We should clarify existing terms and address missing pieces.

[chadsansing]

From Patrick Finch:

• Interesting structure.
• What is the purpose of this document?
• How might we expand our definition of decentralization to address corporate centralization?
• Does "Understanding" mean more than "accessibility?" If not, is it too general a term?
• How might we refine our idea of openness being about inviting the widest diversity of contributors?
• How might we account for intrinsic motivation and individual benefit?
• How might we address the difficulties of investing systemically in some forms of community interaction?
• How might we provide examples of what Open Leadership is not?

[chadsansing]

Updated decentralization (and other IH issues) with language from MoFo's "Key Internet Issues":

The technologies and platforms people use every day are interoperable and based on open standards. People expect and demand systems that allow seamless flow and transfer of information and content.

[chadsansing]

Added the following to "What is open?"

Some projects need specific skill sets and define more narrow contribution pathways. There's a tension in such projects between aspirations of inclusivity and the details of the project. Open leaders strive to collaborate with their communities to imagine and make concrete as many authentic, valuable opportunities as possible for potential participants.

[chadsansing]

Added a new section, "Who and what is this white paper for?"

This white paper is for anyone who shares our passion for openness, working open, and open leadership. It is meant for readers from both technical and non-technical backgrounds who want to use open leadership as a means to improve their work, help their communities, and further their personal and professional growth.

We're asking readers who share our interest in open leadership to help us create a framework of open leadership principles, practices, and skills that describe how and why to apply them for the benefit of communities, contributors, and projects.

This white paper represents our best effors to develop a framework for open leadership that we will use later to

• Develop an Open Leadership Map. This will be some kind of illustrated tool people can use to explore the principles, practices, and skills defined below and to find curriculum and programming connected to each of those.
• Develop an open leadership curriculum aligned with map.
• Develop programming and events aligned with the map.

The white paper is meant to be a framework and foundation for later work, and, as such, it is not meant to be a practical guide or curriculum just yet.

[chadsansing]

Added the following to "What is open?", drawing from Philipp's post.

We believe that it is important to work intentionally and mindfully towards Understanding. Here, Understanding means not only being accessible, but also being transparent in how a community or project is structured, how it makes decisions and does it work, and how it shares that work and news about it with contributors and users.

We beieve that it is important to ensure the Extensibility of an open community or project. The value of openness comes in large part from how it empowers others to adapt and continue the work they contrbiuted to for their own uses and the uses of their networks and communities outside any original project.

We believe that any efforts a community. leader, or project makes towards inclusion must include authentic, significant, and valuable opportunities for participation, contribution and leadership. To make that belief an explicit part of the map and its design, we paired participation & inclusion.

[chadsansing]

Added a section called "How do individuals benefit from open leadership?"

Contributing to an open community or project can be an altruistic act, but such contributions also carry benefit for the individual.

Open leaders empower others to become open leaders in their own right. By inviting others to collaborate, open leaders continue their own personal and professional leadership development and find trusted contributors to whom they can delegate work and offer mentorship for project sustainability and maintenance and for the overall health of the open movement.

Contributors can benefit from the same kind of intrinsic personal and professional development as they assume more responsibility in a project and receive mentorship from other leaders in their project communities. They can also draw other kinds of extrinsic value from a project such as social capital within their professional networks, a forkable version of a project they can use in their own lives or within their networks, and any other specific benefits offered by a project or its community.

Open leaders work to make the value exchanges between themselves, their projects, and their contributors transparent and mutually beneficial.

[chadsansing]

Added the following to "The Open Leadership Map."

A quick note: we've borrowed a list of 6 "community interactions" from Mozilla's Open Innovation Strategy Team and grouped them with particular practices below. Each type of interaction carries its own range of activities. For example, "soliciting ideas" might amount to crowdsourcing ideas from a community of users without offering much value in return, or it might mean bringing in a group of users who first contribute their ideas and then get invited to work on them as credited developers during a "creating together" interaction later in the same project. Open leaders choose these interaction types strategically for particular projects and stages of projects, but they also strategically decide on and define levels of interaction within each type.

[chadsansing]

Barring any feedback and discussion ahead of 2/2/18, I'll close this issue then ahead of the February OLM white paper beta.

[chadsansing]

Join the beta!