Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (VI): organization

Please consider reading previous post of the Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities  series:

• Introduction.
• Root article (you can access the rest of the posts from this one).

This project must have a legal entity that support the activity it will generate. That legal entity must be as flexible as possible. In Spain, for example, it would probably be an Association formed initially by legalized Local Free Software Communities (LFSC). When new ones get a minimum state of maturity, they will be invited to join the association as members.

Each Association would name a representative for this project. The Association's Assembly then will be formed by representatives of every legal LFSC involved. They would elect a Board, that initially, it would be formed by a President, a Vice-president, a Treasurer and a Secretary.

This Association will represent the project from a legal, economic and "political" point of view. Its basic role is to coordinate efforts and to make the project sustainable, keeping the independence of every member.

The Assembly would organize itself in groups taking care of different tasks. Several groups should be created:

1. Activities coordination group: All the activities, schedule and organization details will be coordinated y this group. The schedule is should be presented to the Board for approval and every year, a report should be made to the General Assembly.
2. Sustainability group: this group will take care of the sustainability of the project, specially the economic side.
3. I recommend to organize another two groups. One specialized in promo actions and another one that help the Board in dealing with administrative tasks, taxes, etc.

Sponsors and local entities should be invited to join these working groups so they become part of the project building relations with Local Free Software Communities.

Study of Spanish Internet users habits

The Association of Communication Media Research (AIMC) from Spain has published its annual study, based on questionnaires. This year (2011) almost 35 thousand people has participated.

This annual survey is the most relevant in Spain. This is its 14th edition. It tries to analyze Internet users habits, specially related to media. The first part of the survey deals with basic questions related with time spent in Internet, tools used, connectivity, SO, browser, frequently used services, etc.

As every year, many conclusions might be taken from this survey. I want to point here some interesting ones:

• The percentage of users that connect to Internet through a Linux based system has grown from 3.3% up to 3.6% last year due to the irruption in the survey of Android (0.7%).
• Microsoft market has gone from 86.1% to 86% during last year.
• Mozilla Firefox has drop from 36.6% to 31.6% but this year is the number one browser in Spain. IE is second with 30.1% and Chrome third with 29% Chrome is growing fast.
• Android is the leading mobile OS (40.5%) followed by iOS (22.4%), Symbian (11.5%) and Blackberry (11.3%). 6.3% admits that do not know what OS is shipped in his/her mobile phone.
• 93.4% of electronic newspaper readers use a PC/laptop/netbook, 12.9% tablets and 34.4% phones (obviously these are not exclusive).
• 45.5% of Internet users listen digital radio stations or on line music services like LastFM, Spotify, etc.
• 52.5% say unwanted/unauthorized advertisement is a big problem and 48.5% say Internet speed need improvement. 

The study is very interesting for many KDE related areas.

Please remember that this numbers are referred to Internet users only.

Links (in Spanish):

• Study presentation (.pdf)
• Full study 2011 (.pdf)
• 2011 questionnaire
• Previous studies

Moving to Madrid for a few weeks

As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I'm looking for a new job. I'm moving to Madrid to have some interviews and, hopefully, to attend to some Free Software/Free culture events. Let's see if I can also give a talk about KDE too.

I've been in Madrid many times before. I even have family there, but most of the times, I couldn't enjoy the city or visit some of my friends there since I went to work. It'll be different this time.

During these weeks in Madrid, I'll finish the Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities series of posts and will try to help launching KDE ON Program.

You probably haven't heard anything about it. You can get some idea by reading the following previous posts from my blog:

• Some previous ideas about building new ecosystems around free software projects ( I, II, III, IV and V)
• KDE Program: Mission and Goals
• What is KDE Program
• KDE Organizational Network Program structure

Yes, I know, it is too much to read, but hey, I've been busy.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (V): services

Since this is the fifth post of the Building Innovation Nodes Through Free Software Communities, I strongly recommend you to read the previous four (I, II, III and IV)

This post will explain my ideas about what are the basic services that the initiative should provide so Local Free Software Communities (LFSC) and local player might organize activities that allow the project to be successful.

As enumerated in the second post of the series, the basic services that should be provided by the project to its members can be divided in six major areas:

1. Administrative.
2. Legal.
3. Financial and accounting.
4. Marketing and communication.
5. Business development.
6. Facilities maintenance and management.

The rest of the activities needed will be developed by participants, that is LFSC members, the catalyst organization or local players.

1.- Administrative

The administrative service can be divided in the following way:

1. Administrative services related with the project itself.
2. Administrative services targeting Local Free Software Communities.
3. All of the above.

1.1.- Administrative services related with the project itself

• Board support: as you can read in the Organization section, the project will be managed by a Board, elected from the Assembly. This Board will need administrative support.
• Contact/agenda management for project representatives.
• Accommodation management for activities organized within the project.

1.2.- Administrative services targeting Local Free Software Communities.
 

LFSC legalization: help LFSC that want to become part of the project in the near future with the basic administrative work in order for them to become a legal entity.

1.3.- Administrative services for both, the project and every LFSC participant

• Regular post management: notifications, legal papers and material shipment, this is, regular post service is one of those difficult area to manage when you are a distributed organization where board members chance quiet often.
• Membership management: the management of current and new members is a tedious task that every organization must put resources on. Having an administrative service can help them to become more efficient, specially to those where a each member has to make a yearly quota.

2.- Legal

The basic legal services needed are:

• Advice about basic legal aspects related with statutes and everyday decisions and operations for any LFSC and the project itself.
• Basic legal advice about licensing.
• Legalization of LFSC.
• Institutional agreements.
• Legal advice related with funding.

3.- Financial and accounting

This service should be given to the project itself and for every project member:

• Accounting support.
• Budget and economic reports. Costs control.
• Advice in financial decision and taxes.

4.- Marketing and communication

• LFSC and Project activities promotion in mainstream and social media.
• Project press releases and announcements.
• Local marketing actions support.

5.- Business development

Since the project will need to look for funds in order to grow, business development activities become a key part. The project will provide a service in this area that support participants the following areas:

• Relation with local agents/players.
• Sponsorship management support.

In another article I will talk about the resources needed to lauch the project and make it sustainable.

6.- Facilities maintenance and management
 

The facilities assigned to the project will be when the activities take place. The project will provide the following services:

• Facilities management.
• Security.
• Material manage, storage and control.
• Activities support.
• Connectivity.

and others needed to organize and support the activities defined by participants.

FOSDEM 2012 for Toscalix

This was my first FOSDEM without a predefined tight agenda, so I could enjoy more than ever the event. I had a lot of fun and could talk to many people with no stress.

I attended to several talks. I must say that I didn't like many of them. I'll mention the best ones, for different reasons:

• Wayland
• MER
• Qt5
• LibrePlan
• OpenAdvice
• OpenMoko Freerunner 
• Why the community should welcome Average Jane and Joe 

Obviously I didn't attend to most of the talks. There were more than 400 in one and a half day.

I spent most of the late Saturday and Sunday around KDE stand. Many KDE members where there and I could talk to most of them. I would like to mention Jonathan Riddell's work, specially in these hard times for him, Jonathan, you rock!

It was very cold in Brussels. We reached -14ºC the first night. Simply too much for a Canary Island guy. The beer was warmer than the weather. That was weird. Thanks to the Kolab guys, Paul and Georg, I could drink some very good beer and visit cool bars I've never been before.

As you know, we are having a hard time in Spain, specially if we talk about unemployment. Free Software sector is doing quiet good though. On our recent history, one of our structural problems have been exportation. Last two years, due to the internal the economic crisis, we have raised them by 30% and FLOSS companies are no exception. Many Spanish companies had presence in FOSDEM 2012.

On Sunday night I organized a networking dinner with some Spanish FLOSS companies and a representative of the Commercial Office of the Spanish Embassy in Brussels. KDE Spain, Zentyal, Gestiweb, Igalia, Carlos Sánchez and others (up to 24) were there.

The goal was that these representatives could know some entrepreneurs and how the FLOSS sector is doing in Spain. Next year, the day before FOSDEM 2013, we plan to organize in the Spanish Embassy in Brussels some networking activities between Spanish FLOSS companies and foreign corporations attending to the event.

FOSDEM has a great program, but networking is as relevant as talks. So don't don't miss it next year. See you there, hopefully, with better weather.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (IV): localization/facilities

Please keep in mind that this is the fourth of a series of post. Please read previous ones ( I, II and III) before the following.

The venue is very important in order to be successful. I suggest to launch the project in a city with the following characteristics:

• Big not not too much, so activities created have a global impact in the city. 
• With at least one big University with Computers Science and Engineering/Science Faculties. This will ensure potential contributors.
• Well communicated with bigger cities so activities organized can attract visitors from those cities.
• With an international airport so it is easy for the Global Free Software Communities (GFSC) to celebrate promotional and technical activities with foreign speakers and attendees.

The facilities are a key element in order to have success. Some of the most relevant characteristics that the venue must have are: 

• Close to the city center, well communicated with the airport or train station (if there is international airport) and close to the University if possible.
• Close to hotels, hostels or other accommodations. It is important to have cheap accommodation around the facilities.
• Some kind of garden or natural area where to talk comfortably outdoors.
• Cafeterias, bars and restaurants must be close to the facilities.
• Facilities must have, at least:
• A room for conferences up to 75 - 100 people.
• High quality Internet connection. Wifi in the area and outside.
• AC Plugs.
• A meeting room.
• A computer lab or a room prepared for plugging laptops.
• A networking area with some tables.
• Stock

To be successful, the place must have a comfortable atmosphere. It must be a quiet but informal. It must promote interaction but also intimacy. 

Go back to the description post.

Looking for a new job

After some time resting, sharing time with my family in the Canary Islands and working on personal projects, it's time for me to go back into business. So I'll be looking for a new job as my major goal the following weeks/months.

1. I would like to work for a company with business interests in several countries, not just Spain. I'm used to travel up to 75% of my work time and I'm open for relocation.
2. Since 2003 I've been fully involved in projects, non-profits and companies directly related with FLOSS. I would like to work for a FLOSS organization or an entity that would like to open its business to Free/Open Source Software models.
3. Although I studied Applied Physics (electronic), I'm not a technician. I have experience in the business and executive field. I also have experience as project/program manager and business developer.
4. Most of the people out of Spain know me because I'm involved in KDE, but my experience in FLOSS goes beyond desktops.
5. I've assumed a lot of responsibilities my entire professional career (since 1998), leading small companies, projects and business associations. I'm used to dealing with conflicts and tough situations that need to take risks and decisions.
6. The above do not mean I'm not a team player. I am. I've been part of high skilled teams in very technical projects up to political initiatives.

Like many others with experience in Free/Open Source Software business, I'm used to fighting against giants. Smart people, passion, innovation, cooperation and hard work can take any organization where once seemed impossible. I would like to have the chance to prove it once again in my following job.

To get further details about my experience and skills, please contact me. I will send you my resume:

• identi.ca / Twitter: @toscalix
• IRC: toscalix (freenode.net)
• mail: toscalix (/at/) gmail (/dot/) com

You can also check my Linkedin profile.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (III): participants

This is the third post of this serie. Please read the first two (I and II) before reading this one.

A.- Participants

As mentioned in the previous post, the participants in a project like the one we are describing can be organized in three different groups:

1.- Source

There are the organizations which represent the innovation source, that is, Local Free Software Communities (LFSC from now on).

Mature Global Free Software Communities (GFSC) are organizing more and more local groups, specially in non-English speaking countries since people in general like to related to each other in their native language. But in most cases those local groups are not configured as legal entities. When they are, most of the times there is no legal relation with the matrix, at least, so they can operate as legal representatives of the GFSC in its country.

Due to law differences, in each country that relation implies different rights and duties, so there no single and simple way of building that relation. But is an achievable problem in most cases. In KDE we created a precedent with the agreement with KDE Spain (link). we are using this initiative as experiment in order to replicate it with more LFSC.

This project should have, as one of its major goals, to help local groups:

• To become legal entities, so they can grow and mature, by being able to relate to other organizations, not just its matrix.
• To develop activities that allow them to increase the number of local contributors and the software use by local players.

2.- Catalyst

The Catalyst is the organization that will put the initial effort to attract local communities to the project. Ideally, it'll will have the initial resources and the localization needed to launch the project. Its major initial goals will be:

• To coordinate the initial steps and prepare everything for the LFSCs to take command of the project when the Assembly is formed.
• To promote interactions and networking among LFSCs and between those and local agents.
• To do marketing with impact beyond Free Software media.

3.- Local agents

The initially act as receptors of the knowledge transfer generate in Free Software Communities. In a second step, little by little, will generate its own experience and knowledge to LFSC to end up providing them developers, experiences and (hopefully) code. Beside interacting with LFSC, Catalyst will promote interactions among them, so they can learn from each other's experience.

B.- An example: Spain

Local Free Software Communities

Mi idea is giving this project a try in a certain country. Let's say Spain. It would kick off in a certain big city and could be replicated to smaller ones. The initial LFSC candidates are:

• Debian-es
• KDE España
• GNOME Hispano
• OpenStreetMap España
• Joomla Spanish
• Drupal Hispano
• gvSIG

All of them are legal entities in Spain, regularly organize community events and have ten or more members. They are the perfect starters.

Some other local groups must be also involved in the early steps. They are LFSC groups that are not legal yet, but organize events and are active groups. The project should focus on helping them to become members of the project. By the end of the first year, the goal must be to add another 5-6 local groups to the project with the same rights and duties than founders. Distribution LoCo teams (Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Gentoo, Guadalinex, Linex, CentOS, etc.), computer language related groups (Java Hispano, Rails-es, etc.), product oriented communities (Zentyal, LibreOffice-es, Plone-es, LibrePlan, etc.) and other ones like OSGEO-es, FSFe, Mozilla-es, etc. are perfect candidates for these second group.

Catalyst
 

In my mind, the perfect catalyst is a non-profit with many local contacts and visibility or a Public Administration (City Council or Municipality). Last November, I presented this idea to one City Council from a big Spanish City. Other options are being under study.

Local players/agents

The best players to involved at early stages of the project are those that have demonstrated in the past some relation and support to Free Software. The plan is to reduce the culture gap initially. My first candidates would be:

• Regional/national Association/Federation of Free Software SME.
• Local college (through its Free Software Office).
• R&D Institutes with Free Software related experience.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (II)

Please read the previous post about this topic to have a better idea of what I'm trying to explain here.

When thinking about how to create a local node in a certain area where all the knowledge from GFSC can be used to improve local economy and social rights I came to the conclusion that we need to define a model based on the following six general ideas:

1. Principles: some basic principles shared by all participants must be defined.
2. Participants: electing who is going to participate in the initiative and which role will have each one of them is another simple but relevant idea to determine.
3. Localization/facilities: the initiative needs a specific place, adapted to the kind of activities needed to achieved the goals.
4. Services and resources: participants will need to define services and look for the resources needed to launch and sustain the project.
5. Organization: governance model and structure are also key point to define. They must be adapted to promote an innovation environment.
6. Actions: activities that will be the core of the project.

1.- Principles

The actions that need to be taken must follow some principles shared by every GFSC, adding some important ones for local agents involved. These two groups of principles can be summarized in the following:

• Freedom, which includes economic and administrative freedom.
• Self management.
• Openness
• Integration.
• Free licenses.

2.-Participants

In order to be successful, I think the project must count on three major participants:

• Source: local Free Software Communities.
• Catalyst: organization that will promote interaction among players involved.
• Receptors: local organizations and individuals.

3.-Localization/facilities

Localization must be carefully chosen. I think that the perfect place must be located in a mid-size city, well communicated with bigger cities and an international airport. The facilities chosen must allow to celebrate talks, meetings and workshop, with a networking area. Accommodation and restaurants/cafeterias must be easily reachable.

To be successful, the place must have a comfortable atmosphere, quiet but informal, with areas that promote interaction and others intimacy. 

4.-Services and resources

In order to define a project to achieve our goals, some services will be needed. The basic ones are:

The project will need support in the following areas:

• Administrative
• Legal
• Financial and accounting.
• Marketing and communication.
• Business development.
• Facilities maintenance and management.

The resources needed to launch a project like this one, must come from:

• Sponsorship.
• Local public administrations and innovation agents.
• Local companies.
• Participants.
• Activities organized by participants.

5.- Organization

Innovation and complex organization structures are incompatible. The structure to manage the project must be simple and compatible with the culture from the communities involved. I think the perfect organization and structure comes from a mix of three different kind of well known organizations:

• Labs. There are many of them around the globe. In Spain we have two well known, one in Madrid and other one in Barcelona.
• Self-managed cultural centers. They are multidisciplinary legal entities, self-organized, usually linked to a certain building or infrastructure where many different kind of activities are promoted and organized.
• Business incubators.

The global idea is reducing administrative and legal work to the minimum, promoting meritocracy and electing the people that manage the project, creating forums where local agents directly interact with those organizers from the communities that participate in the initiative.

6.- Activities

The communities involved in the project will determine the type of activities to be organized. Obviously, in order to generate a local pole, an intense agenda a a key point. It should be full of community events, but also other kind of activities that promote interactions with local agents, like training sessions, workshops, etc.

Communities usually organize itinerant events. A project like his do not mean that local communities has to change this mechanism of "spreading the message". It is just a matter of creating several minor activities per year at this place.

In following posts I will explain a little how do I believe the above six point should be done/organized to be able to create a local pole of innovation through Free Software Communities.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities

Global Free Software Communities (GFSC from now on) are a proof that Silicon Valley model is an industrial innovation and business model from past century. GFSC are building, not just great products, but creating new engineering procedures and tools, new ways of governance models, supporting and promoting new legal improvements in some areas, creating its own identity, its own culture and becoming politically active promoting freedom in the digital world.

Communities attract many young talents and professional by allowing them to grow personally, technically and professionally while developing software anyone can use. GFSC represent a mirror to some new movements and a relevant help to others.

Traditionally key stakeholders has seen GFSC as a R&D ecosystem and a hiring environments. Lately, we are facing a significant change. Smaller companies are getting more and more involved with a new purpose, to share the development of a technology or product to base their business upon. This is specially true in vertical (product oriented) communities, like Drupal or Joomla, for example.

We are also seeing some companies succeeding in building communities around their products, creating a new type of communities driven, but not owned, by them.

All this innovation is taking place through internet, starring geographically distributed teams who usually know each other if they collaborate in the same community but do not if they are members of different ones.

I believe that we have a good opportunity in the following years of creating impact in many places with what we do if we are able to create nodes where all that we do in communities can be translate it to local agents/actors so they can adapt our procedures, use our software, create their own, build a local business sector around the software, help other sectors grow, etc. and, at the same time, attract more contributors to our communities, give us very useful feedback and give us resources to increase our activity.

Different communities have done different actions in order to accomplish these goals. We have experiences from all over the world where Libre Software has been used/deployed/develop with a concrete purpose and certain measurable results. Big companies and Public Administrations has also develop many experiences. 

But overall, it seems to me that we haven't yet get the solution to spread our "innovation and culture" in a structured manner, so every community can repeat some basic processes to grow locally and get feedback from these initiatives. For several reasons, many people out there are using our software, but GFSC and the local agents are not properly connected so any of them are taking all the possible advantage. It is hard for us get benefit out of it to let our communities grow. Most of the time it is just a one way street...

GFSC want new contributors that allow us to build new code (and related activities) along with new power users to test and notify bugs and possible improvements. We use internet as the main communication channel and organize events all over the world to accomplish that goal. It takes an affordable amount of resources to execute those action and support the needed infrastructure that allow us to grow every year. But that growth is linear and have little impact in a localized area most of the time. I guess the strategy must be different if we want to create well established local nodes to generate a big impact. And spread them.

How can we move that distributed innovation done by GFSC to a certain geographic area? How an innovation node that helps local economy giving engineers, companies, etc. new chances can be created ? How can we do it in a way that GFSC get feedback? How do we replicated and spread them? Is it possible to do it by ourselves, with our own culture?

I'll write a couple of posts during the following days with some ideas I have related with this topic. These ideas are the fundamentals of a proposal sent to a City Council from Spain to try to create a local node of innovation related through Free Software Communities.

If you know an example of local groups of people that have done sustainable actions in a certain area resulting in increasing the number of contributors in a specific GFSC along with improving the local economy, promoting the creation of local companies, deploying new tools, bringing users to Free Software, etc. please add a link or write s brieft summary. I would like to know about it.

There are several more recent posts about this topic. Please chack them if you are interested: 

• Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (II) 

• Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (III): participants