OSCEdays Future (F) - "Infrastructure" Projects

This was started as a subtopic of this headtopic.

It contains more ideas and questions for projects that a possible OSCEdays foundation could take on and how it could do that.


To remember (from the headtopic):

#1 Why?
Why do we need this? If the goal of the OSCEdays is to research and develop an OSCE with an open community a lot more things than a forum and website will be needed over time. Projects and possibilities that allow the community to do more and more complex and also more powerful work could or should be pushed and codeveloped by the foundation – as part of the job to foster the community.

Take a look at the Wikimedia foundation which is doing way more then running the servers of Wikipedia. Here is a list of the Wikimedia foundation projects. Some have only indirect relations to the Wikipedia. The way an OSCEdays foundation would take on projects would probably look different though but somehow play in the same direction.

Screenshot from the Wikimedia Foundation Homepage

#2 How? Guidelines for the Choice of Projects
What kind of projects could the foundation take on? How would the decision be made if something is a possible project or not? There should be clean rules in the founding documents for this. First ideas:

  • They need to be open source (of course) and in a format/technology that allows use of it by as much people and projects as possible.
  • They should be “infrastructure”-like. React to a real needs and gaps found in the community. Something a lot of people could benefit from for the development of their individual OSCE projects.
  • They should be sustainable in itself – they should be able to sustain themselves without the foundation in the long run. Grow independent children for sustainability reasons!

#3 Examples or Ideas for Projects
Here are some lose ideas for possible projects (not saying that everything is a good idea) and a Call to Action! Suggest more or others. In these ideas we will find the projects and the future of the OSCEdays.

Research: Bundle the Community
Some people plan this already. Take a look at the community – the challenges in the forum, local events and subpages – what are people doing? Write reports useful for many things, e.g. policy making or funding possibilities.

Event, Platform & Community
Most ideas and questions described in the topic about the future of the Event, Platform and Community is of course infrastructure!

Circular Events
During the OSCEdays 2015 the team in Athens for example was already researching about how to make an event with circular economy principles. Taking on that research and provide clean tutorials and possibilities for the whole community could be a good project! Maybe a consortium or companies could be found to support and use this.

Open Source for Bigger Companies
Building resources and knowledge about how to integrate bigger companies in the OSCEdays network and teach them Open Source principles.

Lists with Resources
Doing research and building link lists with good resources for the community – e.g. a list of open and circular companies and projects in the world. Or a list of recycling companies and techniques. Or similar stuff.

Open Material Communication and Database
One of the big obstacles already found in the community 2015 is the problem of the choice of materials for circular goods. The foundation could push to build a consortium with companies and universities to build an open data base of circular materials. As well as good communication-methods for this materials – “when is a material recyclable” – we probably need better ways to communicate this in our society.

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ping @BoST in regard to Strategic Framework