[Eg-oversight-board] Ideas for fostering community participation: survey, IRC practice time

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi Yamil,

On 8/14/2013 3:06 PM, Yamil Suarez wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I wanted to bring up a couple of things by email instead of during the EOB meeting or perhaps both. As a board we had discussed how we could increase community participation. Also, as a member of DIG I am trying to increase DIG participation, specially since participation has been down recently. At DIG's August monthly meeting I suggested two ideas that run parallel to the board's interest, and I wanted to share them with the board.
>
> My first suggestion was to create a DIG participation survey to see what is keeping people from participating in DIG, how to better influence them to participate, and to gauge their current understanding of DIG. We are still just starting to plan this survey, but I wondered if the EOB would like to eventually use a similar approach of creating a general or targeted survey. For example, to get a better understanding of what is keeping folks from participating, and to get ideas of how they can be influence, etc.
+1

The DIG survey might be a nice way to see how a survey will work and to 
further adapt the approach based on what we learn.

>
> My second idea, inspired by the DIG survey discussion is to offer IRC training and practice time. Kathy already made a very nice tutorial page for using IRC [1], though I can't seem to find a link from the chat page[2] to it. I would like to try officially reserving a time on the EG IRC channel for people to practice using IRC commands without feeling like they are interrupting others or that they will embarrass themselves. I would specifically like to schedule this practice time soon after one of our conferences where excitement will be hopefully still be running high. Though we can also have this meeting at a different time of the year, or more than once.
+1

  I've made a mental not to add the quick start guide to the IRC page, 
but, since the community web site is moving to WordPress soon, I've been 
holding off on it until the transition is complete.
>
> These all makes me wonder if we want to come up with other online events meant to promote participation without waiting for the next conference. For example, for DIG we started discussing having a Google Hangout based DIG training session or even a DIG "open house". By open house I meant a time to give a quick DIG intro presentation and have time for viewers to ask questions about our process, etc.
I like the open house idea for DIG. I also was just thinking today that 
I would like to see a return to regular community meetings in the IRC 
channels. It gets more people from the community in IRC at a time where 
they don't feel like they are disturbing others and it also gives every 
a chance to come up to speed with the things the different community 
groups are doing. In the past, I know there have been reports from the 
developers, DIG, the web team, etc.

However, I was thinking it might also be nice if there could be a 
standing agenda item where Evergreen sites might talk about Evergreen 
projects (development or otherwise) that they are currently 
planning/working on. It would be a good way for the community to hear 
what others are doing and maybe join together on projects of mutual 
interest.

This might not be what you were looking for, Yamil, but I thought I 
would throw it out there as an idea since it was already on my mind.

Kathy

>
> Thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
> Yamil
>
>
>
>
> [1] http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=community:irc-quick-start&s[]=irc&s[]=quick&s[]=start
>
> [2] http://evergreen-ils.org/irc.php
>
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