From BlueOxen

The goal: Make Open Source software more usable.

The strategy: Build community (via Stone Soup) and catalyze collaboration within that community. Eventually, we'd like a Committed Founder from within the community to emerge and take ownership of this goal, perhaps under the auspices of an independent organization.

2006Q4 Plan

• Floss Usability Sprint (October 27-29, 2006 in San Francisco)
• Remote Usability Sprint (November, perhaps in conjunction with World Usability Day?)
• Beef up and integrate the online presences of the various Open Source usability initiatives (http://www.flossusability.org/, http://www.openusability.org/, http://meatballsociety.org/cgi-bin/design)
• Season Of Usability (2007 Q1-Q2)

Partners:

• Eugene Eric Kim (Blue Oxen Associates)
• Allen Gunn (Aspiration)
• Jan Muehlig (Open Usability)
• Sunir Shah

Potential sponsors:

• Open Source Applications Foundation
• Open Society Institute
• Google
• Red Hat
• Novell
• Volunteer Sector Initiative {nid 67} -- http://www.vsi-isbc.ca/eng/index.cfm

Information Architecture for Online Presence

• Community site / knowledge repository for how to do Open Source usability (currently http://www.flossusability.org/)
  • Wiki
  • Mailing Lists
  • Visible Pulse -- tag aggregation, blog aggregation, group blog, Flickr
  • Event support tools
• Matchmaking between usability practitioners and developers (currently http://www.openusability.org/)
  • Could use better profile system that encourages community-building
• Design Bibliography
• Interoperable identities (Open I D) between sites
• Possibly unify all or some of these sites under a common domain

The events will help grow the online presence, and vice-versa.