Doug Belshaw mentioned a great tool to figure out some important things to get the Social Coding Movement, the co-shared community parts, going:
Architecture of Participation
The term comes from Tim O’Reilly: “I’ve come to use the term “the architecture of participation” to describe the nature of systems that are designed for user contribution”. Doug mentions the following 8 points to give due attention to:
- A clear mission — why does this project exist? what is it setting out to achieve?
- An invitation to participate — do you have an unambiguous call to action?
- Easy onboarding — are there small, simple tasks/activities that new volunteers can begin with?
- A modular approach — do volunteers have to commit to helping with everything, or is there a way which they can use their knowledge, skills, and interests to contribute to part of the project?
- Strong leadership — do the people in control of the project embody the mission? do they have the respect of volunteers? have they got the capacity to make the project a success?
- Ways of working openly and transparently — does the project have secret areas, or is everything out in the open?
- Backchannels and watercoolers — are there ‘social’ spaces for members of the project to interact over and above those focused on project aims?
- Celebration of milestones — does the project recognise the efforts and input of volunteers?
Here is some more background by Laura Hilliger:
Developed by Doug Belshaw for We Are Open Co-op, licensed CC-BY.