So much seems to have happened during the two days of meetings that it is going to be hard to put it into one blog so I am going to divide it up by topics with reflection on the discussions as I go. The delay in putting up the minutes has been due travelling to the USA in between and learning more about open innovation whilst at a disability conference.
Overview
Thursday 10th March began with Ross providing an overview of OSS Watch Openness Rating with a set of slides that included suggestions for how projects can be evaluated for their majurity. (Download PowerPoint slides titled Openness Rating as a Guide to Project Maturity)
This was incredibly helpful as it enabled us to discuss the various elements that needed to be in place in order to engage a community and provide sufficient information for a project to gain traction as well as possibly find a way to be sustainable.
This was followed by examples of how far three of us got along the route of openness using three different case studies.
Case Studies
- Peter – REALISE (the project market place) – new user /carer – Download PowerPoint slides titled ‘Mapping OR to RealiseThresholds.pptx’
Used the Openness rating at https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dGFMQi1qendNTFNtc184NFhxNFVaOUE6MA
Taken from slides http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/talks/2009-12-09-AHM/researchCollab
orationAndOpenInnovation.pdf
Peter went through the whole process and was able to show the elements of the Openness Rating that would be important to a new comer to the site. It also enabled us to discuss the important areas that required more guidance as to what someone putting up a project might need. This was later illustrated when Garry Paxton (on the Advisory Group) began the process with ‘Picboard’ and sent us an e-mail with queries such as ‘needing more feedback’ and ‘where to go to next’? The Incubator has a number of full and basic requirements that still need to be added. 
- EA – Atbar goes East – SME wishing to take it forward. Here the idea was that a company may take over the toolbar and wish to make money from it – which licence would be best? Once again the questions became more complex and it was clear we needed to add some items to the community and governance documentation to clarify items.
- Steve – MAAVIS – expert developer explained how he had taken the project through the process and how the community was now developing as can be seen from the MAAVIS website.
Steve explained how