User:Prawsthorne/Engagement

Community engagement

How to encourage community engagement within Mozilla's open badges initiative?

Background

Currently, Mozilla has a number of growing communities in relatively new areas. Traditionally, the Mozilla communities have grown around open source projects and those who utilized the software built by these projects. With the introduction of hackasaurus, webmaker, popcornmaker, open badges, kitchen table events, etc. Mozilla has added communities focused on learning webmaking and the use of digital badges. The addition of communities focused on learning, and the support of learning, the audience has changed from the technical to the pedagogical. This is not to say Mozilla as a whole has moved away from the technical, it's just saying that a new group has joined in. And this group is more focused on learning (or pedagogy) than focusing on the technical.

It should be noted that many of the activities described below are already occuring and the open badges group are already doing a good job of growing there community.

Current community engagement tools

• github - source code, wiki with documentation, excellent for the technically oriented (maybe not the best place for the non-technical)
• google groups - great for discussion, has strong history as newsgroup platform, easily accessible for the non-technical
• etherpad - great collaborative space, especially for document creation, does very well during open calls
• conferences - a number of events and conferences (DML 2012, other) have been discussing badges
• other (tbd) - there must be other community tools being used within this realm

Requirements

• support the technologists
• support the learners
• support the issuers
• support the teachers
• encourage communities for all the above
• provide stewardship for their collaboration in a meta-community (or hub)
• be dead-easy to use
• be flat and allow quick access to area of need and support
• provide reference materials (and samples) to ease understanding of the badges ecosystem
• other (there are more, these should provide the gist to describe this "project")

Hub and Spoke (or homebase and outposts)

A mozillian (or small group of mozillians) need to take ownership of an open badges hub. The build out of the hub should focus on the above users and colesce a launching pad for all the communities that have and will form around the use of open badges. The main theme being that Mozilla should grow a kick-ass awesome hub to promote and support the use of badges, they should also provide exemplary outreach services to all the spokes (or outposts) that may form, regardless of where they form.

Outstanding Stewardship

Most important is to provide outstanding stewardship of all the communites that form in and around open badges. This isn't just the communtity hub that draws people in, but also pushes tem out to their areas of interest and need. One of the most interesting aspects of this community is the four different groups that require enagement. These include;

1. the learner