[IAEP] (engineering) capacity building

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 09:29, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> We discussed recently making improvements to the Getting Involved page
> ( http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-June/001510.html
> ).
>
> I feel it would serve us to maintain "job" listings, on the Getting
> Involved page, linked to from each team's page and posted at the end
> of Walter's Sugar Digest: "We need someone to do..."
>
> I agree 100% with Tomeu that recruitment needs to be targeted to where
> prequalified candidates are. For example in the case of the marketing
> team I have built a short list of advertising industry fora, all of
> which have free job listings and accept nonprofits, ideal for students
> seeking experience. I have also identified some business school
> marketing professors whom I will pitch to personally for class
> projects. I want to start this recruitment drive in September (after
> my move & vacation) and get contributors to work on merchandising,
> school visits etc.
>
> Concerning publications, the wider the reach (Ars Technica compared to
> LWN for example), the less likely they would let us publish a guest
> piece for recruitment (if anyone allowed it). Stating our case on blog
> planets, and word of mouth which includes IRC, in each case referring
> to a reworked Getting Involved page, seems to me an efficient approach
> for the target.

I wasn't thinking either of posting articles about recruitment on
those places, rather to get our organization known. Most of the people
that know that Sugar exists think we are part of OLPC, or that we have
funding and a paid development team or that we have abandoned the OLPC
cause and are focusing on the "rich kids".

Once FLOSS people know that we are a global grassroots organization
working on an exciting technology that can have a bigger impact that
any consumer product, we'll be in a much better position for asking
for help.

> Most organizations reaching a size bigger than we are now have a
> person doing human resources who handles recruitment in liaison with
> each team. I'm not worried about building a large and effective
> marketing team (hasn't been my priority up to now), but I share
> Tomeu's concerns about recruiting engineers.

But keep in mind that this is human resources with a twist: we are
asking people with a very specific set of skills to work for us for
free. Also, we are looking for totally self-directed people, we don't
have a management team. That's why I would call it community
management rather than HR management.

Regards,

Tomeu

> Sean
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Caroline Meeks<solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I agree, we need to target for volunteers that already have the skills we
>> need.
>>
>> I think there are a lot of open source developers who want to help but don't
>> think they have the skills we need. For instance I wonder how many eJabber
>> or Moodle developers know we need them?  Our XS side is really lagging in
>> community and I think one reason is that everyone thinks of Sugar as a
>> desktop linux project.
>>
>> Perhaps if we focused on some specific areas we could use some help, defined
>> some tasks, and asked on their mailing lists and message boards we might get
>> some high quality volunteers who wouldn't need that much help coming up to
>> speed.
>>
>> I think a lot of the development work we need to do next is on the XS and
>> creating integration between the XS and Sugar and Activities.  For instance
>> GConpris and another even larger body of educational content both have
>> teacher administrtion pieces that would be really helpful for classrooms if
>> they were ported/integrated with the XS.  I don't feel like the people who
>> work in the server side code communties even know we need them.
>>
>> We should assess what is important to do, even if we don;t currently have
>> the people who have the time and skills to do it, what skills we need to get
>> it done, then let the communities that have those skills know we need them.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 2:48 AM, David Van Assche <dvanassche at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> One thing that comes to mind here is to guerilla market in irc
>>> channels... usually these are already full of developers and its just
>>> a matter of looking at the projects around, going to their respective
>>> channels, and let them briefly know wht sugar is and ask if they have
>>> time to spend on any other projects... still a long shot, but much
>>> more direct...
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>>> > Hi all,
>>> >
>>> > has been suggested that maybe we should code less and instead invest
>>> > more time mentoring newcomers.
>>> >
>>> > Though this is something very sensible to suggest and a good
>>> > recommendation in most occasions, I'm afraid is not what Sugar Labs
>>> > needs now. I say this after more than two years welcoming developers
>>> > that were attracted by the OLPC mission but that never had contact
>>> > with FOSS development before: has resulted in a few very big successes
>>> > but far less than expected.
>>> >
>>> > My suggestions are:
>>> >
>>> > == Send our message to channels that reach "already activated" people ==
>>> >
>>> > By "already activated" meaning people who are already FOSS
>>> > contributors or volunteers in grassroots organizations. If we grow our
>>> > community of these people, we may reach a position where we can
>>> > fruitfully introduce random people and help them contribute
>>> > successfully.
>>> >
>>> > Right now we are getting ourselves known in the general public (kudos
>>> > to Sean), but this is a very inefficient way of increasing our
>>> > contributors base. Nor the message is appropriate for FOSS developers
>>> > nor we use channels that specifically reach them.
>>> >
>>> > Concrete actions: publish articles in the Ubuntu, Fedora, GNOME,
>>> > Mandriva, etc "planets" and in specialized outlets like LWN, GNOME
>>> > Journal, Ars Technica, etc. making very clear our non-profit nature,
>>> > governance model, educational impact, relationships to other FOSS
>>> > projects, etc.
>>> >
>>> > == Understand better how current contributors got to contribute ==
>>> >
>>> > We have this knowledge in some of our heads, but aren't putting it in
>>> > common nor profiting from it. How did you got to know about Sugar? Why
>>> > did you establish contact with the Sugar community? Which was your
>>> > first contribution? Why did you kept contributing? What are your
>>> > suggestions for improving? Etc.
>>> >
>>> > Concrete action: publish interviews to existing members with similar
>>> > questions and debate how we can improve the volunteering experience.
>>> >
>>> > Regards,
>>> >
>>> > Tomeu
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> > IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Milton Berle  - "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." -
>>> http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/milton_berle.html
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Caroline Meeks
>> Solution Grove
>> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>
>> 617-500-3488 - Office
>> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>