Re: [omi] omi Digest, Vol 3, Issue 15

Thank you. -corey scher 510.387-2010 Please excuse the typos from my mobile device. -------- Original message -------- From: Anthony Di Franco <di.franco(a)gmail.com> Date: 04/26/2013 12:38 AM (GMT-07:00) To: Tom Fitzpatrick <fitzsnaggle(a)gmail.com> Cc: omi(a)lists.sudoroom.org Subject: Re: [omi] omi Digest, Vol 3, Issue 15 B​rilliant.​ On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 12:25 AM, Tom Fitzpatrick <fitzsnaggle(a)gmail.com> wrote: A couple of years ago when I was lurking OSE heavily, they were talking about how to get more people involved and utilize all of the people in their network. They failed at this tremendously. A major reason was that they required most people to come to Missouri to really be involved and already have the skills they needed. For other projects they made proposals and had people bid on them to develop, but this would only produce 1 iteration of the device - which is not so good. Marcin refused to alter the GVSC at all. He was convinced that this set of machines was the only set that should be built - however there are many synergies to be considered and many patterns that need to be tried. He ignored that fact that most people live in cities and that people of flooding in to them at an accelerated pace. He ignored a large lesson of Pattern Language that much of the concept was based on - the emotion needs to be there and a sense of ownership has to be there. Morale is multiplicative. Decision making has to be made at the right scale. Around that time they were talk on the forums about making it more social. They released a survey and had people make profiles. They talked about how funds were allocated - but it wasn't all forthcoming - Marcin complained loudly about all of his time being spent writing blog posts and pacifying people that he wasn't stealing their money. I suggested that people be able to pick which projects they funded to deaf ears. There were suggestions of gamifying, of giving everyone a personal blog, of different layers of solidity in the documentation (work being codified more and more as it was proven to work.) None of this came to pass because it wasn't there at the beginnning. The morale was sapped very quickly - collaborators were turned away in droves. DIYDrones did it right. That is the reason the have thrived and why they are not all in prison or largely ignored - even if they are on watchlists. They added a social component in the beginning - blogs posts, profiles, maps - and they bootstrapped from the beginning. It started as hobby and then they started selling kits because no good ones existed. Now Chris Anderson has quit his job as the editor of Wire to run the company with a high school student from Mexico he met from the site. Then there is Alchematter. It is a site being made by one of Marcin's collorabotors to basically be Instructables that you can fork - changing the design slightly, the materials - but being able to branch design and see how it connects - sort of like what James Burke has talked about with his Knowledge Web (which also hasn't come out) but for developing technology rather than just exploring it. OSE missed its opportunity to become the repository for all the worlds Open Hardware projects. Its real value has been how inspiring the collection of material in its Wiki is and the idea of being able to compete with industrial machine companies, public utilities, financial institutions - regardless of the value of any of its designs. If they had harnessed that - getting the amateurs involved with the experts - catologing all the forks, I'm sure the parts of the GVSC that actually mattered would be made by now. You can't pitch to people all the time. High minded talk can only motivate you for so long before it isn't yours anymore - no goal makes that being controlled worth it, the process affects the product. The meaning has to come from inside. Ask for help and show them it is fun. Let people choose the direction of their learning - there is no need to tell them what is important - that will only reflect your own opinion. Realize that building skills take years and that there is no "if we just." That makes you write off the amateurs because they don't have the skills you need immediately. If you catch yourself thinking that, realize that time won't stop once the goal has been reached. There is always something on the path - a reason to change directions. Rather its - how do we get there, what do we do if we fail, why did we fail? If you have to convince people that this is the only way to save the world - its not their world anymore, and its not worth saving. On 4/25/13, omi-request(a)lists.sudoroom.org <omi-request(a)lists.sudoroom.org> wrote: