Marketing Team

OpenACS/.LRN Marketing Team 

Goals

The Marketing Team works to improve adoption and recognition of OpenACS including .LRN and other OpenACS projects.

• [Marketing Projects]
• Marketing_Docs_Index

Team Members

Team members are those people who are want  to be on the team or are proposed to be on the team, and willing to contribute to it, those members will be selected and ratified.  Terms and roles and responsibilities will be determined by the Marketing Team.  This process will be reviewed in a year to see if a more formal process is needed.

The Decision Making Process

Goals

• Make it easy for motivated people to make decisions and implement them with minimal overhead.
• Give the elected OCT and .LRN Board oversight over decisions without requiring too much time. 

Process

1. All members of the  OCT, .LRN Board and Marketing Team subscribe to a designated Forum, email list or Wiki page.
2. Members of the Marketing Team are responsible for reaching out to the appropriate people while making major decisions. Depending on the decision this includes the greater OpenACS community, the OpenACS, .LRN Board and/or membership, and the .LRN Leadership committee.
3. When an individual believes he has done an appropriate level of communication and consensus building on a decision he posts it in the designated place.
4. If no one objects or calls for a vote the decision is confirmed in 2 weeks.
5. If people agree they need take no action; however if there is disagreement or concern, any member of the Board, OCT or Marketing Team may “Call for a Vote” on any decision posted to the decision forum within 2 weeks of the post.
   • The .LRN Board should only call for a vote on things that relate to .LRN brand or dotlrn.org and only the .LRN Board members vote.
   • The OCT should only call for a vote on things that relate to the OpenACS brand or openacs.org or have a technical component that relates to the core (training materials might be an example). In an OpenACS related issue only OCT members vote. The role of the OCT maybe temporary as its charter was to deal with technical issues. However it is currently the only elected body of OpenACS. We will revisit this issue in a year.
   • In the rather unlikely situation where the distinction between OpenACS and .LRN is not clear and its controversial issue then either should call for a vote and both organizations should try to come to agreement. 
6. A decision is upheld with 2 Yes and 0 No’s or a 2/3 majority of all members of the appropriate organization (either the OCT or .LRN Board).  This is usually 5 people.

Informal description of the process

If you have an idea you'd like to implement, discuss it with people who care, post in OpenACS and/or talk about it in an online or meeting or conference. . After you have listened, post your decision Then implement it.  Mostly we all want the same things and we need action.  The OCT and .LRN Board vote is available as an oversight and in those hopefully infrequent times when there is significant dissent.

This is an interim  process 

This process is based on a discussion at the Vienna Conference. There were many different ideas about whether the Marketing Team should be directly elected or report to the current elected boards. There was also discussion about two teams (OpenACS and .LRN) versus 1 team.  This process is the simplest we think could work and our intent is to revisit these questions in a year (or less) and refine the process as needed.

The Marketing Team will be formed when both the OCT and the .LRN Board approve its formation.