hold an Open Company Summit in 2014

[chadwhitacre]

In March 2013, Watsi, Gittip, Trovebox, Balanced & Mozilla WebFWD put on an "Open Company Open House."

Let's do it again! Let's embiggen the tent and have a one-day Open Company Summit in March 2014.

Save the Date: Saturday, March 22, 2014

Photo from last year (more):

[chadwhitacre]

How about Saturday, March 15, 2014? What else is then?

[chadwhitacre]

PyCon isn't until April.

[timothyfcook]

I'm in. @saxifrageschool folks will help make it happen too.

[timothyfcook]

I have DML Conference and SXSWEdu the week before, but... nothing on the 15th

[chadwhitacre]

Issue for last year's event: balanced/balanced.github.com#18.

[chadwhitacre]

cc: @jkwade @steveklabnik @jmathai @gitbiz @chaseadam17

[chadwhitacre]

Proposed: we sign an open company manifesto at the summit.

[chadwhitacre]

@timothyfcook Good call on SXSW. That runs through the 16th. Let's look at March 22?

If Balanced (inc. @steveklabnik), Saxifrage, and Gittip can agree on the 22nd then I propose that we "save the date."

[timothyfcook]

Sounds great to me. Does this mean we need to write the Manifesto beforehand, or write it at the summit?

[chadwhitacre]

@timothyfcook I would expect to draft and discuss online prior to the summit.

[gitbiz]

A Saturday? Nothing on that date yet so I'll pencil it in - love the idea of drafting a manifesto - or at least some kind of guidelines / framework - at the event. VERY cool! I think @adambenayoun‎ would find this interesting :)

[jmathai]

Drafting the manifesto via pull requests sounds about right to me :)

[chadwhitacre]

@gitbiz Yeah I was thinking a Saturday would be easier for an all-day event?

@jmathai Good call. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

@timothyfcook PR for you at #7 w/ the content from the Medium post you and I were looking at earlier.

[adambenayoun]

@gitbiz thanks for the mention - this is indeed very interesting! I'm in no matter when you do this :) 👍

[joelmccracken]

This sounds super cool ++

[ityonemo]

@whit537 thanks for the invite, I will definitely do my best to be there.

[chadwhitacre]

To anyone listening: we're going to have a Hangout later today at 11:30 PST to work on planning this event. If you'd like to participate drop me an email [email protected] and I'll include you when I mail out the Hangout link.

[chadwhitacre]

we're going to have a Hangout

Where "we" so far is @steveklabnik @jkwade @timothyfcook and myself.

Twitter ref

[gitbiz]

sorry guys - I am not available at that time :p

[chadwhitacre]

No worries @gitbiz, the call will end up on YouTube if you want to catch up later! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSPw9dDUbgw

Decisions:

• We are starting the Open Company Initiative (OCI), on the model of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). We'll stick close to the OSI model to make marketing/translation easy.
• We'll work together to produce an Open Company Definition (parallel to the Open Source Definition). Balanced and Gittip represent opposite ends of the spectrum for members of OCI, and there's enough overlap in vision between the two of us to work towards a common definition. The definition is a vision statement, not a legal statement or basis of certification (cf. OSI--they don't actually write licenses, though unlike us they do certify licenses).
• Every company will have their own interpretation and application of the Open Company Definition.
• March 22, 2014 confirmed for one-day Open Company Summit. Open Company Summit to be a participatorative event.
• @timothyfcook and @whit537 are running point on the website, http://www.opencompany.biz/. Will get that going soon to be useful in marketing the Summit. Website should emphasize practical stories of applying the Definition.
• GitHub Issues to be used to manage both website and Summit (despite not being as accessible to tech outsiders; initial audience is tech-savvy CEOs).
• @steveklabnik to run point on evangelizing the OCI and the Summit; will also manage a weekly mailing list to include digest of GitHub issues.
• Legal structure: leaning towards IETF model (small account attached to member company) vs. W3C (full-blown non-profit).

Phew! That's most of it, I think. Whatever I missed let me know! Let's reticket specific issues ...

[chadwhitacre]

Also: Next Hangout is Jan 17 at 11:30 Pacific.

[ericmeltzer]

I'm in whenever this is. @whit537 were you thinking of having it in the bay or in Pittsburgh?

[chadwhitacre]

@ericmeltzer Sweet! :D We're looking to have this in San Francisco (should have mentioned that in the summary above, sorry).

[ericmeltzer]

In that case I'm definitely coming :)

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Chad Whitacre [email protected]:

@ericmeltzer https://github.com/ericmeltzer Sweet! :D We're looking to
have this in San Francisco (should have mentioned that in the summary
above, sorry).

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/opencompany/opencompany.github.io/issues/5#issuecomment-31144584
.

Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[chadwhitacre]

For those listening here, we've soft-launched a revamped site at http://www.opencompany.biz/. Hopefully this sets us up to hit the ground running in 2014 with recruitment of additional companies to the Initiative.

You should also be aware of #24, where we're reaching out to journalists to partner with us on providing ongoing content for the site.

[balupton]

I'll see what I can do.

[chadwhitacre]

Page: http://www.opencompany.org/summit/2014/.

[adambenayoun]

If anyone need a ride from the South Bay let me know. I will be driving from Mountain View.

[balupton]

@yrassoulli won't be coming.

[adambenayoun]

Hey all - I hate to do this but my flight is earlier than I thought and It seems I won't be able to make it to the city tomorrow :(

@whit537 - Are you going to tape that roundtable for the people who couldn't make it?

[chadwhitacre]

@adambenayoun 😿

No plans to tape it, I'll probably try to do a write-up about it at least.

[balupton]

@whit537 can that round table be a google hangout on air so remote open companyers can participate?

[ericmeltzer]

tbh i think it'd be better if it was just in person, my experience is it's
pretty hard to integrate hang-outers into a realtime discussion without
slowing things down a lot

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:28 PM, Benjamin Arthur Lupton <
[email protected]> wrote:

@whit537 https://github.com/whit537 can that round table be a google
hangout on air so remote open companyers can participate?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/5#issuecomment-38340690
.

Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[chadwhitacre]

@ericmeltzer That's been my experience as well. I'm willing to set up a laptop at the end of the table but I don't want to sink too much energy into videoconferencing. Maybe someone else wants to run point on that though? @patcon?

[patcon]

I'm game! I'm pretty big on at least attempting a remote experience. No guarantee of quality though, and participation takes priority over broadcast :)

[chadwhitacre]

Cool, thanks @patcon. That ball is in your court! :-)

[balupton]

In that case, maybe we can have two seperate tracks. The summit for in-person people, and the summit for the remote people.

Who's interested in attending the remote one? Happy to host it while the in-person people do their thing.

[kyzh]

I would be interested in the remote one.
That said if it splits the group in two, maybe that's not the best option.
Maybe we can have a hangout in few days so attendees can share their experience.

[balupton]

Hrmm. I'll head to bed then. Enjoy the summit!

[dmitshur]

Sadly, I overslept so I'm running late, sorry. Be there by 11!

[patcon]

Participation link: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/hoaevent/AP36tYeUWA1BSpgJcb9A6MeJsamws8xA6RiGmkpLQKkPCt_n9qwMsw
Viewing link: http://youtu.be/e4E7kNQSBeY

It's not started yet, but I'll post something here when that happen. Thinking 15-igh minutes

[kyzh]

I will join in, thanks @patcon

[patcon]

ok it's going, starting in a few minutes

[patcon]

ok camera back on

[kyzh]

Sorry I dropped, brb

[kyzh]

I cannot hear much :/
The quality seems better on the view only side.

I don't have enough bandwidth for the hangout, will watch the view only

[kyzh]

@patcon thanks for the video.
Would have been nice to have the mic in the middle of the table to hear everyone.
Maybe next time.

[patcon]

yeah, sorry dude, i realized it was probably going to be bad, but just no time to figure it out. Considering how easy the video feed was, I'm sure a mic would be an easy win to make it 5x better next time, so I'll make sure it happens :)

[patcon]

Video archive link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4E7kNQSBeY

[chadwhitacre]

Thank you so much to all of you for participating in and supporting this event! Here's a summary from my perspective.

We had ten attendees (besides those attempting to watch the almost audible livestream): Lucy, @KimLing, Bobeck(?), @whit537, @mahmoudimus, @patcon, @andrewmallis, @ericmeltzer, @joelg, and @shurcooL. We enjoyed wonderful crepes (ham/cheese, strawberry/hazelnut/whipped cream) thanks to @ericmeltzer et al., and had to interrupt several on-topic conversations to begin our shared conversation together at about 11:30 or so. Everyone was ready to go!

The roundtable conversation had a very loose agenda. We began with a quick round of introductions and then we were off to the races discussing practical experiences and challenges running an open company. Our conversation was far-ranging and rather unstructured, though my sense is that everyone got something out of it. Here are some of the ideas I appreciated:

• We could each make a landing page on our own site like Balanced to explain our open company philosophy and practices to our vendors/partners/customers.
• The OCI could publish a directory of open-friendly vendors (not necessarily open themselves, but willing to work with open companies).
• Interfacing with non-open companies and entities can involve tradeoffs that have to be decided for oneself.
• "Default to transparency."
• The larger we are individually and as a group the more clout we'll have to influence others towards openness and transparency. But even a small company can net benefit from strong policies.
• Openness and transparency are noteworthy now. If we do our job they'll be business as usual in a decade or three.
• The OCI could partner with incubators/accelerators to resource and mentor new startups.
• The OCI could publish "playbooks" for applying open company principles to certain situations.

Those are just some scattered recollections of my own. As mentioned, the conversation was quite far-ranging. I found it stimulating and encouraging. I hope others did, too!

Towards the end we spent a few minutes talking about the OCI itself and what we want it to become, practically speaking, over the next year. The main take-aways I heard were:

• Member companies should fund the OCI on Gittip.
• Financial sponsorship (non-profit status) stays with Saxifrage (@timothyfcook).
• @KimLing (Balanced) stepped forward to help with marketing and event planning. Thank you! :D
• The OCI should run an open ledger.
• We will focus on advocacy, events, and mentoring.
• We want to think in terms of in-house content direction for the OCI website, rather than the weird journalism experiment from partner with journalist(s) for blog #24.

Okay! Thank you again to everyone for making the first Open Company Summit a success! Now we go back to GitHub to see what we can accomplish together this next year! :D

[ericmeltzer]

Hey guys,

I opened a few issues to start doing the things we talked about at the
summit.

#96 - Make an Open Ledger for
OCIhttps://github.com//issues/96
#97 - Make a list of "Openness" pages on OCI
#97
and most importantly
#98 - Hire editors for
OCIhttps://github.com//issues/98

I'll check back in on these during the week and make a PR to add any
openness pages people submit. It was rad meeting you guys and I'm excited
about spreading the openness gospel :)

-E

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 10:45 PM, Chad Whitacre [email protected]:

Closed #5 #5.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/5
.

Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[gitbiz]

check out this event on "open" in SF in a few weeks >
https://www.facebook.com/events/220307241511006/?notif_t=plan_edited

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Patrick Connolly
[email protected]:

Video archive link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4E7kNQSBeY

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/5#issuecomment-38362640
.

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz

[ericmeltzer]

at the risk of sounding like stallman (pboh) open source is not open
company. that looks like a cool conference though, naval ravikant is
speaking and he is a killer smart guy.

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:06 PM, gitbiz [email protected] wrote:

check out this event on "open" in SF in a few weeks >
https://www.facebook.com/events/220307241511006/?notif_t=plan_edited

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Patrick Connolly
[email protected]:

Video archive link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4E7kNQSBeY

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<
#5 (comment)

.

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/5#issuecomment-39271719
.

Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

[gitbiz]

yep - this is along the lines of the open company stuff vs. straight up
open source and the lineup is v good. (ok, disclosure: I'm scheduled to be
on a panel too but - the main lineup is good ;)

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:23 PM, ericmeltzer [email protected]:

at the risk of sounding like stallman (pboh) open source is not open
company. that looks like a cool conference though, naval ravikant is
speaking and he is a killer smart guy.

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:06 PM, gitbiz [email protected] wrote:

check out this event on "open" in SF in a few weeks >
https://www.facebook.com/events/220307241511006/?notif_t=plan_edited

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Patrick Connolly
[email protected]:

Video archive link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4E7kNQSBeY

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<

#5 (comment)

.

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<
#5 (comment)

.

Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/5#issuecomment-39272738
.

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz

[gitbiz]

submit your changes here! >
https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/What-Open-Source-Means-To-Me

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Diane Bisgeier [email protected]:

yep - this is along the lines of the open company stuff vs. straight up
open source and the lineup is v good. (ok, disclosure: I'm scheduled to be
on a panel too but - the main lineup is good ;)

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:23 PM, ericmeltzer [email protected]:

at the risk of sounding like stallman (pboh) open source is not open
company. that looks like a cool conference though, naval ravikant is
speaking and he is a killer smart guy.

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:06 PM, gitbiz [email protected] wrote:

check out this event on "open" in SF in a few weeks >
https://www.facebook.com/events/220307241511006/?notif_t=plan_edited

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Patrick Connolly
[email protected]:

Video archive link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4E7kNQSBeY

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<

#5 (comment)

.

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<
#5 (comment)

.

Eric Meltzer
@wheatpond https://twitter.com/wheatpond
http://theopencompany.net
+1 408 874 6552

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/5#issuecomment-39272738
.

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz

Diane Bisgeier
415 250 1724
http://about.me/dbiz