P2PU Strategy Call - 20 December 2012

Who is here

• Philipp
• Vanessa
• Bekka
• Jane
• Chris
• Dirk

Please join the hangout -> https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/a1f848ca8958f610f25930c25c34ba91e919d8a5?authuser=0&hl=en

What are we talking about 

Intro (Philipp / 10 min)
Philipp created notes from a variety of calls/presentations/discussions to create these slides.

The juice in the P2PU experience comes from the peer learning aspect of P2PU - everyone gets inolved actively in order to make the learning happen

Things we have done well this year:

• Mechanical MOOC - a good project, good partnership, small investment, lightweight build nd now iterate on it, and we are ready to scale
• Storyhack Boston: we were good at events this year - London meetup, Jane's face-to-face meetups, DML, webinars, 
• Beta site - cleaner, lighter, modularised code, easier to experiment with
• Online events
• Berlin Office
• School of Open Community - a good example of how to work with partners, good governance model for us to learn from
• UX Warrior and other mini-research projects

3 things we do well

• Spark ideas and conversations (specifically around learning?)
  • Thinking, writing, meeting
• Build Prototypes
  • Experimenting, testing, playing
• Sustain Platforms and Communities
  • scaling, enabling

Customers

• People who run courses/run challenges
• People who work on the platform
• People who put in something so more people can learn with them

How do we engage with them?

• Bring back the fringe (encompass people who are doing crazy stuff)

How do we measure success?

• Do people get somethng out of the learning experience

Where do we want to go with out platform?

• There is an argument to be made that the platform is the web, as an alternative to building a little web empire. 

Questions

• What are the things and projects we love, and want to do more of? (What are the things we don't love. How do we stop doing them?)
  • Design research / UX Warrior (but questions about effectiveness for org - vis-a-vis funded projects?)
  • Qualitiative research with users (and non-users)
  • Enabling project-based learning through events and projects
    • Example: Loved designing and running StoryHack
  • I really really loved great quirky courses (Poker, Cooking Science, etc.)
  • Don't love: spread thin amongst partnerships - hard to prioritize. would like to know how partnerships fit into strategy and how to evaluate how to spend staff time via partnerships.
    • PS: This comes down to funding, we are all paid for some of the time we spend on P2PU to work on specific things - means we have to raise our own salaries if we want to work on the stuff we want to work on. 
    • Are there things that are def on the table that we have to work on? eg. base list of partners/projects that we are currently getting funding for? Maybe we should start there
      • eg. some percentage of staff time goes into supporting community / platform currently as a whole
    • Makes me feel unfocused, difficult to have a sense of priorities
      • What's your suggestion on how to do it differently?
  • BK: The point is that for the stuff we don't love we have to consciously decide and tell everyone that we won't do them anymore. These decisions need to fit into overall strategy.
  • JP: What are we being funded to do right now? (see above) - I don't see a list of core stuff above. I think a strategy means listing out that core stuff and making it clear (and why).
  • Custom learning experiences and experiments
  • Suggestion: a workshop from Philipp on how to write grant proposals and give people information on how we have raised the money
  • CE: Is it possible that individuals from within the org can write the proposals and have them put forward by P2PU - 
    • PS: absolutely. And Philipp will show us his hair.
  • So just bc we get grants for stuff, doesn't mean we will have more personpower.. how do we sustain existing projects while we pursue new ones? it has to be a balance, between working on funded projects, and spending time raising more (also, i spend more time on raising funds and that's normal). and we have to think about both existing staff, and possibly adding more for more or bigger projects. right, obviously more staff answers that question, but i'm alluding to vanessa's concern about how she doesn't know how to prioritize her time bc there are already so many projects. there needs to be a more clear way to prioritize that time i think. yes. this is probably too much detail, but i think we are ok at the moment in terms of funded projects vs personpower. 

• Who is our audience / community? Has it changed during the last year?
  • Change: funders/grant peeps-->reeeeeally constraining
    • Related to funding conversation overall (if we were all volunteers, it wouldn't be an issue)
    • How could we do this differently?
    • Also, this is not a change---it's a change for me, since coming over the staff
  • Passionate educators/learners willing to use tech
  • Will we ever fund content creation/experience facilitation?
  • Feels weirdly split between folks on p2pu.org and folks who engage in our skunkworks projects---skunkworks folks are likely a different audience each time
    • related: I also think that there is a split within the p2pu.org people - the organisers and the lerners are very distinctly different. 
  • are we talking about end users or core audience though? i think of them as two different things. how do we focus on to make successful? (in order to achieve what we want to achieve)
  • Goals for our audience: 
    • Course creators that are involved with technology and contributing tech to p2pu
    • VMG: Experts in the field that make exciting courses that people want to join
    • Example: When creating the Compressor, tools like a learning workflow and feedback could be extracted into tools and provided for people who want to build interactive learning conversations---that's awesome, CE
  • Audience: The people who do show up +1
    • "80% of success is just showing up" :)
    • so who shows up?
    • Does that make the community the people that repeatedly show up? well, depending on how they show up. i think shooting off non sequiturs (haha! agree) to the mailing list but not building courses or doing something more substantive shouldn't be weighed as much as someone who develops and runs like 10 courses, or runs a workshop on some really cool subject... 

• How do we engage our community more, including through a content strategy?
  • Using a punk-as-f**k voice and tone
  • Editorial calendar
  • Tracking our success of our outreach through content
  • Website doesn't reflect who we are (http://p2pu.org focused on courses)
  • Every P2PU staffer must be *running* a course at any given time (and will always have material for blog posts this way) +1 (and we've said this over and over and just aren't holding ourselves to it, incl. me - which reminds me, Philipp we need to get on the Open Governance course)
    • Agreed, but without interest it's hard to create a course.(what do you mean by, "without interest"?) If no one shows up. It feels forced to continue with a course then. Agree, would make sense to do a different course in that case - find your audience. 
    • Demand driven courses... a topic that came up at many SOO workshops.. letting what we do be (to some extent) be demand driven
  • Vanessa: it's all about who shows up and who's there. so we should def talk about community engagement. It's time to get granular with our strategy
  • Better communication through the tools we build
  • I think that we all know who is doing the work through our individual and professional connections -- and all of that work is not necessarily being reflected on the mailing list. So just to be aware of that.. some people don't want all that traffic or need the mailing list to contribute to P2PU. So we shouldn't just use the mailing list to gauge our communities.
  • VMG: Having a unified strategy between our content and technology
  • Dirk: Conversations can be tricky if they evolve too quick. 
    • And we shouldn't limit the strategy just to the people who show up. Becuase people might show up even if we don't get it right. 

• How do we know if we are successful? 
  • Quality of learning (assessment)
  • x number / 20 successful (=numbers of users, level of engagement, reported happinness) courses running at any given time
  • Site improves/upgrades/releases x number/ month
  • Aren't we trying to measure the value/quality of the learning - personal evaluations? +1 (we should, and it's hard)
  • Active and positive community - if we are successful most people should be happy?

• How do we want the P2PU platform to evolve?
  • Like the idea of using "web" as platform, but challenges arise there in terms of -- 
    • posterity, b/c using different tools/sites doesn't ensure that the stuff will stay there
    • discovery of course/resource (and rediscovery)
    • licensing -- most sites don't enable the stuff to be actually "open" and OER (and we started off as being the social wrapper for OER)
    • practically -- people still need a "tangible" or maybe better word is "visible" gathering space (a mailing list doesn't do this)
    • funding - don't funders need to see something "tangible"?
  • Also like the idea of the "web as the platform"
    • we need to focus on developing in a way that's compatible with the web - linkability, standards, api?
  • To be an orthogonal set of tools to be used for open education

Ideas/ Challenges & Solutions

• Building an org vs building a movement - ...
• More transparency / involvement / open governance - ... 
• Messaging not clear (Jane) - ...     
• How to integrate offline & online (Thieme ... and many others) - ... 
• We like to be nimble, funders don't / aren't - ...

Next Steps

• Tech Plan 2013 (DU/PS) - Already in draft, will share in the new year
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AoM5tp36f6cqSvuvFRzEehPOinColGeSXsmxVnrefOQ/edit
• Update P2PU homepage to reflect our identity
• ? Course Funder (Thieme's idea)
• Philipp to do a seminar on how we raised our existing funding, and ideas for future fundraising
• VMG to organize content strategy sprint (calendar with list of blog posts that we already know we want to get out) BK totally keen to get in on this, and help/learn/plan
• (Jan 2013) Philipp to summarize this call and add slides and share with community

• BK: Want some guidance/ compass (telescope out) but not try to plan too far out
• CE: Content strategy to create more buzz/energy into blog/community
• CE: Create a better environment to raise funding (involve more people in the process)
• DU: Need to get better at communication. Content strategy is one aspect of that, but we also need to communicate better with people taking courses. And in between ourselves, communication hasn't always worked so well. Sometimes difficult to gauge, what is the heart-beat of the P2PU community? 
• DU: I don't think our strategy has changed that much, but I really want to hear it again. To remind myself. This is what we are doing, this is why.
• JP: I want to know what we are doing and why we are doing it. And want it in a strategy document that people can see.
• VMG: Reflecting on what success means and looks like. Gap between formal role and successes I contributed to, and interested in how we can bridge that gap. 
• PS: I struggle with how to do this: on one hand there is an expectation from people who say "what is the strategy/money/direction" but P2PU is the place where people get to do this for themselves, and I feel like I fall inbetween those 2 things - people want to be told the direction, but I am reluctant to share it becase I want them to take ownership. I'm trying to figure out what the role of leadership at P2PU - used to be where I raised all the money, but people seem to want to take ownership of stuff and that's great and what I want to help with, but it's a transition and it also means for everyone to take more responsibility and leadership

**** Note! The following notes were copied from Jane's and Thieme's emails. Please don't edit **** (but feel free to comment)

Jane Park

• What are the things and projects we love, and want to do more of? (What are the things we don't love. How do we stop doing them?)
  • Building and running courses, both for independent and facilitated learning - pure and simple. 
  • Also building and running courses as part of Schools, aka strengthening our reputation as a good place to go for certain subject areas, eg. prof dev for educators or the place to go to learn about "open" or etc.

• Things I don't love just because I don't know much about them and/or how they relate to P2PU's mission/vision (and not because I couldn't grow to love them). 
  • I'm just confused as to what P2PU wants to become going forward, eg. an experimental space like a lab? a place to continue creating and running courses? etc. 
  • These projects include whatever collaborations we're doing with MIT Media Lab, the Mechanical MOOC, and in addition, all the random ideas we throw around on this list that has no current action around it (that I can see at least). 
  • I'd love more clear messaging and info on all of this. eg. Here are the main things we are doing and why we are doing them. Here's how you can get involved if you see a tie with your existing project at P2PU (eg. a School or a course). 

• Who is our audience / community? Has it changed during the last year?
  • People creating courses. People who want to create courses on their own or with others.
  • People who want to take courses. On their own (challenge style) or with others (facilitated)
  • People interested in experimental and/or peer learning models. 
  • People passionate about the future of education. 
  • People passionate about open education, but also about open anything -- because when they build something at P2PU it becomes open by default. 
  • The community as a whole is still a good mix of people seeking to learn about a topic with others, teach about a topic to others, learn about a topic from others, or some combination thereof. Also people interested in different kinds of learning models. However, I don't have any data except reading the emails on this list and seeing activity on the courses I am subscribed to at P2PU. I have definitely gotten a lot more emails about more and more people following SOO courses and commenting on them. I know the community has grown on the SOO side, largely because it didn't exist until a few months ago!

How do we engage our community more, including through a content strategy? 

• Support for people who are creating and running courses! Whether via virtual sessions/webinars, office hours, on or offline course sprints, course workshops, F2F gatherings, etc. 
• Also, the occasional lightweight 1-3 hour offline workshop (plugged into existing events) really helps to engage people in a new way, that later translates to online engagement. 
• I think we should explore more of these hybrid models, locally. Locally because then cost is not as big of an issue and it makes P2PU more real and exciting when not everything is online.

Re Open Governance: More clear feedback loops. Where does my feedback go? How does it get incorporated? Do staff pull community responses out of a hat when and then draw #'s when it comes to prioritize projects/activities? Or does Philipp decide all? Etc.

• How do we know if we are successful? 
  • When we have active participants -- creating, running, and taking courses. 

• How do we want the P2PU platform to evolve?
  • I feel like it's been brought up in the past that we don't want to go in the direction of offering some sleek start-up like platform service. However, I still think the platform is important if we want people to continue creating and running and taking courses as part of P2PU (unless P2PU is going to go in an entirely different direction - then I'd like us to be clear on that). One way I could conceive of P2PU maintaining its innovative, fun, and experimental nature, while at the same time meeting the needs of various growing communities (cough, School of Open, cough) is to provide both 
    • a) a simple UX for newbies to easily create courses (like what is already offered but continues to improve over time), and 
    • b) a way for those with more time and interest to be able to customize and improve the course experience. 

The latter doesn't necessarily mean these capabilities have to be built into the platform, but that the platform is built to be extensible -- and by that I mean not just for the seasoned developer. I'm thinking about a course organizer who might want to use a combination of communication and other tools for her course -- how can she somehow point to all these together via the site so that course content doesn't end up impossibly scattered throughout a dozen different websites and harddrives? One example that is already being worked on is the Open Badges plan. As I understand it, it won't be part of the new beta, but it will be designed so that it can be used with it for those who are interested. And that implementing badges on the new UX won't require you to hire a developer if you are an individual course creator. OBI is something Mozilla has worked on, and the DML grant is allowing P2PU to work to make that existing system compatible with P2PU.. and I think that is a great idea that should be replicated for other existing open tools/systems.


Thieme Hennis

• Explore the Udacity business model in combination with the OBI - 
  • P2PU as a learner identity broker, also offering assessment (people?) and accreditation (OBI) and making the connection with organizations in demand of people with certain skills. 
• Local: better integration with Meetup (or a similar service)
• Challenge: my experience is that learning new things is often a challenge, and the right technology and people can make the challenge sometimes a bit more feasible. I think p2pu tries to support doing challenges, but is not yet there. You can define steps for a course, and people are part of a step, but what I think can be improved, is that now, it really is an open space in which you operate, it does not have any sense of privacy. Each course and course space is shared with so many others, and I can imagine that you need a more personal space, 1 on 1 relationships, etc. to go through certain steps/tasks. Having a personal overview of 'where I am' in the course or challenge, and what remains to be done, as well as having my space to take notes, reflect, interact with the course organizer, and maybe others as well, would be more appealing than having 10 or 20 comments under each of the steps. I am not saying that the other comments are not valuable, but I think it should be able to hide those to give a more dense overview of all steps relevant for my challenge. 

• Attract a crowd by developing a browser plugin to connect learners who are doing a certain MOOC or online course. Instead of 'starting your own learning group', each open course (MITx, Udacity, wherever) has in principle a virtual learning group. When you have the plugin, and are doing course A, you are automatically added to the course A p2pu learning group. The plugin should primarily support online discussions, exchange of resources, and Q&A. It should also be available before starting the course, so you can ask other people about the course. You can also maintain a list of courses you have done (easy to match people/courses) and you can find a MOOC Buddy.
• Coursefunder. I was a bit hesitant to share this idea, but I have too many ideas to be able to develop myself, so here you go. You already have a number of courses that have been funded on Kickstarter, but I think that education is important enough to have its own venue. Possibly, p2pu could facilitate the process of attracting funds and crowds to build courses that cannot be sustained by volunteerism alone.