Drumbeat Projects

Framing questions & responses

• Is 'focus on participation, fundraising and impact' really the most important thing we can do for existing projects. If no, what else?

• What expectations should we set up in terms of more projects next year? How many? What kind? Where from? Our heads? Funnel?

• What do you think about Labs Challenge model replacing online project funnel as our open innovation effort (that's the proposal)?

• Where do you see the projects fitting into the 'connect w/ many more people / engage at scale?' goal that Mitchell has in mind? Do we try for things like the Cory project hoping they attract people? Or just treat projects as small reach / high impact for now?

• Matt's responses are here
  

Project Producer Scope, Capacity & Roles

Broadly speaking, Drumbeat's Project Support tasks can be divided into three core pieces of the pie in terms of how Project Producers like Henrik, Brett and Matt can devote their time in 2011:

1) Sourcing new projects

• Going out and finding cool new projects to add to the pipeline.
  

2) Supporting existing projects

• Hands-on support for existing projects.
  • Helping them with messaging, road-mapping, establishing agile work processes, etc. Ensuring they deliver on the targets set in their roadmap.
    

3) Enabling project self-service

• Providing the documentation and modeling projects need to effectively help themselves.
  • Self-service won't happen by itself -- it requires setting up, optimizing and automating good processes. Some of this is a web platform (Paul O) piece. But another big chunk of it is effective writing / documentation / storytelling.
    

Analysis:

• We currently suck at #3.
  • We aren't devoting enough capacity to #3 because we're too busy with #2. This is a catch-22 / vicious bottleneck we need to break in late 2010 / early 2011.

• The requirements for #3 will increase just before and after Batucada launch.
  • We have a real opportunity to take what we've already learned. Matt is eager to lead this -- but needs to clear plate to prioritize and focus. Batucada could provide forcing function here.
  • The good news: feels like we've learned a lot that we can now more effectively package, bundle, document and deliver
    

• It feels like we've made a conscious decision to de-prioritize #1.
  • e.g., shift in Henrik's focus. 
  • I think we need to remain agile and able to shift priorities in terms of top-tier projects though - one could imagine a cluster of privacy/trust related projects as my main focus, not specifically Privacy Icons, some projects demand little time during a specific period - maybe aim for 10 supported in 2011, but not all as high bandwidth as say, WMM and P2PU? (HM)
    
  • Also, I find it useful to prioritize larger pushes, knight-style, in targeted areas (art/open hardware/privacy/journalism) which will foster intake.
  • Questions: what about Brazil / global diversity piece for supported projects?
    
  • How do strategic goals around supported projects impact here? If we want to reach outside for cool new projects, who will go get them?
    
  • I think, once we nail the platform more projects will emerge, and we will hear about more.

• We have very limited capacity for projects at present.
  • Our three project producers are devoting only partial capacity to projects at present.
    
    • e.g., Matt: approx 50% of capacity currently devoted to projects
    • Henrik between 40
      • (vs. community management, web site, general Drumbeat program stuff)
  • Henrik: approx 40% capacity currently devoted to projects
    • (vs. x, y, z)
    • Brett: approx x% devoted to projects
      • (vs. WMM and Mozilla doc)
        

• Turning supported projects into real fundraising and participation engines still feels very high-touch.
  
  • Project leads are not naturally good at a) storytelling b) parsing particpation asks and c) coming up with fundraising. We can solve some of this through better training / modeling / documentation, but still feels like it's going to be high touch for forseeable future.
    

Recommendations for 2011

High-level feedback from Mark: "We're taking on too much -- so good to poke at that. What can we actually get done and do it well?"

• Continue to focus less on project sourcing. More on supporting existing projects and enabling real self-service & participation.
  • Drumbeat 2011 should still be about helping a thousand open web projects bloom. We need this to be low touch

• Schedule dedicated block of Matt's time to work on self-service piece around Batucada.
  
• It's not just a back-end / technology platform / Paul Osman thing -- need great documentation, content, copywriting around user experience, etc.
  

• Create clear list & plan for "who's supporting which project."
  
• Henrik, Matt + Brett should focus on a small group of projects/areas of focus that they want to push forward for 2011, rather than service whatever moves through the cue/funnel
  • Brett: will focus on web made movies and its spinoffs (NFB, Arte, Global Lives, I Can Haz Popcorn, and potential Doctorow) till at least Q2 2011
  • Matt: Continue supporting P2PU Webcraft & UniSubs (Brett runs WMM)
    
  • add CrisisCommons?
    
  • remaining capacity devoted to enabling project self-service / supporting Batucada for Q1 & Q2
    
    • Henrik:
      

• Use community calls to provide better project support.
• they should be training opportunities around how to work the "mozilla way", ie work with projects beforehand to narrow the scope of their asks, "file bugs" that have a greater chance of being responded to, creating roadmaps, fundraising ideas. Rather than discussions, they should be focused sprints
  • Mentorship.
    
  • Create standing items, processes and templates.
    

* Break into quarterly goals and re-focus as needed.