[Marketing] Website/Outreach Project

Mon Feb 26 11:12:37 PST 2024

Thank you, Brian, for such a full and thoughtful response. Lots of great context in there. 

That’s greatly appreciated. 

I’ll make a point of going through more thoroughly as there are also some important requirements and constraints noted and I’ll want to be sure I understand those as well as possible. 

You’re very welcome to play whatever role you like in this initiative including that of loyal opposition if that suits you. I consider that an important role in any enterprise.

I look forward to staying in touch throughout.

Thanks, again,

Scott.

From: Brian M Hamlin <maplabs at light42.com> 
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2024 10:45 AM
To: marketing at lists.osgeo.org
Cc: scott.mchale at shaw.ca
Subject: Re: [Marketing] Website/Outreach Project

On 2/26/24 07:24, Scott McHale via Marketing wrote:

Folks,

hello all - my comments inline .. this is a community org, I am discovering not prescribing here..

I’m not a marketing professional or website developer (or a GIS person, oddly) so I am definitely open to thoughts, corrections, and suggestions from everyone on my ideas and approach on the matter. 

humility can go a long ways in the long run.. great to see this new effort at #osgeo ScottMH

My initial interest in this change was specifically related to the process for gaining an OSGeo UserId and how best to communicate both the instructions and the value to potential new community members from varying backgrounds. Initial mailing list discussion seems to suggest there’s openness to addressing those specific issues but also review whether there are changes to the website, generally, which would also be of value.

I am a fixture with the #osgeo-sac group, as the "loyal opposition" not a key-signer.   I have participated in bringing up services online at #osgeo-sac that make use of the LDAP  OSGeo-ID.  The original founding group is aging out and/or dissipated. There are two dozen people on the SAC page and almost none of them actually make changes since the covid-19 time.  

A side-effect of the SAC services situation is - be careful what is promised to others. There is a modest amount of skilled admin time available, and some of these changes to inner services that rely on OSGeo LDAP ID are security-sensitive for real reasons.

In early days I enthusiastically visited coder meetings, university public events and hack-a-thons and promoted both #osgeo itself, and later the #osgeolive linux distribution.  At the same time, mobile apps became massive, and funding through the FAANG companies exploded. A net effect is that my own out reach efforts had very modest success.  As with any public outreach, the effort also attracted people with social skills deficit or other personal challenges. Thats OK!  but not really strengthening the dot-org.  I eventually wrote an email that promoted the #osgeolive linux as inclusive include "neuro-diverse" communities.. that email was met with silence, well-intentioned as it was.

Summary of this -- the OSGeo LDAP ID is used right now to access online services provided by OSGeo-SAC and not much else. That LDAP system is used for security-sensitive things as well as a general ID.  Uniquely identifying people on the vast globe, and building some sense of trust while actually in-real-life getting hack attempts, is not trivial.  

I believe #osgeo has to build on the local chapter concepts, to develop a trust (and revoke) mechanism over time, that can respond and grow in these times.  I believe there is a role for anonymity on the net for political reasons, however #osgeo is not setup to deal with this alone. There are many senior people in #osgeo who only use a logged and authenticated communication channel today. The new laws in the EU regarding chain of responsibility and public, govt ID for coding are going to make these lines even bolder in the near future.

My Intended Approach:

I will, on my end, take a lightweight Business Analysis project approach recognizing this is a volunteer organization and will try to make the effort as frictionless as possible for other contributors where I can. Obviously, if we end up taking on a significant effort as part of an agreed solution, more formality will make sense. 

1.	I’ll need help to better understand the context

1.	What we measure as an organization and what we consider success.

1.	Product installations, project contributions/contributors, membership, fundraising, other?
2.	Specifically related to the webpages: page visits, sign-ons, other?

2.	What internal and external stakeholders we need/intend to address.

1.	Assuming existing and prospective sponsors, members, contributors, and users (in addition to this committee and the board)
2.	Any specific business/org types (gov, academia, specific industries)?

3.	What we’re currently capable of as an organization in terms of implementing changes

1.	Constraints arising from org structure, technology choices, budget, etc.

4.	The market(s) we currently serve and whether there are specific areas of focus or challenge within those?

1.	I’m guessing there is a lot of this information floating around in our current organization and membership, but I’m also open to reaching out more broadly. I’ll need help understanding:

1.	Personas of our various stakeholders
2.	Best avenues for outreach

* measures of success.  The FOSS4G event system was the only revenue generating activity and a few years ago, open fighting occurred for control of that brand and approval process.  I do not know all the details but I believe that has been partly patched up now.  The current elected Board members are the ones to drive priority at this time, ultimately, but hours are short and there is much to do.

I personally am working with coding teams, groups of people who write software, partly including power users, OSM power users, and champions of Wikipedia and other very public data  sources.  These are not the only people to measure success! but when I comment, I am mostly thinking of those people.  Second I think that the individual person is the basic unit of intelligence, not collective legal forms.

* Product installations, project contributions/contributors, membership, fundraising, other?  The product I have long-term connection with is the #osgeolive linux setup. I care about it a lot, and it has been very successful for #osgeo. Two other people who also care a lot about that project are currently Board members.  The disk is not ready to be used in production. It takes intermediate skill to install and customize it (I do that).  I know all the contents, the teams that produce the contents, and the way it works, very very well.  

Our #osgeolive success is measured in several ways, and would need its own white paper to explain well from my point of view. I will refrain from random comments on the main website - Jody Garnett has been a champion at all stages for the website and I trust Jody very much for his insights there.

* What internal and external stakeholders we need/intend to address?  for me, the other main open knowledge orgs are my guiding stars, the formal standards groups like OGC are the law-and-order, and massive FAANG-MSFT American corporations are the Monarchy of the network that I use every day.  I am an environmentalist and my personal priority is climate and the natural world.

* What we’re currently capable of as an organization in terms of implementing changes  -- as mentioned above, be cautious with the LDAP identity assignment itself. Make opportunities to collaborate, but be careful with the technical implementation, which is subject to real-world attacks (it already happened more than once).

* The market(s) we currently serve -- I joined #osgeo to be with coders and the projects they release. This is not the only stakeholder group, now including the Board level at OSGeo.  Note that for me, there are several disparate coding communities that really do not interact much with each other, yet the content is related. Java is a first-class citizen on #osgeolive for example. We did not connect with the Leaflet crowd, and after some deals, they actively dislike #osgeo in my experience. Lots of other smaller examples.

* best avenues for outreach -- in real life?  on the network? mass media? social media?  all very different. In some ways there is no best, especially for resource constrained volunteer org. It is a "do-ocracy" so, someone making progress with any of that, is welcome IMHO.

Having these questions – and others you might suggest – answered will help me put together a plan to dig in more deeply on stakeholder needs and then draft a current state analysis speaking to what we’re trying to do and where stakeholders feel requirements are being met, or not.

>From there, we can agree a means for getting a few solutions – likely of varying size and scope – to refine and prioritize. 

Please always feel free to give me your very honest opinions on whether my recommendations here are too much, too little, or just plain wrong. I’d rather re-think the whole thing now than get started on an effort that the team doesn’t think can create real value for us going forward.

* honest opinions on whether my recommendations here are too much, too little, or just plain wrong -- humility will go along way, thank you for this intro ScottMH.  Unfortunately, the 'honest' people are not the entire crowd on this Earth, and that includes greater osgeo dot org. They say the most severe tenure fights are in the English department, where the rewards are few and the alternative is barely survival.   SO it is in the fringe of geospatial. You will find horrible conflicts between well-meaning people, and complacency among the most privelaged. Dont be shocked, the work must continue. Did I mention Climate?  :-/

  all for now in Berkeley   -Brian M Hamlin    /  MAPLABS  /  OSGeoLive PSC

All thoughts appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott.

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