Dear Mach 30 board,
I think I’ve worked out the most critical issue in my mind about the process of increasing Mach 30 participation. I’ve developed this idea based on my experience with Cstart and the Open Space Movement. Both of these groups formed when a community of individuals that were communicating in other ways decided that they should form an organization. Cstart was formed by Reddit subscribers and most of OSM’s members came from the something aweful forums. In the past few weeks, I have seen the Cstart model work well when conducting their distributed collaborative work on Reddit and then link back to their website.
I am admitedly not an expert in communcations or public relations but I think it will be critically important to develop an avenue of communication. Since the Mach 30 organization formed backwards or in reverse of the above examples, what we need now is a community to grow around us instead of an organization to grow out of a community. What communication avenues are best suited to have a community form around them? In this age of instant communication and 24/7 access is there another mechanism to reach a large audience who will then self-select to join us?
Respect,
-Greg
This is a huge and important question Greg–and not one that can be answered with a bulleted list of communication channels. I think the having these discussions in public instead of behind closed doors was a good first step–now it’s a matter of finding our right people and encouraging them to join us. That will involve trying lots of different things and seeing what works.
Less Subtle Approach
First, I’m glad to see comments from someone other than J. and I! B-)
Now that Mach 30 is organized to make progress, what is our communications team doing to get the message out? How are we communicating with the community? You said, “That will involve trying lots of different things and seeing what works” but I’m looking for some additional initiative. I am first a rocket scientist and have little experience with this. What do we try? I think a bulleted list of communication channels is exactly what we need first. Who on the Mach 30 board can organize this effort?
Can I suggest that we broaden the discussion topics to include managing the Mach 30 communications team: finding people to help with our efforts to get the message out, and discritizing the larger strategic goals into reasonable sized tasks for volunteers?
Starting the list
As you say, most of this requires a board level discussion. I can however provide you with a list:
That’s all I have for now–anyone with more ideas, please add them in a comment. Rather than developing a group tasked with this plan, let’s just put our ideas out there.