Difference between revisions of "About"

From Organic Design wiki
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Organic Design is an organisation set up by [[User:Nad|Aran Dunkley]] as an infrastructure to facilitate projects involving a small group of like-minded [[people]] who share common ideals regarding open source software, decentralised solutions and the general idea of maximising re-usability and sharing of these solutions. The diverse projects tend to have many common needs, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, LAN's and servers.
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Organic Design is an organisation set up by [[User:Nad|Aran Dunkley]] as an infrastructure to facilitate the development of a number of projects being worked on by a small group of [[people]] working together as a team. The members of the team all share common ideals regarding open source 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.
  
Recently the Organic Design site has focussed on MediaWiki extensions and has a small online 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 as we've worked on our own projects and work for other clients. We've found that in working together as a group, some concerns come up from time to time amongst the participants regarding their contributions and the distribution of profits made by the organisation. Following are the main concerns that have cropped up within our group and perspectives on them, which may be of use to other groups of specialists wanting to work on projects together.
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Even quite diverse projects tend to have many needs in common, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, printed material, LAN's and servers. The organisation has built up a number of [[procedures]] as a result of documenting its own administration requirements from working on internal projects and taking on work for other clients. We've found that in working together as a group, some concerns come up once in a while amongst the participants regarding their contributions and the distribution of profits made by the organisation. Following are the main concerns that have cropped up within our group and our perspectives on them, which may be of use to other groups wanting to work in a similar way.
  
 
== Working on projects together ==
 
== Working on projects together ==
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== Organic Design revenue ==
 
== Organic Design revenue ==
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.
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This aspect has started to become relevant because the site has begun to build up a small online community mainly around MediaWiki related expertise and resource. 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]]
 
[[Category:Organic Design]][[Category:Nad]]

Revision as of 05:52, 8 August 2008

Template:Webpage Organic Design is an organisation set up by Aran Dunkley as an infrastructure to facilitate the development of a number of projects being worked on by a small group of people working together as a team. The members of the team all share common ideals regarding open source 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.

Even quite diverse projects tend to have many needs in common, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, printed material, LAN's and servers. The organisation has built up a number of procedures as a result of documenting its own administration requirements from working on internal projects and taking on work for other clients. We've found that in working together as a group, some concerns come up once in a while amongst the participants regarding their contributions and the distribution of profits made by the organisation. Following are the main concerns that have cropped up within our group and our perspectives on them, which may be of use to other groups wanting to work in a similar way.

Working on projects together

The people working together on projects are using the freely available system of procedures, extensions, best practices. The site has no ownership or relationship directly with these projects. Each project is an agreement purely amongst the client and those working together to achieve the solution. Any profits or losses generated by the projects are the responsibility of those who accept payments or contracts for work covered by the project. 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 RentACoder and 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. In fact many of the jobs we work on together have come from bids that members of our team have made in RentACoder or eLance.

Work done improving Organic Design

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.

Organic Design revenue

This aspect has started to become relevant because the site has begun to build up a small online community mainly around MediaWiki related expertise and resource. 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.