CWG meeting 2011-09-26

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Communication Working Group meeting minutes

Attendees

  • Harry Wood
  • Richard Weait
  • Oliver Khun
  • Richard Fairhurst
  • Jonathan Bennett

Topics

  • General focus of CWG.
  • Twitter / social media responsiveness. @openstreetmap account
  • Working group updates to the blog
Actions
  • Richard W to write opengeodata.org blog post about planet.osm.org "we're committed to making OSM vector data easier to use; here's the new planet.osm.org, here's Mike Migurski's planet extracts, here's the existing extracts from x y and z, here's people who are doing cool things with vector data"
  • Richard F and Oliver to check on when the management team are meeting and make sure it happens
  • (someone?) explain the blog post plan in a mail to the management team
  • Harry to report to management team and raise discussion of WG blog postings.
  • Harry to update Communication Working Group description

IRC log

<rweait1> Minutes from last CWG are here. https://docs.google.com/a/osmfoundation.org/document/d/18lu-PDZ62D_AR3a5odi5-COr9Dga5FgWqkgCpjiEvgY/edit?authkey=CNWI0ds...
<RichardF> hello CGI104 - if you type /nick your-name then you can give yourself a proper name :)
<CGI104> hello
<CGI104> oh....that's me :-)
<CGI104> just a sec
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<harry-wood> tada!
<RichardF> ah - hello harry-wood :)
<RichardF> (shame, I liked the air of mystery)
<rweait1> Are we expecting jonathan bennett as well?
* harry-wood is using the web interface with new funny windows laptop
<RichardF> he should be along slightly late, I believe
<harry-wood> cool
<harry-wood> Oliver: hello?
<rweait1> Hurricane said she would be along if she could.
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<rweait1> Harry, I'm happy to propose / second minutes of 19 Septmeber
<harry-wood> So we could start, but we're only 2 minutes late
<RichardF> ok. do we have an agenda for today?
<harry-wood> not really. We'll run through some points from last meeting
<harry-wood> normally how it goes
<Oliver> Hallo!?
<RichardF> ok, sure.
<RichardF> Oliver: hello!
<harry-wood> Hello Oliver!
<RichardF> it would be good to start to think about CWG scope for the coming year, too.
<Oliver> Hi everybody! It is my first time on IRC ;-)
<harry-wood> we have an email from hurricane, which suggests she wont make i think
<RichardF> Oliver: be wary, you'll end up wasting your entire day on it like the rest of us do ;)
<harry-wood> hehehe
<JonathanB> It's a lot easier to keep notes this way.
<Oliver> Let's see...
<RichardF> yep. and thank you all for agreeing to have the meeting this way, too.
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<rweait1> It's good to have some additional energy for the wg.
<Oliver> Yes, welcome Newbiews!
<harry-wood> eugh. I'm a windows vista newbie...  it's rather odd
<RichardF> speaking personally, I'm really keen to get involved with this - communications are pretty much what I do for a living, and OSM has a great story to tell, so I'd like to help in any way I can.
<rweait1> So, scope.  How about those web site renovations?
<Oliver> Harry, you live in the past. Vista is dated..
<harry-wood> Oliver:yeah you're right. this isn't vista.  it's the one after that
<rweait1> Also, we've chatted about restarting regular reports of what the WGs and board are doing.
<RichardF> ok - on the issue of scope: I guess we have, at the least, two forms of communications to think about
<harry-wood> should we do a google doc too...     guess there's no need
<RichardF> firstly, there's OSMF<->mappers, which I believe has been CWG's focus up til now
<RichardF> and secondly, there's OSM<->outside world
<RichardF> historically OSM - like any open source project - is not particularly good at presenting itself in a coherent fashion to the outside world
<RichardF> so if we have some additional energy for CWG, this would be a good way in which we can support and encourage the growth of the project
<harry-wood> yes. We've not touched on the "PR" side of things yet (except where the OSMF blog is PR)
<rweait1> indeed.  We've had examples of where we could do better in communicating within the project as well.
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<harry-wood> There's a doc somewhere I put together with many different aspects of communication listed
<RichardF> to a certain extent the two aren't entirely separate - for example, the changes that Matt made this afternoon to the planet.osm.org page are worth communicating both to outsiders and to existing users
<RichardF> so raising our game in one area will help us in the other
* harry-wood goes to look
<RichardF> harry-wood: you should follow @openstreetmap, it has all the news :)
<JonathanB> So CWG needs to be aware of any events happening within OSM, preferably in advance, then prepare some material for it.
<rweait1> in the interest of closing up items from last week.  Hurricane has forwarded details of sotm attendance.  Harry has contacted design@ re the site redesign.  The only open item is re: the management meeting.  any update there?
<harry-wood> no that I've heard
<harry-wood> someone needs to put a rocket up the managment team's ass
<Oliver> Henk was sending aorund a date. Let me check
<RichardF> first board meeting is tomorrow; we can raise the importance of management team/WGs communicating (via CWG or otherwise) as an AOB point then, if that would help?
<rweait1> I'm happy to take Hurricane's stats and post to blog.osmfoundation.org, unless somebody else would prefer to do it.
<harry-wood> in some ways the creation of a "working groups update" blog post would be the main output
<RichardF> yes.
<harry-wood> rweait1: go for it
<RichardF> is it better to encourage one person from each WG to be their comms person, give them an OSMF blog login, and ask them to post once a month?
<RichardF> with CWG to hassle them if they don't?
<harry-wood> that could be another way to do it
<Oliver> Mgmt seems to be on 5th of OCt.
<JonathanB> ...or at least write a draft.
<rweait1> RichardF that sounds good.
<JonathanB> Does CWG want to take on the job of proof reader for OSMF?
<rweait1> JonathanB exactll, draft and send to CWG for those who prefer that.
<RichardF> I'm thinking it might be more reader-friendly, at least - you get a series of shorter, friendlier blog posts by committed individuals, rather than one long thing.
<RichardF> JonathanB: yes.
<JonathanB> Happy to take on some of that workload.
<harry-wood> more pressure to write something long and meaningful though
<rweait1> The proof read and post, has the advantage of a "single voice"  It also has the disadvantage of a "single voice"
<JonathanB> No, doesn't have to be. You say what you have to say.
<harry-wood> could do it with twitter :-O
<RichardF> well, to a certain extent, we are doing :)
<rweait1> I think buy-in, and getting the updates will be the challenging part.
<harry-wood> each WG has to tweet at least once per month
<harry-wood> hehehe
<RichardF> we can sort that. It would be good to have a small number of tweeters, probably drawn from this room. I've been trying to put the proverbial rocket up the OSM Twitter account in the last week
<harry-wood> I dont actually know who's posting to that
<harry-wood> You're one of them RichardF?
<RichardF> mostly me, at the moment, plus stuff that automatically goes from the posterous accounts I think
<RichardF> certainly the fact that people are merrily retweeting whatever we have to say suggests that it's listened to
<rweait1> Yes, I take that as a positive response.
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<RichardF> and going back to Steve's posting about the 'Army of Awesome' that Firefox has - I think we're a small enough project that, for now at least, we can do that from the @openstreetmap account
<RichardF> in other words, we have a few people monitoring if people are asking questions about OSM, and we reply to them from @openstreetmap
<RichardF> there's not much that comes up
<rweait1> I'm happy to pitch in on that.
<RichardF> excellent!
<harry-wood> I was a little surprised that Steve identifies social media as weekness in OSM
<harry-wood> thought we were quite good at all that
<rweait1> No tweet Left Behind!
<RichardF> harry-wood: I think Waze is the canonical example of how to do it - they have a really impressive Twitter presence, for example
<harry-wood> ("we" collectively... the whole community)
<RichardF> we're strong individually, but not "corporately", and building up the OpenStreetMap brand is important to get outsiders interested
<JonathanB> +1 to RichardF
* JonathanB must type faster next time
<RichardF> I've asked Grant if he'd be prepared to tweet from @openstreetmap sometimes too - he's superb at helping people, but if it comes from @openstreetmap rather than @firefishy1, the questioner thinks "wow, that's a cool project, they answered my question"
<rweait1> good point!
<RichardF> and we _are_ a cool project, we just need to make sure people know we are :)
<Oliver> The one point that comes up is if we now also consider communication for
<Oliver> the project rather than only the foundation as we had limited ourselves to
<rweait1> CWG-scope, are we happy to stay as "supporting role if asked" for the site redesign?
<RichardF> Oliver: it's a good point - I think this falls into the definition of "support and encourage"; we're not doing anything that is contrary to the wishes of the community, but we're helping to co-ordinate and organise it in an area where it's traditionally been weak
<RichardF> in this room, for example, only two of us are actually board members, but through CWG we're helping the wider community (e.g. comms professionals like JonathanB) to communicate the great things about OSM in a co-ordinated, helpful fashion
<Oliver> it is fine for me. we just limited ourselves to foundation related stuff
<Oliver> last year-
<RichardF> yep.
<rweait1> I think that we still have room to improve communication from the foundation / board.  As long as we continute to impprove there, I'm happy to expand our scope as well.
<RichardF> I'd hope that, if the board and working groups see active OSM communications, they'll want to be part of it.
<harry-wood> rweait1: in relation to front page design.  It always seemed a little tenuous to call this a "communication" issue anyway
<RichardF> it starts to create a culture of openness and participation.
<harry-wood> my post to the design list is here BTW http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/design/2011-September/000043.html
<RichardF> harry-wood: +1
<rweait1> We also want to be sure that communication from the world / community to the foundation / board is clear.  Are there issues that demand immediate attention for the public to reach the board / foundation?
<rweait1> Based on community participation in LWG meetings, I'd say things are pretty open and findable.
<RichardF> I'd hope so. But maybe we can help other WGs to do that. For example, when we encourage each WG to write a regular posting to the OSMF blog about "here's what we're doing", we could suggest "always sign off with a 'if you want to help us in our work, here's how to participate' sentence".
<rweait1> Even better if there is a specific response requested by that post.
<RichardF> very good point.
<rweait1> So while general inquiries go to wgemail@osmf.etc, a specific response on a specific measure might end up in hte post comments.
<rweait1> That's not always the best place for them...
<RichardF> it might be pointing towards a wiki page or mailing list for a wider project spun out of the working group. for those groups that welcome participation from all-comers, it could say "join us at our next meeting at...". or it might just be an e-mail, like you say.
<harry-wood> I think the operations working group (and maybe the new engineering working group) have the more interesting communications to make.  tangible acheivements etc, but they're busy *doing* and not talking
<harry-wood> We can ask them to write a blog post once a month.
<rweait1> Re: the planet.osm.org improvement. I'm happy to post that.  OGD, or blog.osmfoundation?  
<RichardF> well, we can help there. several of us know the OWG/EWG people.
<rweait1> harry-wood, absolutely. I want to hear about the good stuff those groups are doing.
<RichardF> rweait1: personally for now I'd suggest OGD. in the future we probably want to talk about amalgamating the two blogs, to give a single, consistent "brand", but I wouldn't suggest we discuss that tonight.
<RichardF> (no need to echo the posting to twitter as it's been on there already)
<rweait1> OGD will end up on @openstreetmap as well, automagically.
<RichardF> probably best to delete it instantly so it doesn't look like "you've said this already" :)
<rweait1> Perhaps time it to hit the "business day" in a different part of the globe?
<RichardF> that could work.
<RichardF> or theme the posting around "we're committed to making OSM vector data easier to use; here's the new planet.osm.org, here's Mike Migurski's planet extracts, here's the existing extracts from x y and z, here's people who are doing cool things with vector data", so on and so forth.
<RichardF> subtext: stop hammering the flaming tile-servers ;)
<harry-wood> hehe
<Oliver> most of the time still create nicer (map) images...
<RichardF> Oliver: your vector renderer creates very nice images on my iPad :)
<Oliver> That is why I said "most of the time" ;-)
<RichardF> heehee
<harry-wood> I'm trying to think of what we can agree when it comes to management team meetings and how to gather news from the working groups
<Oliver> But for a reason Google is still using tiles in the web...
<RichardF> harry-wood: do we minute that "our recommendation is that one person from each group is asked to provide a monthly (or better) update to the OSMF blog; CWG is willing to offer any support and help necessary"?
<RichardF> (any votes for/against that?)
<JonathanB> +1
<Oliver> +1
<rweait1> Perhaps, per-meeting" rather than per month?
<rweait1> but +1
<harry-wood> +1 i guess.. because I think it's good to *ask* them to do that
<harry-wood> ...but will they do it?
<Oliver> as long as we tell them they do not have to report something with every
<Oliver> meeting..
<rweait1> They've been resistant before. Perhaps there are new faces involved now.
<rweait1> If some comply, those who don't may find more motivation.
<RichardF> I think (and I'm not going to name names here) that it could actually help the work of the WG in some cases - having to report on what you're doing gives it a focus and a shape
<Oliver> It is true. We just tried it before and it did not work
<rweait1> Sure, it might cut down on last minute cancellations as well.
<harry-wood> I'm thinking monthly to the blog is a little too frequent
<harry-wood> we'd be doing OK if we acheived quarterly to the blog from each WG
<rweait1> Perhaps every-meetingly to a wiki list with the minutes, and as-needed to the blog?
<rweait1> But I think we'll have to establish this as a habit of some sort, or it will be dropped quickly.
<RichardF> things tend to vanish on the wiki. at the very least, if stuff's going on the wiki, there needs to be a pointer posted regularly from the blog ("you can read the most recent minutes of the various groups here...")
<rweait1> +1 "to find the latest WG details on the wiki ..."
<harry-wood> well we we can always do that anyway.   but things tend to vanish in the minutes too
<RichardF> but regular postings shouldn't be difficult. and we do have a responsibility to our members - they entrusted us with the foundation, they have a right to know what's going on
<rweait1> Right, and so we'll ask them again to start doing this.
<RichardF> but let's not phrase it as "again". we want them to _want_ to do it, rather than thinking "oh, another chore"
<RichardF> :)
<rweait1> and accept their alternative suggestions that achieve the same communication.
<RichardF> yep.
<harry-wood> And CWG are on hand to help
<harry-wood> meaning we can do the actual copy  if they just want to give us some headlines
<rweait1> down to ten minutes.  Do we want to go a bit longer?
<RichardF> harry-wood: exactly. "we are your friends" :)
<rweait1> And how about some blue-sky ideas and goals for CWG?  Anything come to mind?
<harry-wood> ah we do need to do an update to the description of CWG.   For the poepl on the list shall I drop Charlotte's name and add Richard F?
<RichardF> well: my blue-sky ambition is to (a) communicate the OpenStreetMap difference, and (b) thereby establish the common belief that open maps are better than proprietary maps
<rweait1> add jonathan Bennett as well?
<RichardF> yep
<rweait1> +1
<harry-wood> JonathanB too!    still there JonathanB?
<JonathanB> Yep
<harry-wood> ok
<JonathanB> Just haven't disagreed with anything much!
<harry-wood> Also the paragraph on design of the front page I will modify
<rweait1> Have we a volunteer to lead the discussion of postings at Management?
<JonathanB> Better press materials
<rweait1>  JonathanB: Yes, please.
<rweait1> You have specific ideas?
<harry-wood> rweait1: I'm the nominated person to attend management meetings, but happy to hand that batton on
* RichardF is happy for harry-wood to continue to be it :)
<rweait1> As long as you have the support from our other attendees it should be simple. :-)
<harry-wood> Let's explain the blog post plan...  in a mailing list post...   and then I will raise it to discuss
<rweait1> and post it to which list?
<harry-wood> I mean post it to the management team actually
<harry-wood> (not a mailing list)
<rweait1> excellent.
<RichardF> definitely.
<rweait1> as an aside, I'd be perfectly happy with regular emails from WGs rather than blogs.  We can transcribe that.
<harry-wood> that's true. just as good.  If they can post to talk with an update
<RichardF> yep. as long as they communicate with us, we can help.
<rweait1> Shall we extend 'til 15 past the hour?
<RichardF> do we have more we'd like to discuss?
<Oliver> ok with me. Are we going to have weekly meetings?
<rweait1> Follow up on media materials, and any other blue sky?
<harry-wood> Well richard and Oliver are in charge of the formentioned rocket up the ass...  I will suggest a management team agenda point about blogging
<rweait1> Weekly, yes please.  Easier to schedule.
<RichardF> weekly's good with me.
<rweait1> For the bi-weekly meetings I'm never sure if a week is on or off.
<harry-wood> IRC meetings working well, but a different feel to skype
<rweait1> It's easier for me to refill my water glass on irc.
<RichardF> only water? :)
<rweait1> It's early, Sir.
<RichardF> of course.
<RichardF> (it's late here and I'm still at work :( )
<harry-wood> at work? :-O
<RichardF> yup, deadline week. big long article to write.
<rweait1> okay, so 03 October 2011 on  this irc at same UTC time?
<JonathanB> OK by me
<Oliver> ok
<RichardF> and me
<harry-wood> ok
<rweait1> I'd like to stick to UTC, as time changes are coming up again I think.
<rweait1> Shall we move to close the meeting then?  +1 s?
<harry-wood> right err...  was it 22o'clock UTC?
<JonathanB> Other way -- 2000 UTC
<harry-wood> or 20?
<harry-wood> hmm
<rweait1> 20, I think.  1600 here.
<harry-wood> marvellous.  See you all then.
<rweait1> Thank you , everybody.
<RichardF> thank you - very productive meeting!
<rweait1> harry-wood can you minute this.  I lost connectivity in the middle.
<Oliver> ok,bye
<RichardF> bye!
<harry-wood> reweait1: got it
<rweait1> thank you
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