Proposal title:

Using and improving community leadership handbooks

Description * (brief overview for marketing purposes, max. length 400
characters—about 65 words)

There are a handful of resources that community leaders have for
teaching others about open source best practices, and even fewer of
those resources are themselves open projects encouraging
contributions.

In this hands-on workshop, we explore, understand how to use, and make
live contributions to two of these handbooks, "The Open Source Way"
and the "Community Management Wiki".

Topics: Business, Community, Government, Education, Healthcare

Session type: 3 hour workshop

Abstract:

If you work in an open, collaborative community, you may find yourself
leading one day and trying to figure out where someone else is taking
you another day. This free-exchange of leadership is one of the many
aspects of open source-style collaborations that we see again and
again.

There has formed a loose community of practice around community
leadership. This community of practice has been meeting at and holding
conferences, writing down practices of the trade, and recently has
seen many people move from ad hoc leadership positions to formal,
titled roles at a company trying to create and improve products by
moving community projects forward.

This workshop focuses on two of the open content/free culture works
currently developed and used by community leaders. The workshop goal
is to introduce the handbooks to community participants and leaders,
show how to use them in everyday interactions, and work with other
participants on contributing to the handbooks.

"The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of
contributors" is a relatively short, focused handbook that is a
canonical source for all the principles embodied in the open source
way. It looks at the open source way as more than just a software
development methodology, making the handbook is useful for many
domains of interest.

https://www.theopensourceway.org

"The Community Management Wiki" is a comprehnsive resource guide for
ideas and practices that are useful in managing participation
communities.

http://communitymgt.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Management_Wiki

Both of these books are written and maintained by open communities
that practice their own principles in creating and using these books.

In the learning portion of the workshop, participants gain knowledge
and practice in using these handbooks for everyday community
situations.

In the hands-on portion of the workshop, participants do work directly
in the wiki tools of these two handbooks. Effectively, workshop
participants become contributors, working under the guidance of one of
the writers of these community resources.

Tags:

community, the open source way, leadership, collaboration, wiki, documentation, hands-on,