26 APRIL 2012

Attendees (welcome to any newbies)

• Add your name (and twitter handle) here
• dirk (@riskycud)
• philipp
• vanessa
• Bekka
• Zuzel
• John
• Alison
• Alan
• Charlie @danoff
• @jessykate (second half!)

Standups
What have you been up to? Short written notes (we'll discuss only if there are questions)

• Alison
• Bekka
  • Berlin planning
  • Org admin & infrastructure (finances, taxes, insurance etc)
• John
  • wrapping up terms discussion
  • working on some issues with https
• Philipp
  • I/A conference
  • board meeting
  • meetings in SF/silicon valley (partners, our pro bono lawyers, book-keepers & accountants)
  • berlin workshop
• Zuzel
  • recent release
  • writing documentation (releases, lernanta setup, ...)
  • a bit of searching oer resources and setting up the 0.1 version of a study group
    • https://p2pu.org/en/groups/accounting-jargon
• Dirk
  • playing with challenge badge creation: http://dev.p2pu.org:4456/en/groups/flying-101/edit/badges/
    • user3:password3
    • nice, checking the demo now (look for typos)
  • going over release procedure with Zuzel
  • cleaning up some spam
• Alan
  • Bonner Conference contract being finalized, starting to prep for that (first week of June)
  • About to take off to Seattle / San Fran for two weeks to visit their Hubs and Bioneers (getting ready for their conference in the Fall)
  • Preping for Open Masters open house in DC May 31st
• Add you name here (optional)

News of the week
Written notes on what's going on in our world (bring up special announcements on the call)

• Blog posts you wrote
  • Experience writing terms w Jessy: http://mozzadrella.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/how-we-do-user-stories-at-p2pu/
• Articles you read
  • New York Times (with Bekka's quote) +1
• Initiatives you heard about

Key updates 
Super short updates about P2PU

• Exciting new courses to check out (Alison)
  • Accounting Jargon course (Zuzel)
    • https://p2pu.org/en/groups/accounting-jargon
    • also saw some video content that could be used in the http://p2pu.org/en/groups/bookkeeping-and-basic-accounting-for-non-profits/
      • http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tW8yiBxRFp8
  • Audacity course
    • http://p2pu.org/en/groups/the-quickest-audacity-course-in-the-world/ - this looks amazing! (created by the Floss Manuals people)
    • Really good example of a well-designed course. 
    • Ali to get in touch with them, invite to community mailing list, promote
  • From School of Ed: http://p2pu.org/en/groups/sims/
  • Spam or potential goldmine -> http://p2pu.org/en/groups/gardenfresh-csms/
  • Digital Literacies challenge: http://p2pu.org/en/groups/digital-literacies-and-learning-going-public-with-your-work-and-inquiries/
  • Python -> http://p2pu.org/en/groups/into-to-nlp-in-python/
• Development priorities (Zuzel)
  • Recent Release
    • Improvements to creation and edition of challenges
    • Rich text content before and bellow courses list on school home pages
    • Included view submissions link on badge page
    • Deferred loading of the courses' metrics table
    • Improved task title validation
    • Updated course creation notification message to organizer
    • Making functionality for sharing badges through the obi more visible
  • Next
    • Edition, creation and ordering on tasks on the same page
    • Badge creation
      • http://dev.p2pu.org:4456/en/groups/flying-101/edit/badges/ (it looks nice!)
• State of the mustard (Philipp)
  • Users accounts, groups created, users joining courses -> on track for 5% growth compared to last month
  • Many more comments last month - worth trying to figure out why last month was higher
  • Media coverage related to launch of rounds
    • April 18 and 19 - highest number of visits in 2012
    • By far most important referer -> http://wwwhatsnew.com (spanish)
      • http://wwwhatsnew.com/2012/04/19/p2pu-ya-en-5-idiomas-y-anade-15-nuevos-cursos/
        • worth trying to find out how they found us
        • The end of the article says "via: TNW" so I think it's likely that they saw that article and wrote another post about it in Spanish
      • The stats on the blog mirror this traffic and activity as well
  • New courses in top 5 for high activity (number of comments):
    • http://p2pu.org/en/groups/get-to-know-the-hackasaurus-xray-goggles/
      • Challenge to use a hackasaurus tool
    • http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/
      • A slightly more quirky course, more like the ones we used to have at P2PU
    • (still no. 1) -> http://p2pu.org/en/groups/a-virtual-worlds-games-and-education-tour/

Agenda
Core of the call. Focused on four types of conversations (invited guests, challenges you need help with, proposals you want feedback on, ideas you need collaborators for). 

• Terms [John]
  • Objective: P2PU has a lot of things and we don't always know what to call them, so the plan was to try and find the right terms for things
  • Some people like legacy terms, some people prefer less loaded terms
  • So John asked us to write a story about P2PU, in an effort to try and get a sense of the terms that people like to use, rather than having a long conversation about this
  • Who on this call wrote a story?
    • Dirk & Ali
    • Talk through some of the harder decisions you had to make
      • Dirk: one of the things about te story was that I wrote it not knowing as much about P2PU as I do now. 
      • I just picked the most obvious terms from the etherpad, and used those ones
      • Alison -> I contributed to Dirk's story - he sent it to me, and I added terms which I think are typical of how people move thorugh the experience of/at P2PU.
    • Do we like this format of working together as a communtiy?
      • Dirk: It was useful to envision the use-case, but not sure if I gave the story and the terms enough attention
      • John: I've noticed on the list that when we make a decision, people tend to get infulenced by those who answer first, and I wanted people to think on their own for a bit before they heard what other people had to say. 
    • Should we do it again?
      • Ali -> I think this is a good excercise for the reasons explained above, but I think the lack of responses was a result of the process of teaming up and going asynchronous
        • People who lurk on the list may be less likely to want to work ina  team
        • John -> would it be helpful to assign people to work together?
        • Ali -> You would get a lot more people responding!
    • What can we change to make it better?
      • Maybe we should have a shorter turn around time?+1+1
    • Vanessa & Jessy
      • Talk through some of the harder decisions you had to make
        • Vanessa: I took the opportunity to talk about this with Jessy becuase I don't work with her that often 
        • good opportunity to make new connections to people you don't talk to often
        • We skyped, and then produced longer stories, and then shared shorter versions with the list
        • Jessy wrote a sci-fi story and Vanessa wrote a match-making story
        • Terms chosen were: design, learning project, peer and team
          • I struggled through these terms, and although they felt unnatural at first, they worked well
          • Difficult terms: 
            • content and assessment & recognition
      • Do we like this format of working together as a communtiy?
        • Vanessa: 
          • Wish that we could have done it through P2PU and that people could have signed up 
            • Idea: Click this to intend to participate and let p2pu do the matching / reminding
            • Quicker turnaround might have helped
            • John -> considered making it a challenge, and tell people "sign up to help P2PU make a decision"
      • Should we do it again?
      • What can we change to make it better?
  • Notes:
    • Does assignment increase participation?
      • Most people who wrote stories would have still written a story
      • How about less involved people?
    • Did the conversation bring out existing preferences (biases) or did people change their minds?
      • Example Jessy and Vaness preferred "projects"
    • Is this more likely to bring out "conservative" choices or "innovative" ones (I think both directions would be valuable)
    • Because it's high effort to contribute - you end up with the inner circle (most committed)
  • People who wrote stories can share a bit
  • Talk through some of the harder decisions you had to make
  • Do we like this format of working together as a communtiy?
    • Discussions on the mailing list are often influenced by who posts first
    • Asking people to do some thinking off-list first is a good strategy to avoid group-think
  • Should we do it again?
  • What can we change to make it better?
    • Asking people to team up makes it very hard to contribute
    • Lurkers don't know people to team up with yet (maybe shy)
    • Setting up a call / conversation requires more time
  • Alison -> people have an allegience to getting things done,and they tend to be the people who get involved in these kinds of things
    • We have a pool of talent on hand who know about this stuff, and it shouldn't be that hard to tap - 
      • If we were able to reach out to them (not staff, not core members) and ask them directly
      • This has the double benefit of bringing them in and getting fresh persepctives
  • Philipp -> it was a good idea to farm out some of the responsibilities to other parts of the community, and get them to give back
    • This is a valuable tool, and we should use it more often
    • Read the stories, and thought about the terms, and I was wondering if this is a process that reinforces my perspectives, or if, particualrly for those who worked in teams, this was a way of actually having your mond changed
      • ?
      • Jessy -> I had a very intersting and positive experience, but I didn't change my mind a result fo the discussion, I changed my mind as a result of thinking about things as a worked on my story, so I think it's still a valuable tool. 
  • John: The idea was 1. Create something, 2. Share it with someone, and discuss your choices (and maybe change your mind) and then finally 3. Present it to the community
    • Next steps: John to look for overlaps, and report back with a summary
    • Is it worth trying to get more stories - YES!
      • More people will work on stories
  • Alan -> Confession: I am a delinquent story writer, and am working on it - there is a mental startup cost to going back, reading the instructions and the terms list, reminding myself what the assignment is, etc.
  • GOAL: To have stories ready by next Wednesday, so we can report back in the community call

• Let's return 20 min of peoples' lifes to them ... 

General discussion and questions

• Anything else that just needs to be said out loud