Community call series on OS governance models and co-creation of related resources
Funding Area: Community governance / Gobernanza comunitaria
Problem Statement: Open-source (OS) project leads need to consider various governance models and make decisions about which are most appropriate as they strive to scale and/or sustain their projects and engage their community members. They need to be responsive when models that are adopted initially need to evolve over time with the project and community. They additionally may need to balance community and project needs with legal and administrative constraints of their host institutions or local regulations. These factors make governance decisions a multi-dimensional challenge. It’s likely that their colleagues before them have grappled with at least some of the same questions; however much of their experience or learning goes unreported, or is not shared beyond an immediate network of close collaborators. To make this learning more visible to leaders across OS organization types, we propose facilitating new connections among hardware, software, publishing, and data projects to gain a global perspective on a range of governance challenges. Our goal is to support a series of activities that will enable open, nuanced, and ongoing conversations about governance, which are vital for sustaining healthy OS communities. We will invite OS project team members to share their experiences, knowledge, and questions around governance, securing representation of OS projects with communities in low, middle, and high income economies, to ensure a global perspective on how governance issues are addressed.
Proposed Activities: We propose a community call series for OS project leads and community managers focused on governance models that may be used in managing teams, projects, and communities. This topic was initially discussed by CSCCE’s CoP in 2021 (https://www.cscce.org/2021/11/19/novembers-community-call-recap-exploring-community-governance-models/). Activity 1: host 5 community calls Each call will feature 1-3 speakers who have experience with one or several models (e.g., benevolent dictator, elected boards, and consensus) and consist of presentations, Q&A, and discussions that allow attendees to synthesize what they learned. We will organize calls by themes, including the governance of “host organizations” (e.g., fiscal sponsors and federations) and how it impacts projects; community-engaged governance approaches (e.g., community councils, membership models and creating leadership pathways within communities); and examples of how governance can evolve and be assessed (e.g., via culture surveys, CHAOSS metrics approaches, and more). We will ensure that we address governance across a range of regional and economic contexts. Our learning goals are for attendees to: Appreciate that governance can have multiple, nuanced definitions - and manifest in different ways within the same project Apply this knowledge to characterize their current governance model(s) Evaluate the contextual factors that may affect how a model is adopted - and explore how problems may be mitigated Appreciate that a project and a community may need to pursue different models as they evolve The calls will be free and open to anyone. We will advertise broadly in our networks and seek out additional communication channels to ensure diverse participation. The governance series will follow our upcoming Tools Trials series (taking place from mid-August 2023), which is focused on open-source tools for community building (https://www.cscce.org/2023/07/20/investigating-open-source-community-platforms-cscce-tools-trials-return/). We plan to recruit presenters for the governance series in late 2023 and launch programming in early 2024 as a series of biweekly calls. Activity 2: produce artifacts for broader reuse We will produce recordings, tip sheets and blog posts for broader dissemination and reuse (see below). Activity 3: connect participants in an existing, active CoP Attendees will connect with peers in a dedicated OS space in the CSCCE CoP who can continue to provide mutual support as projects develop. We are requesting $17,000 to cover the cost of 5 community calls, $5,000 to cover honoraria for guest speakers, and $2,220 for institutional overhead. Funding for community calls supports CSCCE staff as we plan content, invite guest speakers, advertise calls to our community and partner organizations, facilitate the calls, work with presenters to create artifacts, and support the CoP.
Openness: Two open resources were created as a result of the initial community call focused on governance in 2021: A worksheet (with 186 downloads as of 31 July 2023) that allows users to explore different governance models: https://zenodo.org/record/5714448 An annotated list of resources for learning more about governance models: CSCCE CoP: Resources related to community governance While the community calls we propose are intended specifically for OS project leads and community managers, attendance will be free and open to anyone. With the presenters’ permission, we will record presentations (not the Q&A or breakouts) to share on the CSCCE YouTube channel. We will co-author summary blog posts and develop a series of tip sheets explaining different governance models and case studies of their adoption, with presenters. CSCCE has created a variety of similar resources focused on community champions, DEI, virtual meetings, and other relevant topics that have cumulatively been downloaded more than 42,000 times. In addition, we can write a synthesis blog post that details observations we make from discussions and notes about challenges facing OS leads related to governance and the type of support they are looking for.
Challenges: Matching content to attendees’ needs: Governance is complex and there are many types of models to consider. It is therefore unlikely that we will be able to address all of the attendees’ questions and knowledge gaps. We will endeavor to feature presenters in our expansive network who have navigated a wide range of issues related to governance in their own work and have pursued a variety of models. We can also survey interested attendees prior to the start of the call series to learn more about their interests, challenges, and questions, and strive to structure the calls accordingly. Ensuring diverse participation: We will advertise the series to the CSCCE CoP and partner organizations. We will also follow up with the six OS projects that have expressed initial interest in participating to ensure their availability. We will work with IOI to reach out to additional communities. Ensuring that attendees are able to maximize the benefits of attending the sessions. We can work with speakers to identify readings that attendees may benefit from reviewing prior to attending the call so that they are able to understand presentations and ask informed questions. We will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous modes of participation to ensure that all attendees are able to participate fully. We will provide artifacts of the calls (e.g., summary blog posts, tip sheets) that attendees can return to later.
Neglectedness: To the best of our knowledge, there are no other sources of funding dedicated to running the community call series that we propose, with the possible exception of Code for Science & Society’s Event Fund.
Success: Success will be evaluated based on a range of factors: i) Call attendance and participation, number of views / downloads of videos and resources. These metrics will enable us to gauge the reach of the series and related resources. ii) A lightweight survey at the completion of each call asking attendees what they learned, what was most valuable, and what they plan to do next with the information. This information will enable us to both adjust the content and format of the series to respond to participant needs, as well as to gain indications of whether we are meeting learning objectives and what the potential implementation of the knowledge might look like. We also frequently receive impromptu feedback on our community activities (e.g., emails, Slack DMs). iii) Participation in future activities. We anticipate that most of the attendees will already be CSCCE Slack members or join Slack after the call, which will allow us to stay in contact with them longer-term. An additional metric of success is to be able to use this series as an opportunity to build momentum for additional programming for OS community managers and strengthen the OS subcommunity within the CSCCE CoP.
Total Budget: $24,220
Budget File: pdf
Affiliations: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement
LMIE Carveout: While CSCCE is based in the United States, we support an international, virtual community of practice composed of more than 600 members. We have received informal statements of interest in participating in this series from the following OS projects with communities in LMIE’s: The Carpentries, Africa OSH, AfricArXiv, Wild Labs, Reagent Collaboration Network, RSE Asia. We would also work with IOI to identify additional candidate communities.
Team Skills: Lou Woodley led the development and implementation of the POSE Training Program Pilot for U.S. National Science Foundation Pathways to Open Source Ecosystems awardees in April-May 2023. She has coordinated and convened numerous generative open projects including unconferences, workshops, a multi-day festival, and in-person retreats which each supported community development and the generation of new knowledge artifacts. Katie Pratt has three years of experience coordinating community calls for CSCCE and developing open resources and seven years of prior experience with event organization and multimedia resource creation. Emily Lescak has more than three years of experience supporting open research communities at Code for Science and Society, The Wikimedia Foundation, and CSCCE. CSCCE counts among their clients multiple open projects, and discussion of governance approaches regularly comes up during these engagements.
Submission Number: 161
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