApp narrative frontfoots cultural offerings like the above or is strongly associated with tools like loomio won't this create unnecessary friction in the uptake of OpenApp?

OpenApp's very core offering is super-generic and broadly applicable to orgs of all kinds (User account creation, group management, directory, search). However, it will have some built-in biases to democratic thinking. I was thinking that OpenApp's "cultural virus" would be more subtle: "Oh, you've been using these generic tools for a while, btw have you considered loomio and cobudget?"

tldr:
OpenApp should try to appeal to developers and entrepreneurs who want to do things in a different way. Apps that are part of the ecosystem have specific markets and narratives. To grow users, its more efficient to appeal to entrepreneurs and then let them target their own vertical.

Thanks @simontegg interesting thoughts. I'm mull them over :)

@richarddbartlett's and @alanna's comments in the doc have drawn out the following narrative from me.

There's a social problem: Netarchial Capitalism and power relations that favour giant pools of money.

A technical problem underlies this social problem: software architecture'd around platforms.

A bunch of smart people have been busy over the last decade and have a technical solution to the technical problem!: Linked Data.

A promising social alternative to the social problem is growing!: social enterprise, and power relations that favour people and high-trust groups.

OpenApp is implementing the technical solution! This gives social entrepreneurs an edge and evens up power relations between the people and the giant pools of money!

Bubblegum for everyone! :)

For more context:
Loomio plans to implement a plugin ecosystem and federated architecture in 2015. These are hard technical problems. I'm 70% sure that OpenApp know how to solve these problems (drawing on @ahdinosaur's experience in this area) and we would like to proof out how it would work.

At market rates a plugin ecosystem and federated architecture would cost upwards of, idk, $200k? to R&D and implement.

OpenApp could offer consulting and documentation on how to do that in a way that aligns with Loomio's core values (the commons). Doesn't this almost sound like a sustainable business model? :)

Good stuff @simontegg. My problem with these manifestos floating around is they tend to be disconnected from the social context. If we really want to shift social relations, we're going to have to work with the people who have been working on that problem for generations, and they get immediately turned off by shallow technoutopian narrative. They want to hear that you have a bit of a clue about e.g. identity politics, or classism, etc, before they're going to take you seriously.

Also FWIW I am growing increasingly wary of 'social enterprise' as a phrase. Yep there are lots of social enterprises doing good things, but there are also a lot of them that are (sometimes unwittingly) doing the dirty work of neoliberal governments, implementing their austerity agenda, privatising social services for profit.

I'm currently thinking 'commons-based peer-production' is a more potent and revolutionary concept, and it is a phrase that is impossible to colonise. The two important ingredients being: the ownership model, and the coordination technology. Using this terminology aligns you with Yochai Benkler too, who is basically the perfect antidote to the technoutopian strawman critique.

Sorry this is a bit of a ramble. I'm currently writing a blog post called 'putting some flesh on the technoutopian strawman' - hopefully I will be clearer in time :)

That's great advice @richarddbartlett

thanks everyone for contributing to this awesome discussion. :) i'd love to hear more about our visions for OpenApp and how we can communicate our collective vision. who would be interested in a hangout? http://whenisgood.net/zg474i5

also, i want to emphasize that @simontegg or i only represent a part of the whole. constraining to any single vision is bad, opening up to a diversity of visions is good, as long as we agree where we intersect.

in my next comment i'll respond more on the current discussion points with how i feel and how it relates to what i want to work on with regards to OpenApp.

I'm a little torn here, because I think what @richarddbartlett said is really important and would like to have a whole discussion about that. Maybe we should start another one that just focuses on that, and not the technical aspects?

(@ahdinosaur - looking forward to your next comment.)

At the same time, I want to hear more about plugin ecosystem and federated architecture...

P.S. @ahdinosaur I am not seeing the timezone option on the whenisgood page (mentioned in their faq). Anybody know how that works, or what timezone I am seeing? I would like to attend that hangout.

Love everyone's contributions. Personally I like the idea of 'tools to organise commons-based peer-production communities' is the perfect focus for open app. Sure, more traditional organisations might find these tools useful but we're actually trying to outcompete the traditional model so let's just focus on what we think the future should look like and let the past catch up under it's own steam.

I think there's broad agreement about how we communicate OpenApp in general. Confusion may have arisen because the current document has focused on the tech part of OpenApp (because that's the difficult part to communicate, and I still think its more strategic to get developers/entrepreneurs on board than it is to appeal to people in our vertical)

@ahdinosaur - when I responded using the whenisgood page, I got an error. I'll try again tomorrow. Or here is another possibility: http://doodle.com/.

(@bobhaugen: i fixed the whenisgood to include timezones. @lynnfoster: hmm, i just did a test response and it worked, but if it continues to be a problem we can change or you can just message me with your availability.)

as @borisfilipov suggested, i think there is benefit in scoping out our roadmap in terms of what deliverables we want to achieve, and then building up our infrastructure as we deliver.

i'd like to amend this strategy to be a balance between:
1) our short-term deliverables
2) our long-term design

and personally i usually prefer to take more time on solutions that are congruent with a long-term design instead of quick hacks, but that's just me and i'm happy if others prefer whatever is necessary to get software in the hands of users.

this is similar to the process we've already been following:
1) the deliverable is to support using Loomio groups in Co-Budget, and along that mission towards the short-term deliverable i've learned a lot about architectures/patterns/designs i'd like to see in OpenApp and recently started to put together some long-term system designs and short-term implementations that are not exact but at least congruent with the long-term design.
2) the deliverable is to create a user interface for searching people, groups, and related items within a network, and our long-term design is to have a generalized CRUD interface based on triple-store graph queries, so we've been iterating on designs for a "directory" while being mindful of when there is more information than just people and groups.

i think then we should lay out what deliverables we want, lay out how we each would want our ideal team to function and prioritize, and then organize into teams in whatever way makes sense. in the ideal case we all work as our passion drives us. @borisfilipov's comment is good as to what specific questions we need to answer as a team.

as for crowd-funding, i'm happy to continue working full-time on OpenApp without external funding, but if others want funding so they can work on OpenApp more, i'm happy to support that. however, as @bobhaugen says, i would rather focus on assembling our network and developing solutions than try to achieve financial nirvana right now, but i support a team with a focused deliverable trying to get immediate funding.

i think @josefdaviescoates is on point that we need better communication towards non-developers. and even within general developers, maybe Linked Data isn't the right focus. this goes back to the melting pot of all of our visions for OpenApp, as with diverse messages we can target communication to different audiences.

i really enjoy @richarddbartlett's idea to focus our message on "commons-based peer-production". that brings us back to @borisfilipov's comment, we should be using OpenApp to drive OpenApp. i would love if some initial deliverables focused on the economic infrastructure of a commons-based peer-production network like OpenApp, as well as the general needs of organizations like Enspiral, Camplight, etc.

now i need to write up a better description for the long-term design of the OpenApp.js stack i want to build. :)

Regarding federated architecture and graph search:

Currently, when someone downloads Loomio's source code and starts a new instance users would need 2 logins to access content on this own instance and the original loomio.org instance. While they may have started their own instance motivated by security concerns they may also wish to form groups from users across instances and easily invite users to discussions across instances. Its likely that instances off the main one are quiet because users don't see that much content but we really have no idea what's going on because users can't share data across instances. Each one is a silo.

On a federated architecture users and groups can share data across instances. You get your security concerns allayed and you get access to all the content across the entire ecosystem (if its available to you).

Lets assume a federated and discussion-first architecture. Users could start discussions from ad-hoc group of users. Graph search would enable you to start a discussion with "People who live in Wellington and have an interest in social justice" (a graph query). Graph search isn't that useful in silos, but it would be in a federated architecture.

I've just used a loomio-focused example, but there's plenty of other applications. A more near-term might be Enspiral using OpenApp for time-banking (amongst other things) and then agreeing with the Welington Time-banking community (on another instance) that our credits are interchangeable. What I like about this is it keeps the focus on people's identities and works around the social psychology. I haven't joined the Wellington Time-banking community, but I might do so through enspiral (my stronger identity)

@josefdaviescoates pretty much put my thoughts into words:

I was kinda hoping this project would be a little less ambitious and a little more pragmatic (like Loomio and Cobudget seem to be). As a potential user I’m really not too bothered about “graph search across the emerging Giant Global Graph” in the short term. I just want functional tools to use now. I think part of my fear comes from having known and met lots of tech people over the years who’ve had very similar goals and have also had a inclination to perfectionism - resulting in very little running code ever actually getting released (at least from an end user perspective), despite oodles of talent.

It's not that the beautiful technology and philosophy isn't important - it is, and it needs to be the foundation of the design and the motivation for the project. But I think the best way to express that beautiful technology and philosophy is through working software. It's through interacting with the people that want to use that working software and learning from them that the project will be steered in the right direction, and that social impact can occur.

@alanna - We (Mikorizal) agree totally that "through interacting with the people that want to use ... working software and learning from them that the project will be steered in the right direction, and that social impact can occur".

On the other hand, we already got working software. The way we work is to cycle between the general and the particular. So for example we generalized from a few previous projects before we started the NRP project with Sensorica. Now we are almost done with that and ready to re-generalize again. Which means to rethink everything, including the architecture.

So we are looking at what you all are doing and thinking seriously about whether we should go your way (tiny apps etc.). And if we did that, how would we go about it? (Breaking a huge system into tiny apps).

We had a lovely chat with @derekrazo and apparently will meet with more of you later today, so we'll see how it goes. But if we do that, we would only do so in collaboration with actual groups that want to use the software. We don't do product, we only do stuff that some live group that we like wants to use now.

"Group that we like" means that we think they are moving in some significant way in the direction of social/economic transformation.

@alanna I wholeheartedly agree with this:

" But I think the best way to express that beautiful technology and philosophy is through working software. It’s through interacting with the people that want to use that working software and learning from them that the project will be steered in the right direction, and that social impact can occur."

That is why I want to focus on building directoryApp. Want I don't want to do is spend time marketing an ecosystem that doesn't exist yet. Especially since one of these tools (cobudget) is not working software yet.

Some context:
Loomio had a 2 month value discovery phase. Then it deployed quickly into Enspiral and few other groups. After ~18 months in private beta it invested some effort in marketing although relationship building was important through the entire period.

Some (loaded) questions:
Should openApp focus on marketing cobudget and loomio?
How does this relate to our other deliverables?
1. minimally integrating loomio and cobudget groups
2. a UI for browsing people and group data "directoryApp"

Yeah Cobudget isn't working software yet, but the process behind it has been under real world testing for more than a year (collab funding). You can tell it's becoming a balanced project because by orienting its immediate goals to live users needs, the people working on it have felt the need for design, user testing, comms, and people management, and been motivated to get people focused on those things. Not because they thought they "should" but because they oriented the next step they were trying to accomplish toward things that require that stuff.

@simontegg it's totally sweet if you want to focus on Directory App. But my question then is, how quickly can we get to an MVP that real people are using? Whichever use case you think is the right one to start with is great - even if it's highly specialized and your users are other programmers. I totally trust you guys to make that call. But it's only through driving toward something immediately usable that you'll uncover all the problems you really need to solve.

I guess this discussion sort of started about Marketing, but that's not really what I'm talking about :p

Thanks @alanna.
I have to admit to being a bit frustrated with this discussion as the tone of my last comment may have suggested. I had a sleep and feel much better about it.

Cool. I didn't mean for anything I said to be a criticism @simontegg. I think you guys are doing amazing work. I'm engaging a bit black hat because I think this has real potential and I want to make sure it reaches it.

As a newbie in this discussion, I'm cautious about how to speak usefully. I may be coming in at a tangent, but following a first conversation with Derek Razo, I've had a go at drafting a narrative of Open App (attached) a little way into the future from the perspective of an imaginary user. [Richard Bartlett is to blame for the invented names by introducing me to Ursula Le Guin.] It's a bit plonking, but it might be a start...

And the illustrated user context (pace Joshua) is secondary to some underlying principles, that might be:
- mine past user experience to orient new users
- users contribute to experience base
- invite/encourage personal and group growth
- allow time and space for organic growth spurts or sequences
- enable small, simple and suggestive starts
- link both learning and functionality in the overall design

So the streams of work to build the protocols and discover and promote the meta-learning might be separate but parallel, employing different skills.

you're doing great work @theodoretaptiklis! very useful, i quite liked the story. :)

Just reading through all the comments now... along with the 'Communicating OpenApp doc. Thanks for sharing Mikey :)

At , programmer Eric Howe and I have developed an infrastructure for building integrated, community-based networks of distributed sites that can 'hook' onto open source apps. We're partners with P2P, and – by making it an investment co-op – have incorporated a means to help fund both the development of the core backbone/cms, as well as the integration of apps. How we develop us determined by community projects where we directly engage people out on the ground. I'm presently focused on pulling funding in through a project working with indigenous communities. I live in BC.. there's a lot going on with indigenous communities and tar sands at the moment.. I digress!

In summary, our focus is to provide a distributed, open source (PPL managed) framework that integrated P2P governance and technology.

We're in the process of updating design interface and content. Thanks to Stacco of P2P, I've picked up a little info on Budget Buckets.. pulling these sorts of ideas in as I go.

You can get an idea of new interface by going to main url: http://thecitizensmedia.com

To see latest content: http://thecitizensmedia.com/pub/section/what?id=1141

There's a more 'pro' video on the What page, but if you only have a few mins, the Why video probably best place to go: http://thecitizensmedia.com/pub/section/watch-video?id=1166

The idea is for CM to become a self organising system. Our target to achieve this is 7 years. Info re proposed governance etc on the site. Will align with values of P2P.

here's a link to a synopsis of the platform: http://thecitizensmedia.com/pub/section/the-platform?id=1119 (videos: http://bit.ly/1zMHwUG)

if you'd like to get into the sandbox (http://sandbox.thecitizensmedia.com/pub/home), you can use:
login: [email protected]
password: sandbox123

all self-funded.. by a manual snow removal company employing first nations. we lost a guy every year from alcohol related issues.. i'd had enough. started in part because i wanted to unite communities in hood and promote unity (circa olympic games, 2010.. i live in Whistler).

Happy to answer any questions.. and your feedback would be very warmly received. If this can help provide the ecosystem we're looking for here, then great! ...seeking p2p blessings pre-launch!

@stijndewinter and @carolinesmalley, i noticed you both filled out the whenisgood form for August 7th at 7am UTC (timezone helper). would you all be interested in a casual video chat to hear your stories in more bandwidth, discuss how we might collaborate on the Open App Ecosystem, and anything else we want to share? others are welcome too, i'm just coming from those who filled out the form that we haven't met/meet with.

Hi Mikey

I got about 1 hour maximum. If that is ok for everyone, I would love to have a casual chat. Shall we use G Hangouts?

@stijndewinter: yup, 1 hour is good with me. i'll send you an invite for a Google Hangout.

thanks! Looking forward to speaking with you!

hmm.. i tried to post link to event, but i guess just @mention me if you want an invite.

hey @ahdinosaur if I'm up and I remember I'll join, so please invite me, be nice to see some faces :)

getting back to the topic of this discussion, i.e. communicating the project, I still really miss the original bit of the description about "apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising".

I mean, I'm a big fan of commons-based peer production but 1) most people have no idea what that means, and 2) I'm willing to bet that lots of groups and organisations who could benefit from and/or will use Open App apps will not in fact be examples of commons-based peer production (indeed, isn't part of the whole idea that the apps act as cultural viruses that infect other types of organisations too, e.g. local authorities).

Having commons-based peer production in there is nice, but please, pretty please, can we get "transparent, democratic and decentralised organising" back in there too?! @simontegg @ahdinosaur @joshuavial (I'm tagging you as people whom I'm guessing all have permission to change the github blurb :) )

@ahdinosaur casual chat would be good! i'm with the 'keep it to an hour if that's good' :)

@josefdaviescoates, sure we're thinking about:

“A suite of interoperable tools which support transparent, democratic, and decentralized organizing.”

@simontegg so long as "transparent, democratic, and decentralized organizing" gets back in I'll be a happy boy :)