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2:24 am
June 8, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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Post edited 3:52 am – June 8, 2010 by Luke Maurits
Hi everyone,
I've finally finished and submitted the conference paper which had been keeping me so busy and so away-from-CSTART of late, so I have some time to put into the project again.
While I still have a lot of ideas and enthusiasm for our projects, especially CLLARE, I have to say I'm feeling pretty pessimistic at the moment. I know some have suggested that CSTART is merely "on hold", rather than "falling apart" as I have suggested. I know that some of us have been inactive lately due entirely to external commitments, but I still think that things are really bad:
- Not that long ago, our most promising newcomer in a long time, antinode, tried to revive previous discussions about our long term plans and future, and another new member KellyJ asked some really good questions about the point of CLLARE which strongly underlined the need to talk about this issue more. So far only 1 of the 5 acting directors of CSTART has responded to this issue at all.
- Before I got too busy with my paper, I began outlining another new CLLARE plan, which I honestly think is the best plan yet. There are diagrams there and everything, and so far nobody has said anything about it at all.
- 3 weeks ago we had an IRC meeting where, to my pleasant surprise, it was openly admitted by a lot of people that we were in a coma. As a result of that meeting, it was decided that a number of project management applications would be installed to play with, and that we would move to regular IRC meetings at that same time. Almost a month on, there has been no installation of those applications and no further meetings. I don't recall if we decided on weekly or fortnightly meetings (the fact that this was not recorded and put on the website somewhere is a great example of how we are just not working well), but I've been in #cstart at the agreed on time for the last two Sundays and nobody turned up. So I think it is fair to say that the first meeting failed outright.
- Brmj, one of our most active members, announced on April 17 that he was very busy IRL (entirely fair enough), but would almost certainly be back a week after that. It's now June 8 and there has been no further sign of him at CSTART: no forum posts, and nor response to the email about the IRC meeting. I asked what his status was at that same forum thread 4 days ago and there has been no reply. Throughout all of this time, his Reddit user activity shows that he has had access to the internet and at least some spare time (in fact, he made a Reddit comment one hour ago as of my making this post). Although it would be extremely unexpected and out of character, all of this seems consistent to me with him having lost interest in the project, which would be a really big loss for us.
Nothing in the above is supposed to be pointing fingers or laying blame at any of the people mentioned. I am entirely understanding that people have stuff going on IRL at times and nobody can be expected to put time and energy into CSTART non-stop. What I want to point out in the above is this:
- It is now an undeniable fact that CSTART does not have the person-power and/or the internal orgnisation to effectively fulfil its Mission Statement.
- There is some evidence (based on the failure of the emergency IRC meeting to achieve anything) that not only the above is true, but CSTART does not have the person-power and/or the internal organisation to change the above, in which case we are truly humped.
Things seem to be getting quite desperate, and at the moment I am honestly starting to think about the following:
- Proposing that CSTART merge with (an)other organisation(s) of the same kind, like Mach 30 or the Open Space Movement. Right now there is a large(ish) number of very small groups with more or less the same goals and ideas. CSTART, as one of these small groups, is struggling due to its size. It seems a given that one single large(ish) organisation would fare better. If we merged with an already 501(c)(3)'d org, it would save us the trouble of doing that ourself (which I have to admit I now don't ever believe we're going to do, simply because the path has been so clearly laid out for so long now, the money is there and I have made more than one push on this, but still nothing has happened). Obviously there would be some conditions to a merge – I would really likely to see our Social Contract and Design Philosophy carried over to the merged body, because I think that these are great documents, some of our best achievements so far.
- (much, much, much less desirable than the first option above) starting to act a lot more unilaterally in making reorganisations and changes that I think are required to revitalise the project (although taking into account the opinions of those who do actually discuss things significantly, such as antinode). I am extremely reluctant to do this – I already worry about the degree to which I may have been perceived as acting unilaterally and I feel like doing this would kind of paint myself as a dictator, but it is increasingly starting to feel like a matter of "well, if someone doesn't do it, noone will and nothing will ever change". Please prove me wrong on this!
EDIT: Sorry for spamming the RSS feed with reposts of this – I was trying to edit my original post to fix the (as usual) horribly mangled formatting, but was accidentally editing quoted replies rather than the original post.
EDIT2: Forgot to mention at first: getting things cleared up somewhat and getting more people involved with a clear sense of direction is becoming increasingly personally important to me, because for the next 9 months I'm only going to have less and less time to work on CSTART as I need to start really applying myself to my PhD in order to finish on time. I'm certainly still going to be around, but I'm rarely going to be able to put in as much time and effort as I have in the past. I would really like to be able to use the time I have left to set the ball rolling on a project which is sufficiently well defined, organised and has a sufficiently large community that it will keep rolling when I take my hands off it some.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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8:50 pm
June 8, 2010
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J. Simmons
| | Dayton, OH, USA | |
| Member | posts 46 | |
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Hi , this is J. Simmons from Mach 30. I sent the following to Luke earlier today, and I wanted to post it on the forum to follow up. Since this is really an internal discussion in CSTART, I wanted to check with him before I posted to the thread.
I think this must be a common experience in new groups (especially non-profits with very big visions). I shared this post with another Mach 30 Board member and her response was "[that's] creepy and familiar". We go through the same cycles of bursts of activity followed by dry spells. I'm hoping it helps to hear that the experience is not unique.
I also wanted to share with you how impressed Mach 30 is with the work CSTART has completed. For instance, we think CSTART has one of the best online presences of the open source space groups. We are also very impressed with the Social Contract and the Friends program. They are just brilliant works. No matter what happens, I hope that these all continue past the current tough spot.
We at Mach 30 truly believe that a rising tide will help all of the open source space groups. Please let me know if there is anything we can do to be of assistance. We are open to almost anything, from staying out of the way, to sharing processes and best practices, to organizing joint ventures, to discussions about mergers if it comes to that, and anything in between.
In the spirit of sharing processes, I wanted to write a little about how important it has been for Mach 30 to run regular Board meetings, even before formally incorporating the organization. (I know, I know, meetings get a bad rap in lots of corporate cultures, but hang with me for a little bit). For better or for worse, the Board of Directors of a non-profit will have to meet on a regular basis. This is a requirement of any set of bylaws you will see (take a look at Mach 30's for an example – http://mach30.org/pub/about-us…..rds/bylaws, in particular Article 3 Section 8), and it is there for the good of the organization and the directors themselves (one of the reasons is that this gives directors a regular opportunity to get caught up on the work of the organization, which it is worth noting, they are required by law to be knowledgeable about). It is far, far, far easier to make sure this happens if it becomes part of the group's regular activities long before it is required. We decided on monthly meetings after looking at what other groups we were modeling ourselves after were doing and at the work the amount of work there was to keep up with.
There are two other things that we did at Mach 30 as early as possible that relates to meetings that I think helped us to make them more successful (because, let's face it, who wants to go to boring, pointless meetings?). First, we take minutes (http://mach30.org/pub/board-meetings) and try to make them easy to find (though I think there may still be some debate about if we have achieved that goal). Just like holding regular meetings, this is actually required by pretty much every set of bylaws you'll see (for Mach 30 see Article 7 Section 1), so again, better to get used to it early than struggle with it when it has to be done. And, truth be told, having the minutes also helps us keep up with our work. We routinely refer back to old minutes to check our progress on the various projects we have going and to see where we left off in previous discussions. We actually take our minutes real time during the meetings (usually I take them as a way to help me keep track of the meeting so I can make sure we are staying on task). We also use a template to make sure that we keep all the required information about the meeting (http://mach30.org/pub/help/rec…..tes-format). This makes it easy to setup the minutes for a meeting, which makes it easier to make sure we take the minutes. At this point, I think this has become so ingrained in our group that if more than two of us start discussing Mach 30 related work, someone takes and posts the minutes while we are talking to make sure that we capture the work.
The other thing we did is to decide to run "tight" meetings. By that I mean we strictly limit ourselves to 2 hours, and set short agendas before we meet. By short, I mean we do no more than 1 topic per 45 minutes of meeting time and we reserve time (usually about 30 minutes) in our meetings for opening business (review of the agenda, and absolutely necessary reports, etc) and closing business (setting time for next meeting and making sure we know what needs to be done by then). Generally, this leaves us with opening business and 1 or 2, at most, topics for discussion at a meeting. This gives us plenty of time to really address the topics, making it likely that we will completely address topics in 1 or two meetings (I cannot tell you how many times I have seen other groups address the same topic at 5 or 6 meetings in a row, and still not necessarily complete it). You can see more about some of the philosophies that shape our meeting structure at Maureen's blog (http://en.wordpress.com/tag/be…..gs-series/).
OK, that turned out far longer than I anticipated. I hope it did not turn out sounding too much like a lecture, and that some of it is helpful.
Ad astra per civitas (to space through community).
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Founder Mach 30, Inc. and Friend of CSTART
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9:30 pm
June 8, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
| Admin
| posts 1483 | |
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Thanks for stopping by to share your experience and wisdom, J. It's good to see the just the sort of cooperation that Friends of CSTART was supposed to foster happening!
Even though our first little attempt has failed quite miserably, I do think that the idea of regular meetings is something we should try out. This means setting a fixed time and day of the month, recording that time and day on the website and sticking to it. I think we should also endeavour to take minutes, as J. discussed. For each meeting it should be easy enough on the website to find (i) an actual verbatim IRC log of the meeting, and (ii) a dot-pointed set of minutes for quick summarising. The Wiki is probably the easiest way to implement this for now. Since logs and minutes are static things we can just post them and then admin-lock the pages. I'm happy to take on the role of "meeting scribe" to ensure this happens, if nobody else is.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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11:50 pm
June 8, 2010
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rpulkrabek
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Perhaps it's best to toughen up and take care of the bureaucratic things, like becoming a non-profit. Once a month meetings are a good idea and I am also in favor of the meeting minutes. I find that the minutes in my real life job are a huge help to understand where we are and where we are going. We also do them on-the-fly. I think Google Wave is a good platform for this global collaboration. With these things in place, we will open up to do more exciting research and projects, which will in turn attract new users.
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9:04 am
June 12, 2010
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Rocket-To-The-Moon
| | Altus, Oklahoma, USA | |
| Member | posts 685 | |
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We are indeed in a very difficult time. As discussed above, there are several ways forward, we just need to figure out which way is the best for CSTART and our goals. Unfortunately, I don't know the right answer. I don't necessarily think that a merger is the best route because our manpower is so low that we really wouldn't be adding anything. Membership drives are ultimately useless because the prospects of finding dedicated and committed members is low.
The best suggestion that I have is that all current members try to branch out and create local CSTART chapters. I firmly believe that online collaboration CAN work, however isolated people aren't going to get anything done. What I do believe is that online collaboration between groups of people is much more likely to succeed.
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Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering
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5:53 am
June 16, 2010
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brmj
| | Rochester, New York, United States | |
| Member | posts 402 | |
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To avoid repeating myself, here's something I recently posted to reddit:
As you undoubtedly know,
I got busy and burnt out at roughly the same time and dropped off of
the face of the internet. Thanks for reminding me of what I helped
start.
I've put too much time, money and energy into this organization to
let it stagnate. Consider me back in, though I'll be trying to limit my
involvement to a sustainable amount of time so it doesn't happen again.
I may try to throw together a simple static testing rocket this summer
too.
I never lost interest; I got busy and a bit burnt out at roughly the same time and, being out of the habit and having it out of my mind, I failed to get back involved once things improved. This is, unfortunately, not an entirely uncommon pattern with my hobbies and projects. Seing a new post to the subreddit reminded me of how awesome all of this was, I suppose, and after a brief period of mentally kicking myself I decided to get back in for the long haul this time. I am deaply sorry for failing all of you.
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Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)
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6:33 am
June 16, 2010
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brmj
| | Rochester, New York, United States | |
| Member | posts 402 | |
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Post edited 6:33 am – June 16, 2010 by brmj
As for the other things being discussed: I agree that schedualed, more organized meetings of the sort Mach 30 is doing could definitely help, and suggest that they be implemented as soon as is possible, preferably basing it closely on their system for simplicity.
There is definitely a lot to be said for Rocket's idea of forming local groups, especially for actually building stuff. Despite all the benifits of wave and IRC, there is nothing like actually being there for getting things done.
I think we should also be looking at what we could do to get some exitement and sense of accomplishment back, and maybe get us a bit of plublicity. Not making any obvious progress can lead into a viscious cycle in which people leave or slack off because they get bored or discouraged, leading to less getting done, leading to more people getting more bored or discouraged.
Bearing those last two points in mind, one way to proceed might be to each recruit small groups, seek local sponsorships, and work on getting some hands on experience with things useful for OHKLA and CLLARE. Maybe try and recruit some people in the high powered amatuer rocketry community. I'd especially like to see rocket prototypes, since the engine is the big hurdle for OHKLA and rockets look flashy for blogs, the reddit front page, and so on. However, aeronautics and the body are also important for OHKLA, and we could perhaps start on stuff for CLLARE such as the computer system or the life support. If we wait around until we entirely know what we are doing, we will be waiting an awefully long time. The way I see it, OHKLA is simple and we are just a few design decisions and a little math away from being able to constructively playing around with stuff for it.
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Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)
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8:50 am
June 16, 2010
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J. Simmons
| | Dayton, OH, USA | |
| Member | posts 46 | |
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Funny people should mention finding ways to work locally. We have been having similar discussions for a while at Mach 30. Our discussions have gravitated toward partnering with Hackerspaces around the country (or world as we figure out how to work internationally given the constraints of ITAR). You can see our conversations at the following links:
The local hackerspace in Dayton, OH, is Dayton Diode. It is still a relatively new group, but it has approximately a dozen members, and is operating as a 501c3 through a partnership with a local computing non-profit (DMA). With luck, Dayton Diode should be looking for a space in the next month or two.
I think connecting with local amateur rocket groups is another great idea for building local communities. Clearly they have direct interest in some aspects of rocket powered flight, and some experience (always a plus). Once Dayton Diode gets its space, we'll have to talk to the local NAR club to see if their members are interested in Dayton Diode. Might be a nice hybrid of the two ideas.
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Founder Mach 30, Inc. and Friend of CSTART
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12:07 pm
June 16, 2010
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brmj
| | Rochester, New York, United States | |
| Member | posts 402 | |
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You're in the Dayton area? While I'm home from college, I'm just 30 minutes from Dayton. We should meet in person. Thanks for mentioning Dayton Diode. I'll deffinitely look into them.
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Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)
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