Difference between revisions of "About"

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Organic Design is an organisation set up by Aran Dunkley ([[User:Nad]]) as an infrastructure in which to run a number of projects involving a small group of [[people]] with some common ideals regarding open source software and decentralised solutions. There are many common needs amongst even very diverse projects, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, LAN's and servers to name a few.
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The [[Organic Design peer group]] is a small [[trust group]] whose members work well together as a team on various projects involving common interests. The team members all share common values, covered in our [[manifesto]] but include, amongst other things, [http://www.fsf.org free software], [[w:Peer-to-peer (meme)|decentralised solutions]] and the general idea of maximising re-usability of these solutions and actively sharing them with others.
  
The Organic Design site has for the last few years focussed mainly on MediaWiki extensions and has a reasonable community built up around MediaWiki related knowledge. The site has also built up a number of [[procedures]] as a result of documenting the organisation's own administration requirements and from involvement in other projects.
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Since all the members work together as a functional unit, each can confidently take on jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have the expertise to complete alone, and since all the members are associated with many potential clients, the availability of good projects to work on is also improved.
  
== Working on projects together ==
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The peer group has been working on a long-term project that involves defining a standard system we call the [[Platform specification]]. This  is a [[system]] allows organisations to operate in accord with the principles outlined in the manifesto. We've been working on this in the background for over ten years as a long-term research project, and even though we've done a lot of development, it's all been in the context of research and prototyping.
The people working together on projects are using the freely available system of procedures, extensions, best practices etc and the site has no ownership or relationship directly with those projects. Each project is an agreement purely amongst the client and those working together to achieve the solution. Any excess profits or losses generated by the projects are the responsibility of those working on them to distribute. The site procedures, templates and structure offers advice on what aspects should be discussed and agreed upon before moving to each phase. This way of working is very similar to using sites like [http://www.rentacoder.com RentACoder] and [http://www.elance.com eLance], except that the infrastructure is not taking a cut and is more casual and therefore reliant on a certain level of trust amongst members working together.
 
  
== Work done improving Organic Design ==
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We're now at the stage where we have a clear idea of the software and content we'd like to see in a packaged-up and releasable form. The peer group's role in this phase will be that of project architects. The input we'll have in terms of the software development will be focussed high-level technical direction. Our hands-on work will be mainly focussed on the ontology, which includes documentation, procedures, educational material and other system-oriented aspects.
Some of the people working together on projects within the site have put significant time into developing software and content solutions used by the site and its organisational system. All the software and content is GPL and LGPL and most work done on it is done voluntarily, because those developing it realise that working on good freely available software brings opportunity, for example the ability to offer consultation, installation or administration services. The content that the members and public are spending time refining and improving is freely available to be set up on any of their own servers, and the method of doing that is documented clearly as [[procedures]], so all such work is beneficial to all contributors.
 
  
Some of the work on open source software in the site has been funded by clients requiring various functionality, their incentive to allow it to be open source is that we usually offer a lower price to work on open source projects, and often refuse to work on closed software regardless of price. And some of the work required by the site may require financial incentive before any roles commit to working on it. These situations are handled as projects in the system for the members to discuss the resource requirements and allocation as they would for any normal client project.
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Our aim is to minimise the amount of software development required, by using our current [[wiki organisation]] framework as a unified interface that effectively glues together a number of other applications into a mashup.
  
== Organic Design revenue ==
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[[Category:Organic Design]][[Category:No files or comments‎]]
The organisation may generate revenue from hosting other sites, or selling products for clients through some of the sites running on its servers. These revenue streams are independent of the members working together on projects within the site, and some such projects may be completely unknown to the members - i.e. the Organic Design organisation was set up specifically to support a number of open source projects and goals, but is also a business entity representing one member who is entitled to work on private business operations. All the other current members also have one or more of their own businesses and sites and are free to use the resources and knowledge learned on this site to carry out their own private business ventures in addition to those carried out together in the site.
 
[[Category:Organic Design]][[Category:Nad]]
 

Latest revision as of 18:47, 6 July 2015

The Organic Design peer group is a small trust group whose members work well together as a team on various projects involving common interests. The team members all share common values, covered in our manifesto but include, amongst other things, free software, decentralised solutions and the general idea of maximising re-usability of these solutions and actively sharing them with others.

Since all the members work together as a functional unit, each can confidently take on jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have the expertise to complete alone, and since all the members are associated with many potential clients, the availability of good projects to work on is also improved.

The peer group has been working on a long-term project that involves defining a standard system we call the Platform specification. This is a system allows organisations to operate in accord with the principles outlined in the manifesto. We've been working on this in the background for over ten years as a long-term research project, and even though we've done a lot of development, it's all been in the context of research and prototyping.

We're now at the stage where we have a clear idea of the software and content we'd like to see in a packaged-up and releasable form. The peer group's role in this phase will be that of project architects. The input we'll have in terms of the software development will be focussed high-level technical direction. Our hands-on work will be mainly focussed on the ontology, which includes documentation, procedures, educational material and other system-oriented aspects.

Our aim is to minimise the amount of software development required, by using our current wiki organisation framework as a unified interface that effectively glues together a number of other applications into a mashup.