[OSCOM] Plan: OSCOM Revised (3 weeks for feedback)

Hi everyone,

please find my suggestions below - far from being complete!

Let's use this to start a thorough discussion and brainstorming.

In 3 weeks, I will summarize your input (see schedule below).

Take your time to read and enjoy :)

Sandro

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PLAN: OSCOM REVISED

* Purpose *

The purpose of this plan is to identify the projects and actions it 
needs to have the international organization for Open Source Content 
Management (OSCOM) gather momentum.

The proposed ideas should help to get a better understanding of the 
OSCOM goals and how they can be reached more efficiently and with more 
contributors.

This draft does not necessarily formulate the official view of the OSCOM 
board, it is rather a basis for discussion. The draft is far from being 
complete, any feedback is highly appreciated.

* Principles *

Open and transparent: All issues concerning this plan should be dealt 
with openly and in a transparent way.

Cooperation and participation: It is highly important that all involved 
persons act in a cooperative manner and that everyone can participate.

* Vision *

We want to establish OSCOM as the number one umbrella organization for 
all issues related to Open Source content management.

* Brainstorming *

Some brainstorming has been going on on the OSCOM general mailinglist. 
Most ideas have been included in this plan. The plan foresees that there 
will be one more round of brainstorming/discussion about the general 
content of this plan, as well as further brainstorming for each project 
of this plan.

* Organizing *

The detailed planning of projects will be done at a later point.

* Actions *

These are the next actions concerning this plan:

1. (3 weeks): discussion/brainstorming of this plan on OSCOM general 
mailinglist
- include as many as possible from the content management area

2. (1 week): summary of input, revision of plan
- done by Sandro Groganz + OSCOM board

3. (1 week): decision on acceptance of plan
- by 2/3 on OSCOM general mailinglist

4. (2 weeks): planning of projects
- priorities/schedule
- responsibilities
- next actions

* Projects List *

Please note that the term "projects" is being used in a wider sense and 
is not specifically aimed at software projects.

We need dedicated persons for most projects, who volunteer to be in 
charge. Feel free to add your here:

- Organization: Define Scope and Goals
- Organizations: Define Involved Groups and Projects
- Organization: Define Organizational Structure
- Organization: Bylaws
- Organization: Define Roles of President, Board, Members, Community
- Organization: Define Decision-Making
- Organization: Elections of President, Board, Members
- Organization: Generate new Members/Contributors
- Organizations: Affiliations
- Information: OSCOM Wiki
- Information: Definition of Terms
- Information: Collection of Resources
- Information: Collection of Events
- Information: Collection of Content Management Projects
- Information: Personal Page of OSCOM Members
- Information: CMS Matrix
- Information: Planet OSCOM
- Collaboration: Software Implementation
- Collaboration: Software Specification
- Collaboration: Student Projects
- Collaboration: Mailinglists
- Events: Conferences, Roadshows
- Events: OSCOM Awards

* Projects Details *


- Organization: Define Scope and Goals -


To establish OSCOM as the number one umbrella organization for all 
issues related to Open Source content management, we need to broaden its 
scope.

OSCOM should not only be about CMS, but include any kind of Free 
Software and Open Source content management application. This includes, 
Wikis, Weblogs, etc.

The wider scope makes perfect sense, given that CMS integrate Wiki and 
Weblog functionality and vice versa.

Seen from that perspective, it is one of the tasks of OSCOM to 
continuously define what is Open Source content management and bring the 
players in this area together.

The main goal of OSCOM is to foster innovation in the Open Source 
content management segment by creating the potential for information 
transfer between all involved persons.

To formulate the main goal in a different way: What is the unique 
selling point of OSCOM? It is the potential of becoming the main 
information hub for knowledge transfer within interest groups of the 
FOSS CMS segment (e.g. software projects, consultants, solution 
providers, etc.).

In this segment, information is critical for success. In this respect, 
OSCOM can be of benefit in two ways:

1. Distribution of commoditized knowledge, which is information that has 
become standard knowledge in our segment. This could for example be a 
Wikipedia page explaining what is WebDAV?

2. Distribution of first-hand information, which is information only 
available to an exclusive group of persons. Typically, such information 
is exchanged face-to-face at conferences, during talks or in private talks.


- Organizations: Define Involved Groups -


We'd like to involve the following groups in the Open Source content 
management segment:
- developers
- project managers
- consultants
- journalists
- vendors
- solution providers
- users/customers
- others? (feel free to add)

This is a list of projects which could be involved:
- MediaWiki
- TikiWiki
- WordPress
- FluxBlog
- Drupal
- Typo3
- Joomla!
- Magnolia
- Plone
- others? (feel free to add)


- Organization: Define Organizational Structure -


In essence, we do not change the organizational structure, we just 
define roles more clearly as well as the processes of participation.

The Apache Foundation-like structure of OSCOM is ok, but has been 
anticipated as too exclusive up-to-now. What is needed is a rather loose 
interpretation of the existing organizational structure, to give it a 
more inclusive spin and to allow more groups and persons to be involved 
with a low barrier of entry.

We want to keep the OSCOM foundation as a legal entity, mainly for the 
purpose of financial administration. This includes that final 
decision-making concerning financial matters is bound to the rules 
defined in the bylaws.

The OSCOM foundation thus only forms the very basic legal realm for the 
OSCOM community. All non-financial decisions should be made within the 
community, based on defined processes. These processes ensure that the 
community is actually in power of decision-making and that 
decision-making is effective.


- Organization: Bylaws -


Unfortunately, oscom.org is not accessible currently. Thus, I was not 
able to go through the bylaws and relate them to this plan.

I assume, that most things stay untouched by this plan. Nevertheless, if 
we see that certain things should be changed in the bylaws, we should do 
this now, because we have enough momentum to change things.

The major change I propose is that only the president and the board 
members are legal members of the OSCOM organization. The "normal" 
members, are not a legal subject of the OSCOM organization any more. 
This way, we strip down the organization to its core to have it deal 
with financial and legal matters only. (Following a suggestion by Paul 
Everitt)

We need someone in Switzerland, as OSCOM is there registered as a legal 
entity, who can fix issues for us.


- Organization: Define Roles of President, Board, Members, Community -


The roles of the president, the board, and the members are in general 
laid out in the Bylaws, but we might need to redefine or clear them a bit.

The president of OSCOM is in charge of representing OSCOM. He clearly 
needs to distinguish between his role as the OSCOM president and any 
other affiliations. Whenever he acts within his role as the president, 
he needs to follow the principles of OSCOM and pursuit the 
organization's goals.

The board is only in charge of decision-making when it comes to 
financial issues. Other then that, the board members are part of the 
OSCOM members and community. I suggest that the board members should 
represent the groups of OSCOM, thus it should include one representative 
from each group (see above).

OSCOM members are persons who actively participate in or already 
contributed to an OSCOM project, be it maintaining the events list or 
organizing a conference, etc. The term "member" is ambiguous, because it 
could be understood as a member of the OSCOM community or a member of 
the OSCOM organization. We need to make clear that someone is only 
called a member if these two criteria meet:
- the person is currently or has been active in the past
- and the person is elected by other members as a member

The OSCOM community simply comprises all persons interested in OSCOM, 
actively or passively.


- Organization: Define Decision-Making -


The basic formula is that we want bottom-up decision-making.

Existing members (which includes board members) can recommend new members.


- Organization: Elections of President, Board, Members -


The president could be elected every year, just like the Debian project 
does for its project manager. The goal is to ensure that the most 
dedicated persons become the president of OSCOM.

The board should consist of representatives of the interest groups in 
the FOSS CMS segment. This means we need to define the interest groups 
and perform elections for each representative as well. There should be 
elections for each board member. A board member should be elected by the 
OSCOM community, i.e. active and passive persons. Elections could be 
every 2nd year and not overlap with elections of the president for more 
then 3 months. Anyone can run for the elections, you don't have to be a 
member.

Members can be nominated by other members and elected by 1/4 of the 
members as long as there are less then 40 members. Max. 1/5th of votes 
can be negative. With more then 40 members, it is sufficient to have 
min. 10 positive votes. Given there are more then 40 members, you can 
become a member with min. 10 positive and max. 2 negative vote.


- Organization: Generate new Members/Contributors -


The goal of the proposed organizational structure of OSCOM is to provide 
an incentive for others to contribute to OSCOM. Thus, OSCOM invites 
everyone to participate and rewards active persons by becoming OSCOM 
members.

Especially in the current situation, we should actively seek for new 
members and invite representatives of related software projects, 
consultants, journalists, etc. to participate.


- Organizations: Affiliations -


OSCOM could affiliate with other organizations and identify potential 
common interests and projects, e.g.:

- http://www.odfalliance.org/join.asp (idea by Michi Wechner)
- FSF
- Open Source Initiative
- Typo3 Organization
- Apache Foundation
- LinuxTag
- others? (feel free to add)


- Information: OSCOM Wiki -


It would be great to make the main oscom.org portal a Wiki where 
everyone can contribute to. This allows for a simple way to 
collaboratively share information.

Alex Kempkens suggested to use a CMS instead, like the do on the Joomla! 
portal.

In the end, we need a solution which allows simple and effective 
information sharing and we need to know what kind of information is 
valuable to us.


- Information: Definition of Terms -


A kind of glossary on oscom.org, maintained in the Wiki. For example: 
What is an Enterprise Content Management System? What is WebDAV?

If there are already pages on Wikipedia, we could simply link there. We 
could also contribute to Wikipedia and just link from oscom.org.


- Information: Collection of Resources -


A collection of links to online resources. For example related 
organizations, articles, news, etc.


- Information: Collection of Events -


A collection of _all_ events in the content management segment, not only 
those organized by OSCOM.


- Information: Collection of Content Management Projects -


A page for each content management software project with basic 
information. Quality of the project is not an issue here, we simply want 
all projects listed. The OSCOM Awards make the difference when it comes 
to quality.


- Information: Personal Page of OSCOM Members -


Just like FSFE, each OSCOM member could have his personal area: 
http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows


- Information: CMS Matrix -


We need to be more active in maintaining the CMS matrix - how to do that?


- Information: Planet OSCOM -


Let's aggregate more feeds! Maybe add a contact form to the Planet page 
to provide new feeds.


- Collaboration: Software Implementation -


We need more thinking here, whether OSCOM should keep hosting and 
pushing collaborative software projects (like the WYSIWYG editors).

I would say yes, but not with highest priority. Once we really achieve 
such collaboration, this is a sign that there is a big need for it and 
previous information sharing has actually lead to working on a concrete 
result.

For the start, we should concentrate on knowledge transfer, which will 
hopefully foster collaboration in the software domain.


- Collaboration: Software Specification -


Maybe it would make sense to create a repository of basic 
specifications. For example, what should be included in a Weblog, a 
Wiki, a CMS, an Intranet, etc.? Not too detailed, but as a kind of 
quality assurance tool for project developers as well as customers/users.


- Collaboration: Student Projects -


OSCOM could collect information for students who would like to do an 
internship at a community/company/organization dealing with FOSS content 
management. We could provide tips, or a list of potential organizations.

We could also collect information about ongoing student projects. They 
could be in the field of actual software implementation, as well as 
sales analysis, etc.


- Collaboration: Mailinglists -


We keep the mailinglists we currently have. Let's see if we need some 
more in the future?


- Events: Conferences, Roadshows -


Conferences are good for face-to-face conversations and first-hand 
knowledge transfer. OSCOM should support everyone in organzing related 
conferences. We could do this by sharing experiences in the Wiki about 
previous events.

Roadshows are similar to conferences, but they happen at several places 
and rather focus on product presentations.


- Events: OSCOM Awards -


To foster the goals of OSCOM, we could issue OSCOM Awards once per year, 
where we reward persons or groups for certain achievements in the field 
of FOSS content management. The main award could be issued for the "Open 
Source Content Management Project of the Year". There could be other 
awards like "Open Source Content Management Event of the Year".