osm

In an Internet landscape full of "what I ate for breakfast" posts, here's my semi-regular dose of transparency and accountability to the Joomla community as to my activities as Open Source Matters (OSM) President.

Week in Review

• moved forward on my second draft on a few roles and responsibilities documents for OSM Board positions and volunteer opportunities
• spoke to Joomla! users and supporters, developers of other open source CMS projects, and generally extolled the virtues of great open source software like Joomla! at the Non-Profit Technology Conference in Atlanta, USA
• began outlining possible ways for me to give personalized presentations via video in place of in-person presentations, and realized that while it's not nearly as good as being physically present, it makes up for not being able to be in two places at once
  
• updated my contact information and gave some pointers for a new, simple contact spreadsheet for our OSM Board members, until a more robust system is ready to rock and roll
  
• introduced myself to OSM's accountant
• reviewed tax information for OSM
• made plans to speak at ENSOL in Brazil, May 6-9, 2010, and reminds our Brazilian community that if you're able to get to ENSOL you should definitely attend!
• agreed to remotely speak at Joomla!Day Sweden, April 23-24, 2010, via video
  
• communicated with a member of the community in New York who will be speaking at the Connecticut Film Festival in Danbury, Connecticut (USA) on May 4-9, 2010
• talked to new potential development sponsors (note to self: off-load the sponsorship chair role to another Board member, quickly, in order to help keep up the speed in communications with potential sponsors!)
• received terrific information from a community member about outreach success to government agencies, and continued to realize the huge potential for Joomla! within governments worldwide

Next Week's Preview and Goals

• continuing move forward on roles and responsibilities documents
• preparing to speak at the Politics Online Conference in Washington, DC on April 20, 2010, in a session titled "Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal and More: Which CMS Systems Work Best for Which Clients and Organizations?"
• working with the Melbourne, Australia team on early preparations for the major event later this year
• reaching Inbox Zero for my OSM mailbox
• voice meetings with at least 5 OSM Board members and Leadership Team members
• delegating my past/current responsibilities to other capable OSM Board members
• keeping the well of positivity full

Until next time, keep up the great energy, community.  Your success stories and great ideas keep me moving forward.

Read more: http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1155-ryans-update-week-of-april-5-2010.html

In November 2009, Open Source Matters (OSM) put out a request for proposal (RFP) to the Joomla! community, asking teams of community members to provide proposals for what will be the first round of major, worldwide events officially supported by OSM.  In the RFP, OSM looked for a variety of characteristics that would make these unique events a success, in a effort to outline measures of success for this new type of event.

This process has been quite different from the typical process that OSM has undertaken for Joomla!Days.  A major event is, well, major:  an international gathering bringing together up to 1,200 people to a professionally managed event.  Attracting the Joomla! community's users, implementers, and developers from around the world, these major events have a wonderful opportunity to further build bridges within the Joomla! community.

Our goal in this proposal process was to directly engage with the community to find the right teams that could receive the full support of OSM to manage these important events.

The process attracted the interest of six fantastic teams from around the world.  Of these initial six teams, four provided OSM with proposals detailing their ideas for a major Joomla! event.

• Melbourne, Australia
• Toledo, Spain
• Rome, Italy
• Mallorca, Spain

Through a review of each of the proposals, we have been able to make a decision for the first host city for this new series of major events:  Melbourne, Australia!

We have been working with the Melbourne team during the past few weeks to move forward quickly for an event in November 2010, and the team has been doing a fantastic job getting the ball rolling forward successfully.  During the next few weeks, we'll be providing more information about the event, detailing dates, location, and more.

We'd like to thank each of the local community teams for their hard work in putting together their proposals for these new events.  We've been in touch with each team, and look forward to the opportunity to work with them in the future.

Read more: http://community.joomla.org/events/34-event-news/1146-selection-of-first-major-event.html