CODE3: Collaborative Project Development through Continuous Community Direct Engagement.

Why do some collaborations work and others fall apart? Collaborations are the activities of cohesive communities working toward common goals. Yet, so often, a host of issues, cultural, technical, style of communication, thwart the best intended, well resourced efforts. Carlos Miranda Levy, drawing on 10 years of experience building, working with and in community will highlight some of the essential elements of what works, what doesn't and why. He will use examples from the open source movement such as PHPNuke, PostNuke, Drupal, Civicspace and the Digital Vision Collaboration Framework at Stanford to illustrate his case.

Carlos Miranda Levy is a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University sponsored by Google. He has been recognized by CNN as one of Latin America's 20 most influential people on the Internet, for being the founder of CIVILA, one of the largest virtual community networks in Latin America engaging millions of people every month in a host of collaborative environments, cultural and human development initiatives.

Community Collaborative and Continuous Direct Engagement in the Design Development and Deployment Process (CODE3)

A horizontal approach and combination of methodology, techniques and tools for making possible the direct engagement of a community in the process of building their own development solutions and initiatives.

Rather than a top-down or bottom-up approach, CODE3 shows the many ways of implementing a horizontal approach to project development, management and growth, the tools that can be used and the techniques to deal with diverse skills, interests and communication and participation levels.

Practicing what we preach, the presentation will be an example of horizontal communication, community participation and open collaboration. People attending will have access to a list of all the topics (listed below) and will be presented a preliminary roadmap that sugests doing a short introduction covering points 1 and 2 below. At this point a brief pause will be doneto sugest focusing on points 7 and 8 and to allow participants to disagree and decide which topics are the most relevant or even to add new topics to the discussion. Those attending will have the opportunity of receiving detailed documentation covering all points listed below.

1. Why a Special Approach for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies Projects

• The Different Nature of ICT Projects
• What determines the success of an ICT Project
• What Drives Users Behavior and Drives their Response
• The Perils of Intermediation
• The Benefits of a Collaborative and Continuous Development Processes for ICT Projects

2. Differences from a Conventional Development Process

• From discrete to continuous.
• From intermediated to direct.
• From top-down / bottom-up to horizontal.
• From anonynomous contribution to value recognition.
• From unknown decission process to documented and trackable evolution.
• From partial (individual) observation to complete (social) monitoring.
• From making up profiles to real users needs and prefererences.
• From standardization to customization.
• Stakeholders and Forces in Conflict
• End Users and Stakeholders.
• Management (Funders or Policy Makers).
• Researchers and Designers.
• Developers.

3. Value Propositions

• Value to the Community or Society
• Value to the Provider
• Value to the Individual User
• Value of Participating

4. User and Community Profiles 

• Needs and Preferences.
• of the user (individual).
• of the community (social).
• Relationships.
• Actual and potential.
• Assessment.
• of the user (individual).
• of the community (social).
• Acknowledging Diversity.
• Technical, cultural and collaborative issues.

5. Strategies for Identifying User Skills and Assigning Roles

• According to their activity:
• Proactive, Reactive, Passive (lurkers), Helpers, Inactive.
• According to their decission making:
• Early adopters, Leaders, Followers.
• According to their perception and style:
• structured and organized, unstructured and casual, instinctive.
• According to their skill levels:
• with technology in general
• advanced, casual, limited.
• with of our environment.
• advanced, casual, limited.
• with the issues our environment serves.
• experienced, casual, limited.

6. The Basics of Collaboration

• Shared vision.
• finding a comon interest among diversity.
• the challenge of diversity.
• addressing users and community needs and preferences.
• the importance of transparency.
• community ownership through direct participation and empowerment.
• Motivation.
• clearly identifiable benefits for each actor involved.
• perception of the benefits.
• ackowledging individual contribution.
• from communication to participation to collaboration.
• Clear Rules.
• for participation, interaction and collaboration.
• for decission making.
• for conflict solving.
• for implementation.
• Flexible and Accessible Structure.
• diverse tools and mechanism for feedback and participation.
• different communication and collaboration styles.
• elements of communication for collaboration.
• track of incremental and progressive development and individual contribution.
• Definition of workgroups and work layers.
• logistics: planning and implementation.
• content.
• current functionality.
• new features.
• visual interface.
• support: documentation and assistance.
• technological aspects.
• Room for Innovation and Improvement.
• The importance of openness.
• Guidance.
• Documentation, support, moderation and mediation.

7. The Development Process

• Sharing and Validating the Vision.
• Assumptions, use practices, expectations, real life situations and cases.
• Roadmap.
• Where we are coming from.
• Where we are.
• Where we are going.
• Stages based Planning.
• Concept Demonstration, Pilot Phase, Scaling.
• Version focused Development.
• Minor Version Changes: Interim Corrections and Improvements.
• Major Version Changes: New features and functionality.
• Announcements and consultations.
• Deciding and scheduling changes.
• Real time implementation and testing.
• Random testing.
• Voluntary testing.
• Mirror testing.
• Tools for Feedback.
• Open discussions.
• Surveys and Polls.
• Intermediation from usability group.
• Monitoring traffic and behavior.
• Feedback forms.

8. Dealing with Conflict

• Forces in conflict:
• Designers, Developers, Management (Funders or Policy Makers) and End Users.
• Compromise and previous agreement.
• Shared vision.
• Goals.
• Priorities.
• Stages and time-frames.
• The importance of VOTES:
• Validation.
• Openness.
• Transparency.
• Emphasys.
• Shared vision.
• Definition of priorities, goals, time frames, evaluation methods, progress and success indicators.
• Deferring Conflict.
• Stages and versions as wildcards.
• New subgroups and sublayers: modules and themes.
• The danger of forking.
• Copyrights and intellectual property from collaborative work.

9. The Cost of Collaboration

• Paid Personnel.
• Infrastructure.
• Infostructure.
• Moderation.
• Content Organization.
• The paradox of saving time by spending more time.

10. Best Practices and Real Life Examples

• PHPNuke vs. PostNuke: Forking from an impatience community.
• Snitz Forum: A dragging and bleeding community.
• Drupal: An active and motivated community.
• Civicspace: A focused and oriented community.
• Digital Vision Collaboration Framework v2.0: A hybrid community.