What is your name?

How many weeks did you participate as an OSE Developer?

Are you still an OSE Developer or have you ended your commitment? If you have finished, please state the reason(s) for ending your commitment.

What worked or is working for you as an OSE Developer?

What has not worked for you / what did you not like?

What specific suggestions do you have for making the things that worked even better?

For the things that did not work for you, what suggestions do you have for improving them?

How did you expectations of the OSE Developer role match the reality of your experience?

For the specific gaps identified in the last question, what specific steps could OSE take to improve the OSE Developer experience?

What steps could you take to improve your OSE Developer experience?

Which of the suggestions that you brought up would you be willing to help OSE implement?

Please specify how you would be willing to help with the last question (if applicable).

Please share any other thoughts or comments on how to improve the OSE Developer experience.

Have you invited any others to join as OSE Developers? If so, how many people? What would you need to make an irresistable invitation?

Are you working on the things that you like? Or do you wish that you were doing other things?

How would you rate your overall OSE Developer experience?

Which other levels of OSE involvement are interesting to you?

How many hours per week have you done on average during your stay? If you haven't met the 10 hour per week quota, are there steps you can take to improve that?

- the promise of being able to help others to increase standard of living
- learning new skills or doing something new is good
- completing a task is good
- being part of a team, which is built from creative and productive members is motivating

- I don't have the vision of making a living as a citizen in a sustainable way without having a massive land
- rushing: not completing work / tasks, no time to dig into new interesting topics
- misunderstandable task specifications / requirements
- time pressure
- time consuming trial and error, what is the best practice?

- let's have a continous improvement of documented best practices which can help newcomers to pick up the speed (the most time effective way to achieve a result): how to do things effectively, for example one for the freecad test, one for video editing, one for how to create language agnostic instructionals etc.

- rushing: let's complete the things - at least at module level
- misunderstandable task specifications / requirements : let's have a question/answer method of task specifications for example on a wiki page
- time pressure: more members
- time consuming trial and error, what is the best practice? : let's create documented best practices

I expected that 10 hours a week can be done but it is difficult to maintain.

Define frame system for ad-hoc commuters.

Maybe 10 hours/week should be divided to some part of fixed task, which can be like a regular job and rest should be just having fun in an agreed domain.

- divide the tasks into modules and let the OSE Dev complete that module before receiving new task
- formalize the way the tasks are given and accepted which can reduce misunderstanding by having a chance of questions and answers
- track tasks: what was given with which deadline, how that task is advancing, what are the challanges, did contributor receive help, what will be the next task
- define how anyone (including ad-hoc commuters) can take a task without being at the meeting or being part of the OSE Dev team
- divide 10 hours / week : one part for given tasks and one part for freely selected tasks on agreed domain
- let's have a continously improving best practices guide for the newcomers for every area to reduce time spent with trial and error

No. Paying 40USD per hour could help motivating anyone in Hungary.

I wanted to do other things: get familiar with python of freecad, help with creation of a gnu-linux live usb. I got a task to create a language agnostic instructional on installing and running drawing-dimensioning freecad module. Maybe the exploded assembly workbench should be extended with some buttons which removes colors and helps drawing the IKEA-like design elements. So the needs and the things I would like to do might find each other on the long run.

Making a living based on the OSE platform

Frank McCormick

I am still an OSE Developer

I think the Development page is great. The team shares good info on there that helps through issues quicker.

I have liked everything so far, I think I will need to reflect on this as I go on with the team longer.

I think the biggest thing which I believe is being addressed but will definitely need to be improved is all of the documentation of processes and best practices. While I do believe the group we have now seems like they all like to figure things out when they dont know something, I know that not everyone enjoys ambiguity as much when it comes to certain things. I think as we grow the documentation and the how tos will be pivotal in making it accessible to a broader audience that may not be as tech savvy or as skilled with the things we are doing. I will say that I believe Marcin is doing a great job of emphasizing the importance of the documentation.

Again, I would like to be on the team longer prior to saying that something isn't working.

Yes it has, I came in with the idea that I would need to learn some new skills and have to work hard to get up to speed. I definitely think that has been the case and I also have appreciated the help that team provides to inquiries. An example would be the current project we are on. D3D was very far along when I joined and I definitely had to spend some time learning about it. I also have become much more proficient in Freecad.

I think the best thing that can be done is to keep building on the culture of the group. I have really enjoyed the structure and collaboration. I would suggest that what OSE can do is to continue to make the experience an open and welcoming one as it has been for me thus far. Organizational design and culture is huge from my experience in business. That can make or break a group regardless of talent and ability of its members. I believe OSE also has a daunting but exciting task of making this a global open source organization.

I think adhering to the documentation and organizational rules will help to improve the experience. also leaning the team members that are more experienced will be key in accelerating my development and my ability to contribute.

I am willing to contribute in all and any ways to help OSE continue on its mission.

I am willing to work on anything I am asked to do. I just want to help the team and project progress.

I have not, but I have been thinking about doing so. I think the mission statement and the description of what we do would be important. Also some of the videos of builds would be helpful.

I do like what I am working on, I also think the things coming up will be awesome. I also am looking forward to working on Seed Eco home(I want to build my own) and working on anything related to the aquaponic garden.

I have been around 6hrs/wk. My biggest constraint has been my day job. I think as some work projects end I will have more time to get my hours up.

Team effort definitely works - as on the Exploded Part Animations standing ovation

Lack of Best Practices and Curriculum

Focus now more on Curriculum

Yes. An ambitious process where everyone makes the road by walking, but more structure would be needed.

Spend time on Curriculum Development.

Recruit more effectively. We have not met our recruiting goals yet, but there is still a chance we could get to the 2 people per person per week.

Keep digging through old emails.

Put up a video on recruiting Curriculum Developers - which is a unique target market of developer profile.

Refine process. Documentation on Best Practice - in the form of tight curriculum.

Yes. The enterprise model being clearly visible could make the difference.

Partly. I need more Curriculum to make the process more seamless.

Recruiting more team members

Emmanouil

Just pause for a while, focus on some projects I have to do at my farm, unless there is a need for CAD work (I can't resist to that :) :)

a) I was challenged to develop my Freecad skill. I wouldn't know that much otherwise outside of the Development team.
b) I keep learning on how you analyse/break down projects or methods to minimum tasks. I love frameworks

I could not attend the meetings. Most likely its my fault, I felt like I was wasting my time listening some of the stuff in the meeting, so I was trying to find out the useful things afterwards when its uploaded. That being said, the latest meetings have a lot better ratio of useful/useless info than the first.

We already realized the need of a best practices frame for Freecad. Maybe we can gather the good educational videos from youtube, plus recording what is missing, so we can all be to the same page.

Maybe record the meetings with the scope if someone really miss it. Not for the scope of the public to see. Leave any promotional/ advertizing stuff out. The meeting should not be used as a recruiting tool.
I liked Jose's idea about the Agenda though. And definitely the latest meetings are a lot more focused than the first ones.

I am satisfied. Its the beginning so the development is slow, but I like the potential.

We need ways to help new developers learn quickly the tools we are using, and the practices. (like for example we are using the log to record the work, not to write our thoughts/ experiences, how we use mail/minds/uploads etc ). And the use of freecad/ LAI or ehatever else we are using

I will start actually building the tools we develop.

I have. I think that people want to see results first. I have an open invitation by the Mofga's educational director to present an Open Source Event, but I have nothing to show right now that will attract people. Note that my audience is strictly farmers

Running build workshops in your city, Starting an OSE Chapter, Making a living based on the OSE platform

Abe Anderson

There is a wide variety of challenging tasks to learn from. While there are often slow learning curves it is more at your own pace and style. Collaborative documents work OK when used correctly. Improvements in communications options like the minds network.

Lack of concise definitions of best practices and processes for new and old members to reduce confusion and speed work flow.
From experience it can be difficult to integrate documentation into to work flow. These may need to be training requirements, but flexibility for how users implement them is also preferable. Communications need to be more clear and tasks well defined. Some of these are technical difficulties that IT support may help with, but some issues we simply need to find work-a-rounds for.
Training should be a little less trial by fire and weeding out those frustrated by the process issues. Document and page titles could often be named more clearly for search indexing.

More concise curricula and instructions for all contributors.
Further improvements to meeting communications and workflow.
More specific educational materials for contributors to learn how to educate themselves with basic wiki and google docs instructions because some people apparently don't know where the help menu or search boxes are and they aren't always quick help sources. Collaborative cloud docs like gdocs help with integrating documentation into workflow once you know how to use them optimally. More teaming up on work tasks to help with teaching/learning and effectively double checking work for mistakes as it is done.
General policy for managing bandwidth issues in hangouts included in new Devs instruction on open collaboration.

Encourage better preparation for meetings. Scrum stand up summaries of work can be arranged more flexibly by being prepared ahead of time encouraging better preparation for meetings and giving devs more time to consider how to best present information in an educational format to the team with respect to potential inter-dependencies for other devs work and overall purpose relative to the roadmap.
Documents, wiki page titles, and whole projects should be named for ease of indexing and searching by search engines in plain language. Marketing terms can be separate sub titles on the technical engineering pages.
More collaboration with other open organizations (arduino, adafruit, summer of code, farmhacks, etc.). More HR reach out to other open orgs and Linux users. Assign lists specific small sub tasks for new users. We could try creating a page where small tasks side can be posted by anyone and new users can get broad experience by doing those. A more experienced Dev without a specific role could also be assigned to pick up side tasks and assist new users. New Devs could be assigned to rotate tag team or help with tasks that lag behind from day to day. Trial and error with different assignments and leaving choices open will help us figure out what works for who and what tasks.

Mostly as expected including my work ok CEB press code last summer. I had an of what I was getting into after lurking the wiki off and on for years. During the D3D instructional animations the dead line came up a little quick, but my timing worked out about how I thought. Near the end I saw issues others were having and had ideas of why, but often didn't have sufficient expertise to help solve them. Sometimes I end up noticing some disconnects between expectations of how work fits into the bigger picture on the roadmap. Questions about the D3D workshop instructional presentation method were simply unknown to all or were changed. Like with the animations I often start early trying to learn various more advanced methods to solve a task, but end up finding simpler ways due to time constraints. I admit not expecting such a great need for actively turning work in progress into educational material.

More detailed communications and Q&A using the OSE minds network.

Try new ideas out and lead by example. Prepare for meetings better. Write questions & suggestions more concisely. Be aware of and try to recognize my own confirmation bias.

I think I can help with several by just actively doing them and informing others so they can be discussed.

I am interested in working on projects I may have some insight and experience with. More CEB Press work including code again. As well as other code as I expand my Arduino and electronics knowledge. I have experience with a portable band saw mill. I am interested in relearning electronics engineering and eventually designing open electric motors. I am also interested in sustainable building materials and curious about the course planned for October.

I have tried a few things including to posting to a linux forum I was never allowed into. I have some potential engineer contacts I need to work on. Many professionals seem to dislike the idea of learning to work with open source software that is buggy and different from their usual workflow.

I can get into learning almost anything. I have certain preferences and biases, but open source is for all so adaptation is always possible. I think the idea of doing every type of task at least once is also good for understanding and teaching. I also see the things I might prefer to work as requiring significant learning curves and starting at the bottom helps optimize the basic skills so the big tasks are easier.

Process Management of existing project, Running an OSE development process for a new project (must be on the OSE Roadmap and Critical Path), Making a living based on the OSE platform, Recruiting more team members

above 10 hrs, but lots of room for improving skills and efficiency to make time spent much more productive.

Chas Murillo

Having to develop instructionals is challenging with limited information but I'm pushing through

Keeping up a working log and documentation

I was expecting to work on some project development and FreeCAD work and that's what I got ;)

Maybe have a public calendar

Perhaps make more time for projects

Power Electronics and/or motor drives

More tangible results and projects relevant to my experiences would be good.

No, I'm not in college anymore and my friends have jobs. If they could see results of cool/interesting projects that they'd want to build that may help

I like the projects I'm working on. It would be cool if I could apply more of my Electrical background in motor drives and power electronics.

Running build workshops in your city, Process Management of existing project, Starting an OSE Chapter, Making a living based on the OSE platform, Recruiting more team members

About 5 hours. Student loan payments, job searching and family matters to tend to takes away from my time. Hopefully I'll have a good engineering job soon and a more stable schedule.

Jose Carlos Urra Llanusa

Weekly meetings; logging work; learning from others; is truly collaborative and driven by good will; Standup meetings are great

Too "guerrilla" kind of approach good to start but not to scale up. Limited in building a common framework for Open Source Developers; not a clear overview of the OSE development process,; too many tools; there hasn't been a development of product management/process management role; lacks of a clear description of the organization process and where are we (development/documentation/replication/distribution); lack of distribution or delegation, also due to a lack of training and time to focus on getting people to grow; limited time for Open source and lean/agile literacy;

Simplify even more the tools and processes; Keep the standup meetings; most of the content Marcin discusses can be discussed or read in advanced not having to waste time on things that can be read asynchronously; Simplify the content of the meeting it self; giving more space for people to interact together. The meeting is the place where people meet it should be important that people interact between each other a little bit more.

Rotate organizational role to make sure that everybody know what is going on; give people the possibility to moderate meetings so that they get hands on training in managing the process; Open a track of common development literacy and specialization(roles) the point is to get the team members to be active in teaching the rest, also with efficiency;

Good, also found out that I could actually contribute much more than what I expected

1. I guess document and learn about the reflections, share it with the team.

More literacy materials, learning activities integrated with the natural flow of the work.

Setting up Agile processes/ and fine tuning the development process, as well as the Activity model of our workflow

Using Scaling lean methods and the like; developing concepts at enterprise level' replicating local initiatives.

No only talked but not formally invided

Yes, the UX design and Wordpress development I like; but also freeCad, In the future I would like to fine-tune the business model and distributive enterprise concept.

Running build workshops in your city, Process Management of existing project, Running an OSE development process for a new project (must be on the OSE Roadmap and Critical Path), Starting an OSE Chapter, Making a living based on the OSE platform

Ayodele Arigbabu

9 weeks

The community is cooperative, supportive and welcoming, the access to information is great, the weekly meetings are very helpful in adding incremental knowledge on the current tasks at hand within the context of the long term goals. The ten hour commitment period per week for 3 months is fair enough, (if only FreeCAD as a pain point didn't eat so much into that time!).

I also like the way the non-linear hierarchy works in the team, with teams organised around tasks rather than organisational hierarchies, a real life experience of some of what I had gleaned from reading about alternative management practices like Holacracy.

I have also been able to achieve my primary aim for signing up as an OSE Developer: getting insight into how OSE organises around open source technologies, having an understanding of what it would take to run a Distributive Enterprise and and getting behind the scenes view of how OSE teams are deployed towards achieving its goals for developing the Global Village Construction Set.

1) FreeCAD is a major pain point, especially as it is so central to the current OSE development framework. FreeCAD has very poor user experience design, which is understandable given that it is still under development and is an open source tool. In the past 9 weeks I've wasted a lot of man hours trying to fix very simple things in FreeCAD and I still can't say I am comfortable with it, even after devoting a lot of time to learning how it works. I don't expect to be an expert in 9 weeks but I would have hoped to be able to model simple shapes and volumes in a few minutes rather than spending hours trying to figure out what went wrong this time, which in turn is demotivating, further affecting productivity. I would hope that as FreeCAD matures it would become more intuitive to use and less confusing and time demanding, however, this would take time, probably years, leaving a small business like mine looking to build it's process around some of OSE's resources wondering if it's prudent to rely on FreeCAD at this point especially as it would be quite difficult to scale: even if I spend a lot more time to get a lot more used to FreeCAD, I would find it extremely difficult recruiting or training anybody else who would be willing to devote that much effort towards learning the tool to a decent level of proficiency, meaning I would find it very hard finding or training people I can collaborate with locally.

2) Information overload. While the volume of information contained on the wiki and elsewhere on OSE is an amazing treasure chest, having to engage with all that information at the same time or without a guide could be daunting, though this has been greatly mitigated with the OSE crash course page, the Developers on-boarding process (including the welcome email) and the weekly meetings.

It would be interesting if Developers' contributions could be gamified in an automated way. So you earn different types of badges at different points based on your progress. It would also be great if past developers could return to pick 'floating' tasks off a live list to contribute to and automatically add further badges through these efforts. The gamification would be complete if the badges added up to something, one strong possibility being a work-based learning certification of some sort, perhaps awarded in collaboration with a university.

It would also help to have a 'newbies' corner on the network, where new developers can interact, share, and ask questions, especially about things they find confusing with one or two people from the HR team devoting time to helping them get answers to those questions. Most softwares have such forums newbies and for questions and answers and if we were to view OS as an operating system for open source development, this should be a major feature in how OSE functions.

First, I would suggest a 'mid-term' review with each OSE Developer in tandem with this Feedback Questionnaire to review each person's pain point and lessons learnt.

For FreeCAD, there is no easy answer as OSE is far advanced in its adoption of FreeCAD and probably can not afford the time nor the cost of improving on the UX issues by itself. FreeCAD is also probably the best open source solution currently available for what it does making a search for alternatives impracticable. If it was possible however, to employ at least one FreeCAD expert who is not just a smart user, but someone who can do actual FreeCAD development by tweaking things under the hood, creating custom workbenches and interfaces, listening to the pain points of new users and addressing them, being the go-to person when stuck with issues, This might help.

Concerning information overload, previous suggestion about the 'Newbies Corner' as a place where new developers could ask questions and get help could also be of help.

I was hoping to have an insight into how OSE organises around projects and I did get that, thanks mainly to how Marcin steers the weekly meetings between current tasks and long term goals. I was also hoping to engage in a real build process, even if remotely.

1) Reduce the bottleneck presented by FreeCAD
2) Get to build an actual machine and continue from there
3) Have the OSE Developer experience lead up to some form of recognisable certification.

1) I made three video for a 'FreeCAD for Dummies' Youtube series and hope to make more.
2) I'm eager to build a D3D and to plan / my first workshop
3) I am interested in building a curriculum around the OSE Development process and exploring potential partnerships with universities engaged in work based learning, such as Middlesex University, London, of which I'm an alumnus.

Eager to build, and then run a workshop at the earliest opportunity. Working on a curriculum.

Greater support for FreeCAD usage,

Two people. Would want to be sure FreeCAD would not turn them away half way through! Some recognisable certification would also go a long way.

I'm interested in building things and would have liked to experience actual builds, even if making something remotely and getting tips and advice from other developers as I get along, documenting the process all through. It would be great if each developer got to do this at least once for maybe the D3D, build an actual machine and make things with it, get a tactile feel for how all those components made in FreeCAD come together, though time might be too limited viz OSE's own development imperatives. It would also be interesting to run build workshops (which clearly would be predicated on first having actual build experience) and providing feedback based on the process.

I would also be interested in building a curriculum around the OSE Development work, towards work based learning certification.

Running build workshops in your city, Making a living based on the OSE platform

Roberto Jaramillo

I love meeting inspirational people from different places, learning and working as a team. I think we are using a lot of wonderful tools: FreeCAD, Linux, Kdenlive, Vokoscreen, Work logs, OSE Wiki, Team Meetings, Design Sprints, Network Group, Working docs, etc. I like the kind of challenges that come up in the process, I think there are many learning opportunities.

I'd say... nothing. I see that we can solve all the problems that appear.

I think if something works well for me, there's no good reason to change it, as long as there are other priorities.

I think my expectations were related to what I read about the agile-Scrum methodology, and I think we are approaching that, especially with the recent Design Sprints.

Maybe make Design Sprints more frequently, and try to implement the Git hub -
GitKraken tools.

Engage me in a real machine building, meet local people with the same goal, to develop synergy. Although this seems to be beyond the OSE Developer rol.

I could help with the preparation for Design Sprints and if I learn to use GitKraken I could help others too.

I think it could be interesting to understand why some people leave the team or have a low participation. I remember from my business classes: usually it's much more expensive to attract new customers [perhaps developers too] than retain the current ones.

Yes, 2 people. I think when something is irresistible people don't need invitation.

Yes, I like the things I'm working on.

Running build workshops in your city, Process Management of existing project, Running an OSE development process for a new project (must be on the OSE Roadmap and Critical Path), Starting an OSE Chapter, Making a living based on the OSE platform, Recruiting more team members

still intrested in becoming part of the team

I'm learning your infrastructure, reading contents and try to reorganize that on the OSE wiki

too much confusion wiki should provide a clear view on what's the staus

"in easy words": don't show too much information on a single page but let the user choose what's the type of content he needs. (i got throught lot of information that i didn't need to understand how to collaborate and that took me some time to understand it was outdated or revisioned)

Don't let complexity of the infrastructure be visible to whom approach it provide ti only if requested may help people getting closer.

I was hoping in a better management of the human resources and in a more effective communication system but maybe it's just too early to talk

Split so projects may work independently but all still under the same roof
Few main rule every step and a good structure for interdisciplinarity approach.

Not sure: can dedicate my time because this is the way i'd like world to go but i have not so big skills and no economic power. I think i can deal with 3d models but still not understand what's the standard. I can manage contents of the wiki like group up stuff remove doubles and link to each other, revisions for formal

I'm at your service, please give me a role where u most need for now based on my examples of work

for now i think i can do only conceptual designs and researches in the future i'll may be able to setup a small workspace to build and test some machines but very small to be shared with others.

I'm dreaming about a program that slowly but constant expand OSE network such as: ppl like me that are willing to collaborate should have a formative plan that include them on the project as part of the "system" so they can approach OSE as a work and get what they need for live (if no money where used the game is done, then u need to work only on the needed)

I talk about OSE with all ppl i see may be interested in this kind of project but I did't found private or institutions that would afford this kind of investment because they looking for a faster feedback.

providing documentation is not my faviorite job and is needed for a good communication. I would like to design machines but i won't take tat task alone because design for me means a deep comprehension of lots of subjects that i don't have.

Running build workshops in your city, Process Management of existing project, Making a living based on the OSE platform, Recruiting more team members

Not sure about this to keep a low profile i think i can say i did around 25 h/week profitable work.
May be my faulty organization but i'm not doing anything else about learning how to work for you and all i did is posted on the links please give me a feedback about how my work is and how i can be useful for OSE.
Thanks