OSI-EDU-WG Meeting Notes

Combining 25 March through 13 May 2014

Participating

Joseph Potvin
Ken Udas
Wayne Macintosh
Amanda Brock (via a separate follow-up conversation)

Discussion Notes

1. Overview of JPotvin's Meeting with OSI Board on 29 April 2014

The OSI Board members are very pleased with both the substance and the process of this Working Group, and are looking forward to assisting the outreach stage. Thanks to each of you for helping to make it so!

The Board asked for the following items from us:

1. Text for a draft template "media release" and very brief communications plan, timed for mid-June;
2. A hand-off report regarding this first stage now being "completed",
   ready for an announced mid-June launch;  (The current working group needs to be stamped done, so that it can stand on it's own as a competed project and usable resource. We will reviewing the original charter/proposal to see if all the deliverables are there before moving on to the next WG.)
3. A draft for a new Working Charter going forward (let's say with a 1-year time horizon);
4. Regarding the idea that Ken, Amanda and I (so far) have discussed, to prepare a learning module based on the section "Constraints on the FLOW of Ideas" (i.e. patents) that can leverage the prominence of the CLS Bank vs Alice Corp case in the US whichever way the court goes, they asked for a brief proposal. That legal case will be decided (it appears) in June.

In Boston we also met with staff of the Free Software Foundation, and with Richard Stallman. Amongst various topics of mutual interests, we discussed the potential for adapting a variant of the FLOW Syllabus for the FSF site.

2. Towards a Scalable Approach to the New Working Group

1. Proposed Name: The FLOW Education Working Group (FLOW-EDU-WG)
2. Official Launch: 16-17 June 2014
3. "General Communication Strategy of the FLOW Syllabus" http://osi.xwiki.com/bin/Projects/The+Communication+Strategy+of+the+FLOW+Syllabus
4. 4 Teams: Educational; Management; Legal; Technological
5. 3 Levels of Participation: "Team Contributor", "Team Member" and "Team Chair"
6. Team Mandates: Each team helps with maintenance and evolution of the concepts, methods and strategies of The FLOW Syllabus
7. Team Roles: 

• "Team Coordinator": Facilitates maintenance of the team mandate, and operational alignment with mandate. Collaborates with other Team Coordinators in a Steering Committee.  
• "Team Participant": Identified as a Participant in an online FLOW-EDU-WG forum (has a published record); Speaks in participant-only monthly conference call (has externally-streamed audio and published minutes with NO attribution). The different team calls occur on 1st; 2nd; 3rd, 4th Tues of each month respectively. Requirement for being a team participant is that s/he must work professionally in the disclipline named by each theme, or may be voted in by working consensus of current team members (in favor or neutral, none opposed). Each participant's accession must be ratified by the OSI Board with regard to consistency with FLOW principles, versus conflict of interest.
• "Team Contributor":  Identified as a Contributor in the online FLOW-EDU-WG forum; Live audio output and text participation access to the monthly discussion and minutes. Anyone may be a contributor.

This proposed design responds to the following discussion points:

• Official launch announcement of WG on 16-17 June (i.e. N.AM & EUR and ASIA & AUS/NZ)
• Charter for the new working group is being drafted, needs to go through OSI Board feedback and vote
• Four sub-groups with two levels of membership discussed (OER also has tiered working groups)
• Coordinators of each WG create a Steering Cttee
• All meetings accessible to read or listen into, but there should be a simple degree of role-based access to contribute. Anyone with an interest can join, but this way each team should have its discussion quality trend up rather than down. The purpose is to have effective scalabilty, yet provide Coordinators a straightforward way to maintain focus.
  Meritocracy in team discussions will require sensitivity. The Coordinators might make discrete offline comments to participants or contributors. 
• Ultimately, "good facilitation" depends on a "quality without a name" (C. Alexander)
• Etherpad will be useful during meetings 
• Etherpad has provided integration with video, but the video part is not free/libre

3. FLOW Video Series

Recently we have been discussing the production of short videos to both supplement the syllabus, and to supply various media a clear synopsis that they might pick up, so this can also be used to promote the FLOW Syllabus. [This section is adapted from an email by JPotvin, after the conference call.]

The very high profile "CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation" case will be decided by the US Supreme Court in June, which is aligned with when we're planning to officially launch "Version 1.0" of the FLOW Syllabus. We've been discussing the potential value of a 3-to-5 minute video that clearly explains the central ideas and issues of the case. Such a video have several complementary objectives:
(a) It would become a re-usable educational asset of the FLOW Syllabus itself;
(b) Leverage the newsworthiness of that supreme court decision to get the video picked up (CC-by, of course) and used by business news and IT news media all over the world, in addition to educational organizations.
(c) Of course, leverage both of the above as a way to indirectly publicize the launch of Version 1.0 of the FLOW Syllabus and its purposes (eg within the video, letting viewers know where/how to learn more).
(d) Since it would be CC-by, invite others to adapt/extend the video, as well as to consider creating additional videos for inclusion in the FLOW Syllabus.

Towards high quality content, we have some excellent audio already, which JPotvin recorded with prosumer equipment during delivery of the initial course based on the FLOW Syllabus (pre-cursor to this general syllabus). You will find reference to the following two audio files in our section on "Real-World Patent Court Cases": http://osi.xwiki.com/bin/Projects/draft-flow-syllabus#HRealWorldPatentCourtCases

Audio File (pending): Listen to a Discussion with an Invited Authority on 20-Year Artificial Monopolization of Computational Ideas ("Software Patents"): What do we learn from the CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation case? Dan Ravicher is Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation http://www.pubpat.org/Board.htm

Audio File (pending): Listen to a Discussion with an Invited Authority on 20-Year Artificial Monopolization of Computational Ideas ("Software Patents"): The Open Invention Network (OIN) and The Future of Patent Non-Aggression Pacts Keith Bergelt is the chief executive officer of Open Invention Network (OIN) http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press_management.php

For these an other discussion interviews with top lawyers, JPotvin had the phone audio patched directly into a Tascam DR-100mkII stereo, 24-bit, 96kHz dual-battery recorder, and the room audio picked up with a good PZM microphone http://tascam.com/product/dr-100/ http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/microphones/pzm.html

We have conditional permission form all of the interviewed lawyers to make use of the recording. The understanding is that at some point we would produce a draft, let them review and approve/remove the sections as they prefer.

The audio files are not currently posted on the FLOW Syllabus website, as they have not yet been edited, and remain as the raw files. Creating podcasts or videos was out of scope for my statement of work in June 2013. But I figured that high quality audio explanations of the key ideas would be very useful later on. Videos with such content can better using visuals other than talking heads anyways.

University of Southern Queensland is looking at the possibility of producing a first video, and The Opman Compan (JPotvin) would assist by working on an overall script, with some guidance from a colleague who's a professional TV news feature script-writer.

Altogether JPotvin recorded a dozen top lawyers during the first run of a course based on the FLOW Syllabus, each touching various key topics of the FLOW Syllabus. So once we've done the first one, if the community finds this interesting and useful, we can create more as a FLOW Videos Series.

Let me know if this seems interesting+feasible in a general sense. If so, then we can talk about what's realistic in terms of calendar time and commitment time, resourcing, etc.

4. Ken's "Sloan-C" submission

Ken Udas submitted a proposal for a poster session at the Sloan Consortium Conference (October 29-30 2014) http://sloanconsortium.org/conference/2014/aln/welcome  

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Notes prepared by:

Joseph Potvin
Chair, OSI Working Group on Management Education About Free/Libre/Open Methods, Processes and Governance
jpotvin@opman.ca
Mobile: 819-593-5983