John Smith and I did another MVP Clinic for Social and Community Apps on Nov-20-2013. We took notes live in a PrimaryPad (an EtherPad derivative application). What follows is a cleaned up version of notes that we took and the audience contributed to. You can see Recap from Nov-20-2013 for more background information.
Overview: exploring how to identify some key problems in communities where the presenters members, trying to understand how to research them, and how to contribute to solving those problems. Two very different people facing analogous situations: one is a researcher looking for action research topics in the KM4Dev community, the other is an entrepreneur who wants to make athletic contests more engaging for contestants and the audience by providing more information that is mobile device friendly.
Commonalities between the two cases that were presented on November 20, 2013
- Challenges in understanding the embedded (often invisible) interests, incentives and assumptions of different groups
- Assumptions about boundaries of organizations that interact with those communities
- Change management perspective is necessary but is challenging to apply in a community context -- it is more of an organizational term, based on a high degree of control
- watching a school of fish trying to determine how they decide to change direction
- both were familiar with communities but may not have appreciated impact of incentives
Panelistsfor today:
Presenter #1: Phillip Grunewald
- PhD student researching how knowledge exchanges can be best facilitated in the international development sector.
- Have been working on this for 1.5 years now and have another 1.5 years left to conduct studies
- Before starting this PhD, worked in in various organisations on Marketing, Corporate Communications, Monitoring and Evaluation and customer relationship management.
- Hold a bachelor's degree in corporate communications and a masters degree in international studies.
- LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/philipp-grunewald/6a/4ba/82/
- Blog: www.thoughtfordevelopment.com / twitter: @thought4dev
Presenter #2: Eugene Chuvyrov
- Have 14 years of programming experience, with 3.5 of those being an independent consultant.
- Built many web-based and several mobile products - love technology, not just programming, and I can see myself programming robots or wearable devices just as eagerly as I do mobile dev.
- Ran a Software Architecture group in Florida and I help organize a cloud computing group here in the San Francisco Bay area.
- Curent startup: http://www.we-compete.com/