Discussions about the Community Future and Roadmap

This topic is for further discussion on the future of the Community, and as a follow-up to the direct message sent to all community members (which is still available in the pinned forum topic: Who we are, What we do, And how YOU ❤ can help Humane Technology too! )

I will answer some questions I have already received.

From @spearfishcitylimits:

I’m sure many of us have applications that we would like to submit to
the group to provide concrete implementations of humane tech … do you
have a repo?

Yes, we have. Our Github organization is at humanetech-community and here you’ll find our Awareness Program and Community Website repo’s.

And I have just renamed another project, so it can be used to file ideas (create an issue): humanetech-community-ideas

At @wim:

Thank you for your best wishes! And - to point out to others, and avoid misunderstanding: The HTC and CHT are different entities. See also the position statement. HTC is free to start their own initiatives in the realms of Humane Tech, and we are entirely run by volunteers (including me), who create crowdsourced, open-source projects and content in the public domain.

Hey Arnold,

Your message arrived in a great moment. Unfortunately I don’t how to DM you so I post it here. Please feel free to move this post anywhere you want :slight_smile:

First of all - I run a visual communication agency and I’d like to help you. We work mostly with Fortune Global 500 companies but the idea of making humane tech is close to my heart since I wrote a thesis about it in 2014.

Therefore please let me know what you might need - infographics to make your articles easier to understand, explainer videos to spread the knowledge about the main points of our philosophy, funny comics (think: Dilbert style) to show the mechanics of behavioral loops or anything else.

The other reason why the timing is perfect is that my friend Suzie (ex C-Level corporate executive) is organizing the conference for C-Level Executives about the role of Technology in our society. She’s looking for top-tier speakers to make it as impactful as possible. Suzie (conference’s host) is a great person and has worked for the last 8 years to make the world more human and welcoming. You can read about her foundation here (http://www.humanites.pl/en/)

Therefore if anyone of the Humane Tech team would be interested just please let me know.

Best regards,
MB

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Wow, that is wonderful @MaciejBud! Thank you so much for your great offer of help!!

We have lots of exciting ideas (some of which are already in our awareness campaigns project), and many more are just hanging in the air, waiting to be grabbed and materialized. At the moment we are very busy setting up social media channels and defining the marketing and promotion strategies to use them most effectively.

There is much cool stuff to work on already. And - referring back to Rewards and ‘selfish motives are okay’, we take attribution of creative works very seriously.

Lots of things to do :slight_smile:
It would be great if you’d like to join our Campaigners team, so you’ll be in the loop of what we are doing. (For anyone that is interested: It comes with no obligations, read more information here).

The conference of Suzie looks to be very interesting. Be sure to have her post a Call for Speakers on the forum when the time is there, and then we can also spread it with our social media. I’ll also bring the request to @randy and the core team (though they have nightmarish full agenda’s already).

Warm regards,
Arnold.

PS. Sending a private message (PM) is done by clicking someone’s avatar next to the post, and then ‘Message’ button. And the other option is from the top-right corner using the messaging feature.

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Im concerned about the separation of CHT and HTC. I feel we need to be sharing objectives and key results. I don’t understand how the roadmaps will collaborate or combine in the future.

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Hi @kingi, I just addressed your concerns in Community position statement, contribution guidelines, forum improvements.

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Awesome thanks! I will take a look.

Thank you @aschrijver! It’s been a pleasure to be part of the community. I’m very passionate about the issue and would love to contribute.

But after spending some time reading the discussions on the forum, I find myself struggling to get more involved for a few reasons:

  1. There isn’t clear definition of roles and division of work. As a new member with a specific set of skills, it would be tremendously helpful if I could just have a clear view of what sort of skills are needed and in which projects, for example, research, design, video production, blogging, script writing, community management, search engine optimisation, or social media marketing, etc. Going through pages of discussions about key issues is inspiring, but also time-consuming. I won’t be able to keep it up if I have a full-time job yet still want to contribute…

  2. Project management: I love lots of the project/campaign ideas. But again it is not very clear who are the key members of each project, what their roles are, and how many milestones have been achieved. And if someone wants to join half-way through, what skills are required, and who they need to talk to and how to fit in. And overall who is/are accountable for the success of each project.

  3. Production: One thing I’ve learned over the years of producing video content is that you should not have too many people involved in the feedback/review process. That’s why agencies hate it when too many people at their client side give feedback on production. Creative is a highly subjective process and everyone has a point of view on it, so a video production project shouldn’t be driven by concensus or nothing will get published, or it will always be out of date. We could have a committee of experienced creative content experts who give feedback and sign off on creative output if the messaging is agreed upon by the majority of the community, instead of the possibility of open discussion and review.

  4. Simplicity: I think streamlining is really the key here. The process is a bit too sophisticated for the size of the group, and the current stage of development. It may be better to simplify the templates required, shrink the hierarchy of the community, reduce the number of forums & sections & topics, use simple and catchy phrases for mission statements instead of long & complicated descriptions. It feels a bit daunting to start anything if we try to fill so much into it at the beginning.

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Thank you so much @MelodyLiu! I really love :heart: your feedback, and you are very right on a bunch of those points. Problem I have is also time-constraints and being all over the place with things that need done too (not too efficient always, I admit).

For example today I spent considerable time making the case for a feature request in the forum software that is a requirement for your point 4), because we indeed decided we want to work first and foremost in the forum and only as a second stage use Github for deliverables (the documents are there so that they appear in the community website as auto-generated HTML pages, but they will be informational, not living documents).

I will address each of your points as soon as I have time :slight_smile:

Edit: Yesterday I created this post in Aware Prepare: Lowering barrier for people to participate dealing with division of work

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Aware Prepare: Lowering barrier for people to participate

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Strategies for posting CHT-related messages to social media channels

So let’s address your points, @MelodyLiu :slight_smile:

Yes, we are brainstorming a Division of work here, and you gave the valuable feedback to shorten the list. Let’s continue in that topic.

Other than that, I want to keep the number of pinned topics as low as possible (max. 2 per category, and 2 global ones). The table with the Division of work will be in the pinned Community announcement along with the list of all projects we are working on. Each community role gets a separate topic in Help Wanted category, explaining exactly what it entails and how to join.

All of that will also be explained on the community website, for the wider public to see, when they land there.

This is all continuous improvement. Currently we haven’t decided on many of the details of how it should work. Key members aren’t determined, because people should volunteer to take the lead. This also requires more clarity on community philosophy. I’ll elaborate a bit more, but this needs further attention:

Some of the philosophy is in the Community announcement message. Participation should be fun and rewarding. We are all volunteers and spend the time we want. We can take any community role we want, and grow into more responsible ones based on activity. We work on principles of mindfulness, i.e. we accept current reality. As a facilitator I will support any initiative, if it makes sense in the greater whole. But there is no guarantee on speed and progress afterwards. That depends on member activity and initiative. If there is none, then the project remains ‘on hold’. My second facilitator role is to help embed the project ever more firmly into the community structure, creating connections. The Awareness Program is a good example of that. It has broad applicability.

I agree, but this is solved by the workflow process of campaigns (they have 4 states). Anyone may have great ideas for a campaign, and submit them without commitment to also produce or lead them. That is why the campaign has ‘Ideation’ status. The idea is describved and veryone can help refine it. If we decide pick up a campaign, its status goes to ‘Preparing’ and we find a team for it, decide the work method, etc. After that the campaign is ‘Launched’ and now the team is working on it, and it is up to them how they handle additional feedback.

Currently all but the dogfooding campaigns are in ‘Ideation’ phase, waiting for someone to take an interest. The campaign documents serve to describe the intent and purpose. They are informational only, and will be updated only sporadically (not living documents). Once the campaign is launched the team decides how they track progress, what and where.

I agree on the ‘streamlining’ part. I call this continuous improvement as-we-go. What we are setting up may seem complicated, but in reality it is not that sophisticated (e.g. campaigns only have a 4-step linear workflow process). It just need proper explaining in the proper places.

The reason why it takes some extra thinking upfront, is that both the forum as well as github, are not ideally suited to the work we want to do (and we don’t want to add, or know of, additional tools at this time). Experience learns that having just simple forum topics makes the thread TL;DR really quick, and people skip reading, go off-topic all the time, etc. Too many ‘work topics’ will make the forum less interesting for visitors who want to read about Humane Tech insights. And on Github there is a barrier to overcome for non-technical members.

But we’ll get all your points addressed properly, eventually, I gather :smile:
Keep the feedback coming, it is super useful!

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Attention

A prior staff discussion on restricting community scope, and @micheleminno’s comment (and those of others before) in this topic: Reflections on the community's Mission Statement and 'brand image' have set in motion a brainstorm for a different Mission Statement (preferably as mission+vision combined in a slogan, which is now: “Re-aligning Technology to Humanity’s Best Interests”).

You are most welcome to make your thoughts known.

Hello! As a parent, I would like to see a Parent/Guardian roadmap or forum or the like for those of us are dealing with our children in classrooms/schools who want to offer too much screen-time. I think if we can get the information into teachers’ hands and minds, there maybe hope to diminish the wave. I feel that a teachers and parents would be best served in separate communities, though the two overlap, as we do deal with different aspects.

I am wondering if there are any experts, psychologists etc., who would be willing to speak or have conferences for concerned parents and teachers. I read the books and had previously shared numerous articles on FB but had little response. I am the odd parent who refuses to own tablets or give my child technology as gifts. HOWEVER, I have heard often how parents’ lament the amount of time kids are on the screen at school or home. They feel helpless. Schools and teachers feel like “the state” are making them have the EdTech.

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This may be of interest. GitHub has started a new Sponsors program which could enable the Community to fundraise. @aschrijver

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