1. Old (or new, which ever you want) nail polish bottle.
2. Cut small pieces of ABS filament
3. Get some acetone

Here’s what I did:

1. Empty and clean the nail polish bottle. I left one of the steel balls in the nail polish bottle but it did not make any difference (I think). I thought that it might help in making the melting process a bit faster.
2. Fill the bottle with acetone half full.
3. Pour in small pieces of ABS plastic until the bottle is 3/4 full
4. Shake and twist the bottle once in a while.

After about an hour is was about ready to be used. It did contain some lumps so better leave it for some more time if you want it to be smooth. If your glue feels to thick, just pour in some more acetone and shake.

It should be pretty easy to glue parts together with this DIY style ABS glue This was just a test, but I’m amazed that it worked and I will do more glue in different colors as soon as possible. And as it was said earlier, I will not use this glue just to put pieces together, but to increase smoothness in 3D printed objects. I guess I could pimp my phone by adding parts in it, fill holes that I don’t like, over-coat manufacturer name and such. I would not paint over the operator name in the front

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Related posts:

1. Growing 3D printing ecosystem Depending on your viewpoint, 3D printing, 3D manufacturing or if you prefer peer production is what will change production of goods...
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Since the community manager ‘business’ in Finland and in Open Source is becoming more and more ‘professionalized’,  we need to make manifest for Community Managers in Finland. The manifest will help in defining what community managers are for and what they are not. This in turn will possibly make it somewhat easier for companies and communities  in open source field to understand what they can expect from community manager. Note that this blog post is intended to start the discussion, not to end it.

The manuscript represented here is based on my experiences in Ubuntu Finland (I was active for some time), MeeGo Network Finland (paid community manager for 8 months) and in Devaamo (just member).  Initial discussion around this topic was started in previous blog post and the discussion continued in LinkedIn. Based on those, I’ve gathered some guidelines regarding national level community managers.

1. Professional commitment

It has been visible in several open source communities that purely volunteer-based management is not enough. Communities today have so much activities, communities today have become more professional eg people participate in those both as paid developers and as pure volunteers. The role of communities has also become more demanding and more people participate in communities. It is hard to get professional results without professional commitment. In my experience, paid community manager is the answer to this.

If someone gets paid to make sure that community at hand keeps on motion, gets resources needed and stays active and forward looking, it needs someone’s full-time attention.

2. Locality is underestimated strength

Commonly large open source efforts have global level community manager(s). Their hands are already full of tasks and responsibilities. They don’t have time or knowledge to handle local / regional level activities. Local community manager (for example in Finland) has better knowledge of the culture and skills to make community run smooth. One of the local level activities that seem to have really positive effect on developers, is running a Local Device Program. That program will loan devices (for short period) for developers to make testing and development easier. This is something that can be done in local level. The ‘big brother’ of local device programs has been tested in various contexts, such as MeeGo and Raspberry Pi. By extending global device programs to local levels, the reach could be boosted and workload distributed more evenly.

Local community manager understands local needs and situation better than global managers.

3. Advocacy

Community manager is expected to be advocate. This includes writing a blog, participation in discussions (in and outside of community), participation in community related events, giving presentations in different kind of events and ad hoc meetings. In brief, one side of being a community manager is to represent the community, make it visible and well-known.  Again, this means that getting one paid community manager, your project gets better representation locally. It also enables better communication (outside the community) about goals and aims of project. This is because, local community manager communicates with the press and others in local language, and therefore it is easier for press to contact project member for further information. This is turn results to more accurate information in public and (evil way to say it but) possibly slightly better control of the press.

Local communication is more efficient than press releases in English.

4. Liaison

Community manager is a bridge between companies involved and community. Community manager knows the ‘spirit’ in community since he/she lives in it. A good community manager is always observing what’s going on in community. That means a lot of listening and reading, sometimes between the lines.  One of the key tasks that a good community manager should do well is communication. Communication includes putting forward information about community status to companies involved and back to community. Community manager should be informed about changes in company strategy if it affects community. By enabling fluent flow of information, doubts and fears become lesser and people find it easier to participate. Working with community is about trust. One aspect of open and transparent communication is to put community meeting agendas and meeting minutes available publicly.

Fluent, transparent and open communication is essential for successful co-operation.

5. Technical expertise

Some of the community managers are needed to have technical skills to evaluate code and even contribute code. This is not always the situation. Every community manager can not be expert in all fields. If the community manager is not ‘technical’ enough, he/she should engage another person to handle those tasks. In my personal opinion, community manager is more about social aspects than about technical items such as code. Same applies to setting up and maintaining community tools and servers. Of course it makes start a lot faster if one person can handle the above mentioned tasks.

Technical skill are needed, but deep and profound technical tasks can be delegated.

6. Engagement enabler

As it was stated above, community manager is probably not so talented in all fields and always needs help from rest of the community. Therefore community manager should be skilled in getting people involved and in finding ways to lower barriers to participate. Engaging members in community is vital for the success. More important (and harder) is to keep up the engagement. This can be done by renewing activities, providing rewarding challenges and acknowledgement (in some cases as hardware bribes or other ‘benefits’). One of the ways to keep up community interest and engagement is to arrange Summits, events for the community. Summits function as ‘glue’, which ties people together and towards shared goal. Often these summits can be arranged mostly with the help of community members, but they need some resources (often some money). To keep engagement level high, community manager should always be looking for new inspiring tools to support community efforts and activity. One such example is Local Device Program.

Enabling and keeping up community engagement requires shared goals and ability to renew activity.

7. Organizer

Every group of people need organizing if their goal is to make something useful. Organizing should not be seen as extra bureaucracy, but more like guidance and resource stream management. A good community manager can see what kind of groups emerge from community and foster the group formations. Groups per se are not the thing, more important are groups created by activity and need to focus activity. Community manager can hardly manage all the groups and normally there isn’t even need for that. Good community manager is not a dictator, but master of delegation. As it was discussed above, Summits and other events are important for community engagement and liveliness. Community manager should take responsibility of organizing the events, not alone but with the help of community and companies involved.

Not a dictator but master of delegation.

Summary

All in all, good community manager is a combination of salesman, HR manager, developer, master of psychology and packet with extra energy bars. The above is a lot. Given features and requirements vary from case to case, but it is obvious that without getting an opportunity to focus on community management, no one will be able to do it properly. This initial version of Community Manager Manifest lacks at least one thing: company viewpoint. That is prepared to be done during this summer in co-operation with COSS (Centre for Open Systems and Solutions). Any comments would be more than welcome.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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Survey has new home – not Google

Since last summer I have started a new project Statistical Studies of Peer Production, which is dedicated to DIY community surveys. Project is supported by P2P Foundation. It provides tools for P2 communities to make surveys to gain knowledge about motivations and activities of community members. Different aspects of this domain can be summed to include three parts:

1. It provides open source survey platform (limesurvey) for different P2 communities (such as hackerspace, makerspaces and diybio) to conduct surveys among members.
2. Analysed results of surveys are provided under some Commons license (you choose).
3. Site requires that all collected data will be open sourced. That means access for all and to all data. You can download all survey data and do your analysis!

Well, there you have it. No more Google Forms and no more excuses not to answer in this survey. First critique hammered. It took some time and effort but now the survey has proper ‘home’.

Language options are unlimited

The other critique concerned language used in the survey. While using Google Forms, it would have been quite a hassle to make survey in multiple languages in controlled manner. This time it’s the opposite. Since we use LimeSurvey, it’s pretty easy to make (and maintain) translations for each survey question. Furthermore, there isn’t any limitations on translation count. The most obvious translations that would be needed are: French, Spanish/Portuguese (to catch Latin America hackers) and Chinese.

Call for action

While I can manage a lot of things, I can’t speak or write French, Spanish/Portuguese or Chinese. If you want to assist in translation here’s your chance. I can post the questions to you and you post back the translations. Or, I can make user account for you in our LimeSurvey tool and you can do the translations directly without emails. There’s plenty of time still and translations should not take too long if you put your heart on it.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Related posts:

1. Developing Peer to Peer Community Surveys For some time now I have been pushing an idea of a new hacker generation called ‘Peer Production’. It is...
2. P2 Generation Survey Site The past ‘hackerspace’ surveys 2010 and 2011 have created a great data base for longitudinal study. Now that my funding for...
3. Surveys for DIY communities Ever wanted to know what kind of cool stuff biohackers do? How about what’s the attitude towards external funding in...

I’ve been working in a 3D printing focused startup (Want3D) as CTO and I’ve been lucky to speak with lots of people with different backgrounds and needs about what they think 3D printing is about and why it matters. Those people have been artists, blacksmiths,   CAD designers, engineers, house manufacturers, manufacturing plant executives, teachers, surgeons (well, haven’t discussed with directly, but my associate has) to mention a few. Now I think I have hunch what the buzz around 3D printing is about.

Not just about 3D printers

The revolution is hardly just about the actual 3D printers. Those mighty machines are the surface, gadgets which get photographed into blog posts and articles. In the below image is my interpretation of what the revolution is about and what it affects.

Hardware – the mighty machines

Let’s start with the most obvious part – 3D printers. Most of us might know that the ‘new wave’ of 3D printers was started by RepRap project. It is a open source/hardware project with tons of members, out of which numerous are active developers or at least users. Several newly (during past few years) started 3D printer manufacturing companies have adopted the development fruits of RepRap community.  Some of these companies have been bought by some of the ‘old wave’ 3D printer manufacturers such as 3D Systems which (according to them) started the 3D printing about 25 years ago. These acquisitions can be seen as an effort to stay in the 3D printing market. They have rightfully understood that the new wave will eventually take major share of the markets and old wave technology will loose, but not fade away. Old wave based devices are expensive (10k€ to 150k€) compared to new wave printers (a few hundred € to 2k€; excluding ‘free’ RepRap ).

The pace in hardware development has been huge! It is evident that printers will be developed to be cheaper to build and use; parts needed will be optimized and techniques used will evolve. We haven’t seen nothing yet! Dual head printers (use two materials simultaneously) have been done already, printer head maneuvering has become more accurate and so on.  New innovations are born every week.This (hardware) part is probably obvious to all and known part of the revolution.

Currently new wave printers are USB attached to computers. They are personal. First attempts to break away from this is happening. There is WiFi connected device (Cubify) also, but at the moment it is in ‘pre-order’ status. But still, connecting 3D printers to web is one of the inevitable steps, the make personal devices a shared device just as laser printers are currently.

Materials go forward – so does needs

Printers need material to print, just like inkjets needed cartridges. Most used material at the moment is some form of plastic, probably PLA (derived from corn). That again is just the peak of the iceberg. Materials used in 3D printing range from chocolate to steel. Also the scale is everything from nano structures to airplane wings and smaller scale planes. Human jaws are printed, as well as livers, teeth and skull parts. What will happen is that now costly materials will either be cheaper or replaced with other material with same or superior features.

Designing the products – in the web

3D Printers use 3d models, which in turn are created with some applications. These applications are normally used by trained professional and software might cost several hundred euros. Lately there has emerged new kind of 3D design tools, which are based on HTML5 (and WebGL specifically) for example TinkerCAD and SketchUp. In the same time users have changed as well. Now the users are, if not the average Joe, at least some more skilled people. The web based design tools are (still) somewhat limited compared to desktop applications, but same applies to them as what is going on with materials discussed above. Of course this will lead to 3D model pirating and possible new ‘war’ of copyrights  as people share original or 3D scanner recreated models of products. They can go even further than that. People will modify the existing product model and then print it – and possibly sell it.

Manufacturing will be localized

One of the biggest challenges in the revolution is to convince old school managers to believe that metal is not the only options to achieve durable products. Even bigger challenge is to sell the idea of micro factories and desktop factories to be part of manufacturing processes.  3D printing holds major role in these easily movable modular factories.

In the near future, some part of the manufacturing will occur close to the customer. Why? So far manufacturing has been rather cheap in Far East and lately in surrounding areas such as India. This is due to low personnel costs, low salaries. In the future transportation costs for value-added products by airplanes will rise due to rise in oil price. It will be less ‘cheap’. It will be as ‘cheap’ to produce goods for example in Europe even with higher salaries. Shipping raw material around the world does not have to be fast, it can take time and therefore the costs are lower. In addition to that it makes sense to produce goods near the customer, keep minimized (or close to none) warehouse storage and create more opportunities for personalized goods. The demand for personalization is rising all the time. Some even say that the revolution is one of the few changes that Europe has to survive.

New world needs new skills

As the manufacturing will be different, so does the skills needed. The industrial designer needs to take into account manufacturability as usual, but also possibly printability. They need to understand the limitations and more importantly the new possibilities that 3D printing brings. It also affects the process. Instead of making one prototype model to be molded and tested, the designer can create 3 or more slightly different models to be printed without delaying delivery. The other option is to transfer faster prototyping time savings to make whole manufacturing process shorter. In brief, make more iterations or achieve one goal faster (get product faster to market).  Of course if the latter is chosen, it will affect the whole production and therefore changes are needed throughout the line even in entering the markets. We can’t yet even see the changes it will bring.

Before all that can occur, users of 3D printing must be made comfortable with the new thinking and technology. It must be taken to new professionals by including it in education. People that normally were trained that one model, one cast, one prototype is the process, should now learn that one base model – multiple prints – several prototypes is the future.

New manufacturing will create new kind of business

This is already a fact. There are multiple 3D printing services for the public. You create 3D model with any tool you like, then upload it to service and after some days you get it in the mail. Until recently, making the 3D model has been rather difficult or required lots of learning eg how to use some complex application such as Blender. Now more ‘humanly’ 3D modelling applications are emerging as was discussed above. These new applications are not sold to customers with licences, they are sold by features. You get the freemium version which you can use and get results. But if you wish to have more features, you pay and that is easy in web based applications. In addition to that, you can start earning money with your 3D models. In some services, when you upload your model, and someone else prints your design, you get a slice of the profit. I’m no business skillful person and therefore I will not speculate what other new business models will occur.

Well, there it is, some of my thoughts on the next revolution brought us by 3D printing. What about you? What do you think?

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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In brief the 3D Printing Network (3DPN) is a neutral, non-partisan, public network of 3D printing professionals facilitated by FSFE. 3DPN is an open source driven network, which enables co-operation among multiple companies and volunteer community. One goal is to develop future 3D printing related solutions such as a 3D Printing management platform. 3DPN aims to engage all existing 3D printer manufacturers and software developers in the project, both open and closed source, and gather the broad 3D printing open source community under one brand. [http://wiki.fsfe.org/3d-printing]

The network will reside within the Free Software Foundation Europe and will be governed by a Technical Steering Group. The Technical Steering Group is the primary decision-making body for the open source project, with a focus on platform development and delivery, along with the formation of working groups to support different 3D manufacturing devices and software.  [http://wiki.fsfe.org/3d-printing]

Purpose

The 3D Printing Network has been formed to guide the industry role of 3D printing, including gathering of requirements, identification and facilitation of service models, and overall industry marketing and education. The platform will provide a robust and flexible environment to utilize 3D printing in variable environments and to fit different needs such as product development and prototyping, unique model manufacturing, and other industries. The platform integrates several different 3D printers from various vendors.

Current status – spread the word and get started

FSFE supported

The network has just gained official status from FSFE. 3D Printing Network is currently ‘activity supported by FSFE’. When the network gains enough momentum, it will be ‘raised’ to project. Currently all that there is, is

1. Wiki page (http://wiki.fsfe.org/3d-printing)
2. Mailing list (https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/3d-printing) and
3. IRC channel: #3d-printing (freenode)

Future?

Rest is up to the community. The more activity we have, the more credibility we have, the more support we get.  The roadmap for future is not carved in stone. There are some major items that are intended to become real in near future. Here’ a few of those:

1. Intention is to invite all major players in 3D printing to participate in the network (such as printing service providers, printer manufacturers, software companies).
2. Invite all existing open source communities working around 3D printing to participate.
3. Start local groups around the world. They can start for example inside existing groups and networks and ‘grow up’ later.
4. Organize international 2-day conference around Jan/Feb 2013.

The next thing to do is have discussion in mailing list about what we do, how we do it and when.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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3. Fabbing Industry – laying the foundation Fabbing Foudation – sounds like fun and something big. Fun like hacking, ‘fabbing’, doing stuff, creating something. Big like Mozilla...

In short I gave modified presentation about my MeeGo Conference presentation. I added one slide in the end which contained elements that a strong, broad, willing and committed volunteer base needs:

• Transparency (in roadmaps, decision making, progress)
• Openness != code dumps
• Let volunteer contributors participate
• Trust volunteer community (give responsibility)
• Respect open source culture
• Meritocracy (if possible)

So there it is, that’s how communities work or there are the values that drive open source community forward. How to get there?

Problem

The response from audience was amazing. During the presentation, a lot of them asked questions and in some cases we even discussed items for quite some time. The problem with current national communities such as Ubuntu Suomi and Devaamo is that they lack community manager which can focus on community issues full-time. Commonly national level community managers are not getting paid and they still need to have another paid job to get bills paid and kids (+wife/husband) satisfied at home. Naturally these valuable free-time community managers can’t use the same amount of time or energy to manage community at hand.  Result is that national communities are more or less drifting and not organized (in a good sense). Open Source communities sometimes need a little kick in the behind to get things done.

Solution – shared funding

I also introduced a model which could help national communities to gain more momentum. It is not solution to all problems or challenges national open source communities are confronted with. But still, it does enable building of a more coherent and forward marching national community. The idea is simple:

1. companies in same region will yearly collect some amount of money from own pockets,
2. money is governed by some other 3rd party such as COSS in Finland.
3. With that money this coalition of funding companies working around same topic or technology (such as Mer, Tizen or any other) can get paid community manager.

If community manager is hired from other company than where the money comes from, the community manager would not have any strings attached. That is serious threat (biased attitude) if community manager works for one of the companies involved. He or she might favor own company driven efforts even though other solution would be more beneficial for the ’cause’. Remember: there is no such thing as free lunch.  Of course there are issues that needs to be solved even after that. One of those issues is to find suitable person run the community, act as community manager. In Finland that is in my opinion a bit easier than elsewhere. We, as Finns have values of Open Source in our blood, it is given to us in milk. We have been helping each other for centuries in events that we call ‘talkoot’. The idea of talkoot is also simple: give something to someone, without getting anything in return. Normally that has been helping in renovation or something else that requires larger amount of work. That is what separates us Finns from the rest of the world. We know how to work in communities, we know how to run communities.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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1. 3D-CUPS Printer Job management needed Several new 3D printer vendors (RepRap, MakerBot Industries, Printrbot) have entered the markets during the last year or so. These...
2. Building national level teams This blog entry describes what national MeeGo network is and what it could be. Viewpoint is  teams which are the...
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So what has changed?

The new wave of 3D printing has Open source / hardware background. It has started from the hacker culture. And it is based on additive methods. The world and technology are ripe for Star Trek style visions. What is still lacking is tools to manage printers, fluent and flexible printer configuration and queue management. That is understandle since efforts has been put to materialise those replicator visions. Another thing that is missing is information about 3D printing community; who they are, what they print, with what they print, what are the backgrounds of printer developers and so on.

Survey for 3D printing community.

P2P foundation supported peer production studies oriented project is going to release (in May) a survey to fill the above described gap. Survey will be directed to selected communities listed in Statistical Studies of Peer Production site. The collected data will be ‘open sourced’ so that anyone can use the (anonymized) data for further analysis. More information about the survey can be found from Statistical Studies of Peer Production site.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Related posts:

1. 3D-CUPS Printer Job management needed Several new 3D printer vendors (RepRap, MakerBot Industries, Printrbot) have entered the markets during the last year or so. These...
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In previous blog entry

After a few days I received a response from Franco Iacomella, Executive Director of the P2P Foundation. Yes, the Foundation can support the idea and concept and even make “the survey project some kind of sub-project of this wider research initiative [the P2PF ecosystem]“. Awesome!

Call for action - tools for all P2 communities

Details of the transition to new domain and other managerial and technical details need to be handled. It has been suggested that the domain would be “http://surveys.peerproduction.org” [not working yet, 21.2.2012]. As a founder of this idea I would be the main responsible and administrator of the web infrastructure. Nevertheless, developing such ‘tools for all P2 communities’ is more (fun) work than one can manage. Besides, since I am sort of “Jack of all trades, master of none”, I would really appreciate any help. Furthermore, developing tools alone in my ‘cubicle’ for Peer to Peer community sounds a bit spooky and somewhat ambivalent. Therefore I’m inviting all interested to participate – hackers, researchers, community enthusiasts and others. I will create communication tools such as mailing lists and IRC channel as soon as we get initial tasks and procedures done.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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1. Developing Peer to Peer Community Surveys For some time now I have been pushing an idea of a new hacker generation called ‘Peer Production’. It is...
2. Surveys for DIY communities Ever wanted to know what kind of cool stuff biohackers do? How about what’s the attitude towards external funding in...
3. P2 Generation Survey Site The past ‘hackerspace’ surveys 2010 and 2011 have created a great data base for longitudinal study. Now that my funding for...

Ever wanted to know what kind of cool stuff biohackers do? How about what’s the attitude towards external funding in different kind of DIY communities? Or what’s the most preferred way to handle space rent?

Now that’s possible to find out. For the past 3-4 years I’ve been studying (and participating) hackerspaces; motivations to participate and interests among members around the world. In January 2012 it occurred to me that perhaps other people wish to create surveys to find out stuff about the communities they either are involved or just out of curiosity. That’s why I created the domain ‘p4.ossoil.com’ with limesurvey platform.

Intention is to know more

In short, here’s a list of features and requirements.

• The domain is intended to be used by different kind of DIY communities such as hackerspaces, makerspaces, 100k garages, diybio and fablabs.
• Anyone can start creating a survey, conduct it and analyze results.
• We don’t believe hiding information resulting to better results.
• You can even create multi-language surveys pretty easily.
• Platform allows timed surveys and exports to several data formats (CSV, SPSS, R).
• We only require that the raw data will be accessible to all. In other words, we leave the data open for others to study and use.
• Does not use Google Forms or Docs.
• Survey responses can be anonymized
• All raw survey data will be linked to “Open Data” section (automation under work).

Not just surveys

The domain is not intended for just conducting the surveys. It is intended to be a place to find links to analyzed results (such as blogs, articles, tv shows) based on the surveys. Nothing of the latter is automated, at least not yet.

http://p4.ossoil.com

That’s it. So, if you or your community wish to make a survey about topics around ‘DIY’, contact me. More information can be found from the site http://p4.ossoil.com. 

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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1. Developing Peer to Peer Community Surveys For some time now I have been pushing an idea of a new hacker generation called ‘Peer Production’. It is...
2. P2 Generation Survey Site The past ‘hackerspace’ surveys 2010 and 2011 have created a great data base for longitudinal study. Now that my funding for...
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In my previous post I gave a heads up for the 2012 ‘hackerspace’ survey. It will be pushed to members of hackerspaces, makerspaces, diybio and other similar communities. Only the term under which the survey will travel will change to something more general like ‘Peer to Peer DIY community’ or ‘Peer to Peer Production community/generation’. In brief, the taxonomy will be changed at top level. There will be changes in technical side as well. Here’s some more information. At least these will change:

1. a subdomain will be (established already) dedicated to these surveys and analyzed results derived from them.
2. Survey will not be based on Google Forms. Most of the critique after the last survey was about the platform used.
3. Future surveys will be open sourced and turned into community efforts.
4. Survey will be served in multiple languages (if the project will get some translations contributions)

Survey domain – http://p4.ossoil.com

The site/project has a home. I dedicated a subdomain for it. The home is not finished yet and some static and dynamic parts are still missing. However, it’s a start. Here’s a view to it.

p4.ossoil.com - site is dedicated to P4 longitudinal survey

Survey engine – limesurvey

I have installed limesurvey to one of my servers. I took a little time to get familiar with it and to see if it really fits the purpose. It does  Platform enables several needed features:

1. timed surveys – enables building/preparing survey ahead.
2. translations to different languages
3. multiple contributors can participate in development
4. several different surveys can be build in the future – or even now.

Here’s a sneak preview of the survey to be released this summer.

Peer Production Generation Survey 2012 preview

During this weekend I did some of the needed stuff. So far I have moved about 40% of the questions to the new platform. At the same time I’m making CSS modifications to make it look something that resembles the p4.ossoil.com theme. The limesurvey engine groups the questions pretty neatly and creates pagination based on the groupings. Survey participants can break off during the survey and return to it later. The only downside I have discovered so far is that it might need JavaScript to function properly. I must admit that I haven’t tested that yet – without JavaScript. However, if it really requires JavaScript to function properly, it is something that we need to live with.

Call for action – need more collaboration

That’s the story so far. A lot needs to be done and this is an open invitation to participate. Things that need more attention are:

1. The first page of p4.ossoil.com
2. ‘About us’ page content not done
3. No decision about how to show results – blogs (own or just feeds) and/or separate pages? Live results (possible)?
4. No decision how to list past surveys (if will be listed)
5. What else is needed?
6. Tools for further development: where? which tools are needed?
7. 2012 survey needs to be translated at least to: French, Spanish and possibly even Chinese.
8. Possibly get new ideas; questions and approaches

Despite the fact that a lot needs human touch, I’m more than confident that the 2012 survey can be conducted with this platform. Only thing that raises some worries is the resources of server; it does have small amount of memory and processing power. Therefore it might be a little slow to serve especially during the surveys, when small scale peaks might occur. So…perhaps that would be another thing to contribute Happen to have a spare server to use for the surveys? It has also crossed my mind that perhaps there could be some foundations or alike that could support efforts like this. Perhaps P2P Foundation could provide some help in some form.  Don’t know yet – need to approach them directly.

Content is available under 2012, Jarkko Moilanen. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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