#CLS11 - Facilitating International Collaboration session
11:00 Saturday
Etherpad notes: http://notes.openmrs.org/international
http://web.archive.org/liveweb/http://notes.openmrs.org/ep/pad/view/international/latest
Attendees -- add your name here:
- Michael Downey, OpenMRS, michael at openmrs dot org - @downeym
- Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation, sumanah @ wikimedia dot org
- Jacob Redding - Drupal Association - jredding@--asssociation--drupal--org--
- Jim Eastman - Open Source Bridge - Pure Imagination - jim@jimeastman.com
- Kerry Finsand - Portland Community Manager at Groupon - @grouponpdx
- Stephen Spector - OpenStack - stephen.spector@openstack.org ; following via notes while in another session
- Alexandre Lefebvre, OW2 - alexandre.lefebvre@ow2.org
- Koray Löker - Pardus Linux - loker@pardus dot org.tr
- Welcome! (virtually)
Goals, questions, needs, etc.
- Languages, translation, etc
- Cultures
- Time zones
- Asynchronous vs. synchronous
- Online vs. offline communication
- Travel, passports, etc.
- People with bandwidth & connectivity issues
- Perceptions of culture and what it means to the org
- Crowdsourced translation vs. central, quality assurance, etc.
- In a global project, are we ever allowed to go to sleep?
- How to do real-time meetings?
- How to internationalize/localize software?
- Language-specific sub-communities for your project, how to feel connected
Notes and dialogue
- Some of us have previous experience dealing with multiple parts of the world, but some do not!
- Tokenism - i.e., when people say/think: "You are _____ so you should know about ______"
- What about group meetings?
- Alternate times each period (week, etc.)
- IRC logs - should be searchable!
- Apache rule: "if it didn't happen in email, it didn't happen." Phone & IRC are great, but there's a rule that someone has to mail the list & give it 72 hours before decision is MADE
- Crisis Commons needs to be transparent. Uses Skype - freely available (as in beer). Invite people to rooms. Can have a public dialog
- What free alternatives are there to skype? (not much!)
- The people you want to reach are indeed already there and installing Skype isn't a barrier to entry.
- Another good thing - they have to add you as a contact, so now you are in each other's contact lists, so it feels like you are approachable.
- IRC isn't always user-friendly for new or technically-challenged people. Freenode can be embedded in web pages
- A few people using Google+ Hangout for meetings. Some bandwidth issues for some people, but effective for small groups if they all have the bandwidth & tech capability.
- Conference calls - quality always stinks :(
- Hardware/equipment is often expensive
- Lots of alternatives: Skype, telephone, IRC, H.323 video/audio, Jabber/Asterisk, Adobe Connect ($), etc.
- People don't mute their mics - but with reminders, this gets better over time
- Some cultures are less "aggressive" in speaking up and speaking out during meetings
- Europeans, US, Asia, etc. -- jumping in, respecting agendas.
- Some people need 5 second blanks to jump in. Literally count (silently) a pause in the discussion!
- May try asking the silent people for their feedback (via IM back-channel or verbally in the call)
- Many people have quiet voices!
- Even when VoIP connection is fine, if there's an imbalance where the bigger team forgets about the small one on the other end of the line
- have video, or table cards with people's photos
- idea: make the in-person group split up into small groups to dial in!
- +1
- this is especially a problem if there's a cultural barrier where someone doesn't want to say negative things in meetings, bring conflict in
- Someone always needs to be driving meetings to ensure it's productive, inclusive of everyone.
- Corp people sometimes get training on running effective meetings in ways that community folks don't!
- Core contributors might not be best leader for doing "all the leader stuff"
- Corp people sometimes get training on running effective meetings in ways that community folks don't!
- Culture... what are good resources to discover good outreach models in specific places/populations?
- Drupal - deals with every place in the world! And sometimes there is a perception that an org is "coming in from the outside"
- depends on whether you're established as a brand or coming in brand new
- is there already a directory/dossier of grassroots community organizing efforts in different geographic locations/populations?
- better to work with established homegrown local organizations!
- Recognize (somehow) local/national chapters
- Wikimedia might be a good role model/
- Sounds like another good session topic!
- In-person meetings
- US sucks for physical in-person meetings!
- China & Russia - can use an agency
- Canada is much better in North America
- Co-location or at least before-after another conference to save money
- Asia is better for visas. Vietnam & Thailand
- Poor Australians, whom we forget, can get to Asia reasonably easily
- What are the goals of the meeting?
- Who are the intended audience/attendees?
- Take turns for the location, not to exclude the ones who cannot travel as easily
- Let the users run meetings, not the central organization
- Turkey would be an alternative.
- Re culture with Asia:
- Language is important! Don't just do it in English!
- "Our Japanese community really likes to talk in Japanese"
- Chinese, though, 3 strong -- traditional, simplified, & English. & Drupal's Simplified community run by a dude in Boston. Key: find those people, talk with them.
- Drupal got Chinese community to collaborate in one place. "we understand there's language barriers, but could we put that aside & choose 1 or 2 languages?" it worked.
- In South America, Drupal to run a conference in Portugese & Spanish, choosing -- for that conference -- to exclude English.
- Heartwarming story: communicating complicated concepts across natural languages, with BASIC.
- Reminder: when speaking English to non-native English speakers, be clear, fewer contractions, fewer collloqualisms & sports analogies
- Tip: translate them to Google Translate & back to see how they will seem!
- & idea: if you are communicating with someone in another language, autotranslate & include a note? Idea: include English original, machine translation, & a disclaimer.
- Wishlist: Google, GMail -- let me translate a whole thread from one language!
Share links to cool and useful tools and sites here:
- http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ - Time Zone comparison charts - good for meeting planning
- ETHERPAD! http://piratepad.net/
- http://www.freeconferencing.com - phone & skype conference calling, yes, it's free
- http://www.freenode.net/ - IRC - OpenMRS uses this as a 24x7 "support" room
- Seconding this, from Wikimedia.
- http://partychapp.appspot.com/ - Partychat - XMPP/Jabber group IM
- OpenMRS is experimenting with Google+ Hangouts for video meetings - bandwidth challenges can be annoying
- from IRC: <koray_pardus> http://www.ipv6.net.tr/fi6en/ floss voip solution for ipv6 ifrastructure... I'll translate the page if anyone is curious about
- The new Google Groups UI does automatic translation of individual messages
- 37 signals - campfire
- bots to import IRC logs into wiki - then it's searchable
- Skype
- OpenHatch -- http://openhatch.org
- Microphones & headsets: what's recommended?
- I've had good luck with the Everyman model that Skype does (or did) sell online for ca. USD 20. - M. Downey