#opendevelopment

As we research for OpenQRS, we identify people, organizations, tools and technologies that we think contribute to the overarching vision of building products with integrity by design.  

We are eager to share our research openly in order for others to add to it and to build from it, but we're stumped on how best to share this information.  

We see this resource as an ecosystem map of people, projects, companies, tools and technologies.  Resources would be listed with basic contact details and keyword tags, and they could be searched by geography, focus (QRS), resource type (hardware/software/open,etc), etc. [visually similar to We Feel Fine] 

We would like contributions to the map to be open to anyone. Contributors earn editorial/curatorial privileges based upon their contribution record [similar to wikipedia editors].

Ideally, the map could be organized with a personalized view/notes independent of a generic shared view.  This approach would allow for organic organization by users and minimize the need to adhere to a rigid, imposed taxonomy.

We've wondered what is the best technology to do this?  

.

In a recent weekly check in with Social Tech Europe, we had our in-depth discussion about what technology tools exist to capture, map and share the resources we identify in our respective research work.

 Our Requirements for an Ecosystem Mapping Tool

Data that needs to be mapped:

For OpenQRS: A link categorized as [people, projects, companies, tools/products] and organized by geography (may have multiple geographic sites), device category, QRS category, keywords.  Potentially with comments/notes.

For Social Tech: people, networks or companies who are using digital technology for social good with categories [Cities/geography | events | sectors | networks]

Features: - visually appealing/understandable, such as We Feel Fine - map can be embedded within blog/website - anyone can update/add to it (tiered access including curators) - annotate it with comments (like pearltrees) - ability to have a personalized view for my own organizational framework that plugs into a public framework (like pinterest) - notification for updates - open source

.

Mapping Tools on our radar:  Pearltrees  (link focused, allows comments, allows multi-editors) Kumu (relationship focused)  Mural.ly (collaborative development within established teams, but not as appropriate for open access; no localized view) Wordpress theme: Explorerly (allows for posts to be mapped geographically, each link has comments area but only by geography)  Google Maps (geographic mapping, but not multi-dimensional and not great for multi-site initiatives) Evernote with mapping tools Ushahidi  (maps by time and geography with comments, open to anyone to contribute, need to check editorial capacity)

.

Mapping Tools/Resources we would like to learn more about: Torque: An Open Source Mapping Tool for Big Data by CartoDB  Maptools.org  Cytoscape Gephi

.

Proprietary mapping tools/resources that we wish were open source: SocialSca.pe 

.

If you have experience with any of these tools/technologies and/or if you have other mapping tools that would fit what we're looking for, please let us know!  

Thanks for your help!

Here’s what we’re up to this week at OpenQRS - get involved!

Here's what we're up to this week at OpenQRS - get involved!

Here's what we are up to at OpenQRS this week! 

On our Week #5 Check In, we mentioned that our struggle was to get robust feedback on the vision-mission-strategies draft. 

By chance, last week was the first Tuesday of the month, also the night of the monthly "SenseDrinks" gathering of San Francisco's MakeSense Hotspot, a global community passionate to help social businesses.  Friends of MakeSense, including several Hult International Business School graduate students with concentrations in Social Entrepreneurship, were the ideal community from which to gather this feedback. We printed copies of the draft and invited attendees to share their critiques. Here's a snapshot of what we received:

As we work on v.2, we are grateful for the input from all of the "sensemakers" who attended this event and gave us great insights!

Next time, you're stuck for feedback.  Check local meetups or online communities interested in your project's topic area.  It's powerful to tap into the abundance of people who are excited to solve a challenge and/or to support a social impact project.  If you have a social enterprise, MakeSense is an awesome global resource for this kind of support!