Describes the vision for the creation of a community of practice and a technology platform to connect projects that have related missions; projects from around the world working on climate change, for example.

1. OpenKollab
Catalyzing Strategic Confluence
Suresh Fernando
Founder
suresh@radical-
inclusion.com

2. What is OpenKollab?
Why Build OpenKollab?

3. “Given enough eyeballs, all
bugs are shallow!”
• Linus’ Law

4. To get you thinking…
Would enough eyeballs make the problem of
climate change shallow?
How about global conflict….
… Global economic inequity….

5. What We Will Talk About Today
 What is Strategic Confluence?
 Context
 What Is OK?
 OK Goals
 Project Matching
 Execution: Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems
 The OK Model
 The OK Community of Practice

6. Catalyzing Strategic Confluence
Philosophically speaking
Confluence: ‘a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one
point’… ‘the flowing together of two or more streams’
Generally we think of confluence as something that emerges; as a natural
process that occurs under certain conditions. We might envision a flock
of birds. At times their flight paths might seem chaotic, but in time they
will coordinate their actions and act in concert; their intentions aligning…
Strategic Confluence: What distinguishes strategic confluence is that we,
as agents have an intention to create confluence; an intention to bring
about the alignment of intentions and harmony that then results.

7. Strategic Confluence
Practically speaking
1. Scalable Open Collaboration Environment
 Low barrier to entry
2. Community of Practice
 people and projects
3. Technology Solution: Platform or Distributed
Infrastructure that Matches Projects
4. Processes and Models
 Drive and support collaboration, governance etc.
Create Infrastructure That Will Enable
Mass Coordination and Mobilization
around large scale social problems

8. Another Perspective…
Somebody’s Theory of Needs!
No Open Space
‘killer app’ to
Social
connect people on Friends Networking
basis of ‘work
synergy‟
WHY?
Dating Sites Love A Person
No one has solve
the Open Group
Collaboration ??? Work
Problem!

9. Context
Why the timing is right for OK

10. The Cultural Shift: societal
• Peer Production: distributed infrastructure – communication between network nodes
• Crowdsourcing: accessing intelligence of masses - nodes
• Agility: ie. „agile software development‟ – iterative process…dialogue
• BarCamps: commitment to openness
• Chaordic Organizational structures: non-hierarchical
• Top Down vs. Bottom Up Information Categorization: ie. Tagging vs. pre-
determined categories
• Citizen Journalism: power at the network „nodes‟
• Communities of Practice: learning as a social enterprise – based on dialogue and the
the ease of communication and information flow
• ‘Copyleft’: Creative Commons… „share-alike‟ licensing
Reflects Transition from Centralization to Decentralization
From ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’

11. Cultural Shift Parallels And Is
Interdependent With
Transformation of Communications
Infrastructure
Cultural Shift
Communications Infrastructure
This relationship is due to the fact that Time
communications patterns contribute to patterns contribute
cultural patterns to cultural patterns

12. A Historical Inflection Point
Provides Context for Massive Social Change
Technological Transformation
 towards a decentralized P2P architecture
 General social media trends toward real time connectivity
Cultural Transformation: towards Openness
Global Consciousness
 Internet
Problems That Require Global Coordination: climate change…
Demonstrated Failure of Western Institutions:
 capitalism… most recently
 Consciousness of responsibility for climate change…
Therefore leads to transition from emphasis on individuality
to community
There is a greater consciousness that the status quo need not be so!

13. OK Goals

14. OK Goals
[OK_SUP]: Catalyze Strategic Confluence
[OK_ SUB_1]: Aggregate 1,000,000 projects on
platform
[OK_ SUB_1]: Connect 100,000,000 people on
platform
Wow! That‟s either brilliantly
ambitious or insane!

15. Why connect 1,000,000 projects?
Practically Speaking
 Market Fragmentation/Redundancy: There are many different, but
related projects that could create critical mass and leverage by
collaborating
 Inefficient Deployment of Resources: Financial and human capital
resources are scarce and therefore efficiency considerations are
paramount.
 Inefficiency of Mission Alignment: Due to lack of visibility into what
other groups with similar objectives are Is Better
Effective Social Change doing, opportunities for
increased efficiencyServed By Large Scale
are lost.
Coordination and Mobilization
Around Common Objectives

16. How does OK connect 1,000,000
projects?
 Gather Project Information
 Focus on Scalability
 Match Project Information
 Provide Infrastructure to support
Collaborative Dialogue

17. How Does OK Gather Project
Information?
1. Define a basic ontology/meta-data
structure
1. Goals, needs, resources…
2. Provide standardized input forms
(relative to ontology) and standardized
syntax for distributed input (via
Twitter, Facebook…)
3. Focus on penetrating Ecosystems

18. Focus on Scalability
To scale the process, four things have to
happen:
1. Ease of Entry for End User
 Natural Language Input
2. Project Visibility
 Natural Language Input
3. Platform Must Add Value – must link
projects!
 Semantic Matching
4. Organizational Scalability: OK and
Projects
 What is the model?

19. Project Matching

20. Objective Of Matching Process
Create dialogue between
proximally related organizations
about collaboration possibilities

21. How Do How You Identify Projects That
Are Proximally Related?
Gather Meta Data about projects that
will support linking them to each
other
First Approximation
 Super/Sub-Ordinate Goals
 Needs/Offers

22. Project Matching
Company A Company B
Goal: fight global warming Goal: fight global warming
Need: marketing support Need: strong developers
Offer: strong developers Offer: marketing support

23. Problem: Semantic Ambiguity
Company A Company B
Goal: fight global warming Goal: fight climate change
Need: marketing support Need: strong programmers
Offers: strong developers Offers: marketing support
Semantic Ambiguity

24. Make Project Ontology Goals
Project Assumptions Needs
Mapping/Matching Resources
A Hybrid Process Gather Project Data
(ontology + qualitative)
Identify Relations/ Identify
Matches Manual Matches
Revealed By Platform
Identify Meta-Data
Discrepancies
Commence
Collaborative Modify Project
Dialogue Ontology Assumptions

25. So Why Both A Manual And
„Automated‟ Process? - Hybrid
We don‟t know what meta-data about projects is
actually necessary in order to drive collaboration
 Need an iterative process to learn what works
Project data needs to be authenticated
 Problem with WiserEarth, for example
Technology platform must be developed on top of
existing real world relationship – ie. Facebook

26. Collaborative Dialogue Process
OK Community Helps to Drive Collaboration
Define Process
1. Make time and process commitment
Deploy
2. Set up chat spaces
Resources
3. Set up information spaces: wiki,
Google group etc, of OK
4. Coordinate regular open Community
collaboration sessions
5. Provide expert facilitation

27. Hierarchical Goals and Project
Visibility

28. Understanding Hierarchical Goal
Structures
 !sup <openkollab> catalyzing strategic confluence
 !sub1<openkollab> 1,000,000 projects on platform T
 !sub1 <openkollab> 100,000,000 people on platform 3
 !sub 2 <openkollab> build Openkollab strategic
confluence platform
 !sub 2 <openkollab> build community of practice
T
 !sub 3 <openkollab> build team
2
 !sub 3 <openkollab> build project roadmaps
 !sub 3 <openkollab> identify subprojects T
1
Hierarchical Goals are Temporally
Sequenced and Force Projects to
Think in a Certain Way

29. How Do You Make Projects
Visible?
Represent the Project in a way that makes it visible
OK.SUB.2.2: 'Developing a Technology Platform to
Support Catalyzing Strategic Confluence'.
This would be associated with the following project
structure: PROJECT PERSONAL
· ONTOLOGY ONTOLOGY
Mission Age
Goals Sex
Leader Height
Team Interests
Milestones Hobbies
Note that Visible Personal
Ontologies are a recent phenomena.
Why not Visible Project Ontologies?

30. Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems
Rolling Out the OK Platform and
Process

31. What Is An Ecosystem?
Climate
Change
Forestr Ocean
y s
Project 1 Project 1
Project 2 Project 2
Project 3 Project 3
Land
Use Generally
Project 1
Project 2 connected via
Project 3
communication
s systems

32. Connecting Ecosystems?
What are
the
points of
Climate confluen
Chang Meta ce?
e Gov
Human
Rights

33. Driving Collaboration in Ecosystems
The Process
Test for Ontology
Alignment Manually
Build Commence
Gather Identify Collaboration
Community Collaborativ
Project
Identify Platform Opportunities
Ontology e
Ecosystems for
Data
Ecosystem Dialogue
Test for Ontology
Alignment Via Platform
Strategy: Develop
Conference Ecosystem
Platform Service Offering
i.e. target climate change

34. The OpenKollab Model

35. Organizational Structure
Will have
Founders - formal
OKco legal
structure
Active Members
Members

36. Issues We Are Working Through
 How do you balance an open environment with
the leadership requirement that is necessary to
drive projects?
 For-Profit or Not-for-Profit
 Should we stipulate all profits be reinvested?
 What implication does this have for equity/quasi-
equity funders?
 How do we a compensate structure pre-
financing?
 How do we structure a compensation structure
that will serve to scale participation?

37. OK Revenue Possibilities
 Conference Services
 Consulting
 Software Development
 Software Productization

38. The OK Community of Practice

39. What is OK community of
practice?
Governed by common intention: to drive collaboration
Committed to learning together: what is necessary to
drive collaboration
Committed to developing a common linguistic
framework
Committed to developing an internal, reputation
based, economic system
Committed to developing processes and models to
support collaboration
Operate as an Open Collaboration Space

40. The Importance Of a Common
Language
 Proper discussion/discourse requires Shared Terms
of Reference
 At this time there is no standardized ‘Collaboration
Language’
 Note, for example that a semantic framework for
social interaction has evolved; ‘lol, lmao, brb….’
 The meaning of terms is contextual
 Baseball Domain: “home-run”, “triple-play”
 Project Domain: “Super-ordinate goal”, “project”, “intention”
Mitigates Semantic Ambiguity Problem

41. How Do You Develop a Common
Language?
 Hybrid: Top-Down and Bottom-Up
approach
 Top Down: introduce set of terms and
definitions
 Bottom Up: allow community to
collaborative modify terms and definitions
 Formal Syntax: develop formal syntax –
ie. Tent

42. The OK Reputation Based Economic
System
 At least at the outset, what is available for exchange
is our time and labour.
 The return is the garnering of reputation
 Reputation has currency in the „real‟ world.

43. OK Processes and Models

44. OK Communications Structure
 Listserv
 IRC Chat Space

47. How OK can help to end the Arab/Israeli Crisis!
Perception of No Direct No Real Time
Conflict
Difference Experience Interaction
Possibility of
Note: most state sanctioned False Information
killing does not occur
AND Build OK
Absence of
within ones community Experience
Platform
of Similarity
Realize we don’t need to kill each other
Leaders realize we are all alike – are human
Provides Real Time Experience of Each Other
Create Generation of Leaders Connected on OK Platform

48. Enterprise Ecosystems
Needs/Resource Synergy
„An ecosystem is a system whose members benefit from
each other's participation via symbiotic relationships.’
Client Client Client Services Layer
Partner Organization Partner Service Delivery Layer
Support: Financing, Volunteers Support Layer
All organizations have other organizations that they work
with regularly. These organizations form a set of natural
relationships; an Ecosystem

49. Community
Formation
Coordinated
Collaboration
Action