Governance task-force meeting 22.07.05

Governance & Processes
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Go here for the Poll for the next meeting.
Minutes of the meeting from July 5th 3PMUTC

**Attendees **

Andrew Lamb - IoPA Council Chair
Anna Lowe - Manufacturing change
Barbara Schack - IOPA Coordinator
Kaspar Emanuel - Kitspace
Max Wardeh - IOPA Tech coordinator
Michael Weinberg - OSHWA
Raisa Ismaily - IOPA Coms officer
Sarah Hutton - UMass, researcher for IOPA
Tiberius Brastaviceanu - Sensorica

Agenda overview:

  1. Welcome
  2. Updates: IOPF
  3. Discussion points:
  • IOPA Structure today
  • Presentation on research results that can inform governance
  • Update from Processes WG
  • Processes for community participation/engagement
  • Foundational documents workstream
  1. Recap of action points
  2. AOB
  3. Close

Notes:

  1. 3pm - Welcome round
    At the next meeting, a chair will be elected. Role description here: IoP Alliance community roles

  2. Review of action points since last meeting: Update on first IOP Foundations to be created.

  3. 3.15pm - Discussions

  • 5’ - Presentation of current IOPA structure :
    The current IOPA structure was presented in these slides.
    This structure is not meant to be set in stone. The Internet of Production Alliance is growing and there are lots of things we need to figure out about how we organise ourselves, how we take decisions, and what processes we use to get things done. Historically decisions have been taken by the ‘Council’ which was created from the meeting in Warsaw in 2019 that created the Alliance. It is time to open up the discussion and start creating a governance model that is far more open and representative.

  • 15’ - Presentation by Sarah (researcher hired to work on OKH) on findings related to governance
    These slides (link to ppt slides to add by @schutton) were presented.
    The question of vocabulary was discussed. Examples of when vocabulary is a topic of debate discussion were given: What we are doing needs a shared ontology. For the why of what we are doing, then it’s vocabulary around values for example. Particularly for newcomers. Why this standard, why metadata vs something else. Are we doing infrastructure or standards?

  • 15’ - Presentation by Processes working group (Kaspar & Max) on the tools they have developed and the merger with the governance Task Force
    This research by the processes working group was presented (at this link you can see the various platforms that were explored and how pubpub and discourse were selected for now): https://standards.internetofproduction.org/pub/process-notes/release/2
    There will be a presentation of these tools in more details on July 25th, at 2 time slots, and it will be recorded
    For now pubpub has standards on it. We are quickly seeing other use cases where this platform would be the right tool maybe. Suggestion: change domain name to documents.internetofproduction.org

  • 10’ - Processes for community engagement: discussion.
    Default assumption on open was discussed. Advantages: building a ledger of activity. Helps with roles.
    Foundational documents workstream: introduction of idea. To be expanded in the next work-session

  1. Action points moving forward
  1. AOB: (Added later via forum): A workshop will be organised to explore the OVN governance structure. More information here: Process to design governance
  2. Close
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Something to put on the agenda: announcing and explaining the new IOPA deck of tools! :slight_smile:

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Would that be better done in a community-wide call?

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I was thinking both. That there needs to be a community wide launc/Q&A/demo. But also that the Gov task force needs to have this information asap as it’s the tooling layer for some of the community engagement processes.

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Update: The community-wide call on tools is now in planning phase! There will be 2 time slots on Wednesday July 25th. Will update here with the link once the event is up!

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Thanks for the opportunity to contribute to the Governance meting,.

The discussion on transparency attracted my attention and I want to share two pages from the OVN wiki
http://ovn.world/index.php?title=Transparency
http://ovn.world/index.php?title=Openness

Both pages have a section about the economic rationale behind these organizational features, mainly referring to Yochai Benkler’s work on the economic of open networks. We can use these pages to get inspired for Governance, chose the levels of openness and transparency based on the vision, mission and goals of IoP.

I also want to take this opportunity to make a comment about openness: I searched the website and I could not find any link to Discourse. It is customary for every collaborative network to provide a visible link to a community space from the website (public landing space), to funnel traffic into participation. I understand that IoP is probably run as a consortium or an association (or at least it is driven by that culture) and perhaps we are in a process of transitioning to an alliance (more like an open network). If that is the reality, I suggest to provide a bridge to a digital environment that can nurture a community, Discourse for example.

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On that last paragraph: the discourse forum was made “live” in the past few weeks. Before that it was sandboxed inside the processes working group (a recap of this was given in this governance TF meeting). Which is why the link from the website to the forum is still on the to-do.
It was waiting for coherent communications: having enough life on the forum (based on these recommendations for example), a newsletter announcement, setting a date for an information webinar, and announcement and discussion “live” in some of the working groups/task forces.
The lag also comes from how our website is maintained for now (some types of changes go through a service provider/web-designer => lag).

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