DrupalCON summary and next steps
[This is a cross-post from my blog.]
We had a very successful BoF on Wednesday. The goal was to discusss how the Drupal community would manage our relationship with the Knight Foundation.
For those who were not at DrupalCON, here are the basics:
-- The Knight Foundation (KF) provides funding for open-source development, products and innovations that are in line with their core goal: improving communities through the free exchange of news and information.
-- KF needs help from the community to review proposals that are specific to Drupal.
-- The program will be ongoing, with the deadlines and length of projects to vary on a case-by-case basis.
-- KF handles all the project management and grant management issues for acceptaed proposals.
-- The Drupal community will try a two-step process for applications.
1) Submit an idea for community consideration.
2) Ideas that get community support will become project issues in a special project queue. These proposals will get serious review from the community in preparation for passing to the KF for final evaluation.
Let me stress that this is not a contest; it is an ongoing program that is an extension of work that KF is already doing. They are looking to the community to help, since we agree that Drupal and KF share some common goals, particularly about the purpose of open-source software and the desire to enable open communications.
There will be some additional detail forthcoming over on g.d.o in the KF group. For now, you can see the meeting minutes from the BoF.
In summary, here is where we stand on the process:
-- Moshe and Josh are working on some CCK and voting widgets for use in submitting proposals via g.d.o.
-- Gary Kebbel and his team are working on some language so that we all know exactly what types of projects they wish to fund.
-- I will be creating a project page on drupal.org.
We are going to have a check-in on or about March 21st, to make sure that we are on track with the work to be done. At that checkpoint, we will create the next round of tasks -- which will be focused on three aspects:
-- Defining and communicating the goals of the program.
-- Marketing the program to the community.
-- Lining up volunteers to help manage the process.
I have to say that I am very excited about the potential here. And I think that the members of the KF who participated in the BoF were equally excited to see how the community responded and began to self-organize.
As a final note, let me stress that this will be an open process. We are striving for complete transparency regarding the proposals and the process for recommending them to the KF. If you were not at DrupalCON and want to participate, come on over and join the KF group. Everyone is welcome.
Using g.d.o
For anyone interested in seeing the new g.d.o. functions which we'll be using for this now (they'll be here soon, but not quite ready), there's a lot already happening on groupsbeta.drupal.org.
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
KF
That's great!
I'm looking forward to helping out
I am the guy who has extensive experience in grantmaking as a designer of grant systems, as a grant giver (I ran a grant program for a time), and as a grant writer.
Awesome! And a suggestion on organizing suggestions
As we will both be proposing projects to be funded, and the process by which we rank and intend to support projects we recommend to the Knight Foundation, I make this suggestion:
Enable free tagging keywords for the group, and allow Discussions (formerly Stories) and Wikis to be tagged as either
to help us keep the two types of proposals straight. That is, project for ideas we think make sense for Knight to fund, and process for ideas about how to structure our decisionmaking and plans to evaluate and support projects.
To be very clear, the Drupal community is asked to become involved in the process of reviewing projects. Finding a new way to evaluate the many, many proposals Knight has received is a large part of their motivation here. We, the Drupal community are fortunate enough to get the benefit of this trial of a new way to grant money because we submitted so many proposals to the News Challenge (a separate, ongoing program). I think suggestions about how we could help support and manage Knight-funded projects to successful completion would also be appreciated.
Ben, Very Helpful Categorization. What about...
It may be too soon to try to clarify subcategories within project and process.
But, from my (process) perspective as a very local news and information organization, the "news business" is about how relevant global and local news is aggregated and categorized and how people (formerly known as audience) use, respond to and produce the news. So it is about tools, stories and people in a structured, two-way medium.
I suppose this thinking can be framed as a question: What is the underlying or overarching philosophy of the project assessment process? How do we define the process clearly enough to judge the effectiveness of a proposed projects?
I hope these are fair questions, and I am not going over ground already covered.
lowVocal
See the meeting minutes from the BoF at http://groups.drupal.org/node/9461
On point one, we are asking Kinght for clarity from their end. Really, we want three or four bullet points that we can all remember. Those points will have to mesh with the Drupal philosophy, as documented in the handbooks.
On point two, we're going for a minimalist approach at first. A rather holistic rating system will be employed on proposals made here. Items that hit a certain threshold of interest will then be moved to an issue queue for more serious consideration. There are some notes covering the axes on which proposals will be rated during this formal review process.
--
http://ken.therickards.com/
http://savannahnow.com/user/2
http://blufftontoday.com/user/3
Done
And the current posts have been tagged.
This is not freetagging, however. It is required, fixed tag selection.
--
http://ken.therickards.com/
http://savannahnow.com/user/2
http://blufftontoday.com/user/3
g.d.o/knight-challenge <==> News Challenge
This wasn't discussed during the Knight Foundation BoF at DrupalCON, but will News Challenge proposals making use of Drupal necessarily be driven through our g.d.o/knight-foundation process? Perhaps we could use more definition and/or discussion re: encouraging/discouraging/eliminating Drupal-powered proposals being submitted directly to the News Challenge?
AFAIK no
The News Challenge is a separate entity from this. Some project entries there may be built/based on Drupal, but I believe this project is specifically based on the KF's interest in realizing the potential for Drupal as a community/news platform.
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
right
We'll put this on the list of things for the Knight folks to tell us.
In general, I would say, if your News Challenge idea is powered by Drupal -- but does not require any new Drupal features (that is, if Drupal is the technology, not the proposal) -- then you should go through the News Challenge.
There are differences in the timelines, rules, and goals of the two programs as well, which we need to highlight.
--
http://ken.therickards.com/
http://savannahnow.com/user/2
http://blufftontoday.com/user/3
Defining "new Drupal features"
Would we say "new Drupal features", means : modifications to core? modifications to contributor modules? new modules developed as part of the proposed project?
I would say
"New Drupal features" counts as any code, documentation, patches -- core or contributed -- that will be released on Drupal.org.
If you intend to write your own module and never release it, the community should not accept your proposal through this program. A News Challenge grant of that sort would sink or swim on its own merits.
--
http://ken.therickards.com/
http://savannahnow.com/user/2
http://blufftontoday.com/user/3