Brainstorming Organizational Issues and What Are We?

[Tom Wall]

Cindy wrote:
1. We could work in larger teams. To date, the largest teams we've 
ever had have been 2 people ("Mysteries" update and "Lupin") or three 
("Hagrid?").

Tom:
I like this – three to four person teams sounds ideal (from my 
experience,) in that there is a lot of old through which we have to 
comb, and our search options are limited. Oh, and then the writing 
part.


Cindy:
3. We could have roving, motivational FPers who would help (and 
prod) FP writers.

Tom:
I like this, too. If half of our whole team is occupied with writing 
specific FP's, then the other half could be free agents who could 
help everyone out. This might also be a great way for us new people 
to help out while familiarizing ourselves.


Cindy:
4. We could have a lead FPer on a particular FP, with a few others 
acting as support (helping to find good posts with The Whole 
Enchilada).

I add:
I really like this – especially since Abigail noted the dangers of 
having too many chiefs. This one person could remind everyone of 
deadlines, take the helm


Cindy:
5. We could decide that a writer may only reserve one FP or update 
at a time. When the first is completed, then the writer could choose 
from whatever FPs remain unassigned.

Tom:
Yep, yep – also great – we wouldn't want to have anyone overextend 
themselves and turn something that's fun into something that's 
stressful.


Cindy:
6. We could decide that a FP must be completed within a certain 
period (6 months?) after which time the FPer would assemble a team to 
move the project along.

Tom:
Well, Abigail also noted the possible potholes over deadlines, but 
overall, I think that some kind of flexible, deadline-oriented 
procedure is the best way to ensure progress.

Considering that I don't really know how things have worked thus far, 
and don't want to step on toes, I really like all of these 
suggestions. So, combining most of Cindy's excellent ideas into one 
whole, I'd say we do something like:

We break down into several three-to-five person teams, each working 
on one of the several FP's upon which the group decides. Can we pick 
three or four topics that desperately need to be written/updated? 
This way, teams have several heads working together, which allows for 
more creativity, and also more activity than one person could manage, 
without having to deal with the confusion of having thirty people 
chiming in together.

Depending on how many people actually *want* to be responsible for 
leading a group, we can take victims, oh, I mean *volunteers,* or 
else have elections for `team captains.' The captain could be the 
cheerleader, and keep track of the group's ideas, then help organize 
how the topic should be tackled. The captain could also post once-a-
month on the team's progress.

Each team's members should try to limit themselves to the one topic 
for which they signed up. If a team member realizes that he/she won't 
be able to (or else doesn't want to) help, then they could try to 
switch to another team, or else join the roving-FPer ranks.

The remaining members who aren't married to a topic can be 
motivational free-agents, and help out everyone else, while still 
taking a break for themselves. We're going to have a place where 
these works-in-progress are posted, right? The free-agents could 
check this page once in a while to see how things are progressing.

I'd bet that since the veterans have worked very hard in the past, 
some might want to relax a bit. Also, being a free-agent seems like a 
great way for newbies to acclimate themselves to group-procedures and 
so forth.

We set flexible-deadlines for some reasonable point in the future 
(several months?) and get to work.

On that note, I like monthly progress reports, even if (and 
sometimes, *especially* if) there isn't any real progress to report. 
This is a great chance for everyone on the list to review the 
progress of each group, and is also a chance for other members to 
comment and make suggestions. If a group isn't making progress, then 
this would also be a good chance to initiate discussion on how to get 
things rolling. 

So, if we have, say, four ongoing topics, then each group could pick 
a week of the month to make its reports, so we won't get boggled down 
with ideas all at once – we'll get one topic per week to review as a 
whole, and then a new topic the next week.

Through the progress reports, we can ensure total participation and 
input from everyone without having too many people involved 
specifically on one topic.

Anyways, just my take.


Phyllis suggested:
How about calling ourselves the "Fantastic Post Owls"?

I add:
Although we (well, a subset of that `we') *are* powerless squibs when 
compared to the administrators of main list, I'm down with owl-dom.

It's cute, classy, matches the `FP' bit, and we would be the 
purveyors of information to everyone else. 

I'm not flying a daily subscription to the Daily Prophet, though. ;-)

-Tom