Metakgp:Governance/Election March 2017/SOP Ayush Goyal
Email : [email protected]
Hall : RP Hall
About me
I am a second year undergraduate student of the Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering. I am also Executive Head (Projects and Open Source) at Kharagpur Open Source Society.
Contributions
I started contributing to the metakgp wiki from April 2016, and from then I have made some or the other edits on the wiki. All my wiki contribution can be seen here.
I majorly contributed on the project Naarad , of which I am the maintainer now.
I have also contributed to five months of the server pricing.
Vision of Metakgp
I see metakgp as a group where one can find a lot of interesting people to interact with and learn. Metakgp is not just another “coding” society(which a lot of people think it is ), it is a lot more than that. It is a place where one can find proper guidance,support, resources to bring an idea to life.
Problems in Metakgp
One of the major problem with metakgp right now is gender diversity. There are very less or I can say negligible female contributors. Recently, there had been quite an interesting discussion to overcome this problem and I think this problem will soon be resolved.
Secondly, the number of “active” contributors in metakgp is very less. Like currently there are 150+ members on metakgp slack of which hardly 10 or 20 people actually contribute which is very less.
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Plans and proposals as a maintainer
Increasing the scope of Metakgp
Currently a lot of people thinks of metakgp as only coding related organisation which is not the case. For example , a lot of people are not aware of the book-club. So, to overcome this I will arrange weekly book-club meetups and try to have discussion related to it in general or random channel. So that everyone know it exists.
Involving more people to contribute
Our major projects such as Wiki, MFQP are community driven and to keep them alive we need to see that we are getting active contributions for them. Only a small fraction of people contribute to make them better while a lot of people use them. So, to overcome this situation I propose to have more editathons and in-person events and also in every event we should tell why everyone should contribute towards these projects.
Getting a professor as our mentor
To increase the scope of metakgp and for smoothly conducting on campus events we really need a professor to back us up. So, after discussing with everyone who that professor should be we can contact him/her.
Publicising metakgp
As it is said that you can make an awesome thing but if no one uses it than it is a waste. So we need to ensure that metakgp is publicised properly among everyone in KGP. For this I will start with asking the VP Gymkhana to give a short introduction to the first years during the orientation programme and also ask people at Student Welfare Group to tell about metakgp in the information brochure and tell about us in their Campus tour.
Public Comments
I'm using Amrav's SCAMP guidelines to rate each part of the proposal.
Increasing the scope of Metakgp
Measurable: 1.5 it is almost impossible to measure the success of your proposal after your term is over.
Calibrated: 1 the proposal doesn't discuss possibility of failure but that is also because of its vagueness. It is hard to think fail scenario when it hard to define failure (or success).
Aligned: 2 the scope of metakgp is pretty wide already, I don't there is a need to increase it further.
Coherence: 2 The proposal is largely vague
Effective: 1.5 I don't think conducting weekly book-club meets will be sufficient in attracting non coders to metakgp.
Involving more people to contribute
Measurable: 2.5 hard to measure
Calibration: 1 doesn't talk about why editathons might not work, which I think isn't too much of an issue here.
Aligned: 4 if this works it can be awesome, a single new dedicated contributor can transform the community. New people are ones who will take things up for metakgp in the future, it is very important to bring them in and nurture them.
effectiveness: 3 I think "regular" editathons and in-person events can be an effective way to bring new people in.
Coherence: 3 The goal and step are broadly defined.
Getting a professor as our mentor
Measurable: 3.5, after the term, the professor is either there or not, though it might not be clear if (s)he is mentoring us or not
Calibration: 1 doesn't talk about failure
Coherence: 2 I think the steps to getting a professor in are clear (but implicit, just talk to them). The goals of bringing in the professor are not clearly defined.
Aligned: 1.5 it is more important to get the right professor than getting a professor. A bad professor can actively harm the community by unnecessary bossing and interfering.
effectiveness: 2 I think most professor don't have time or enthusiasm to get involved in communities like ours. Even if they are enthusiastic they might not turn out to be effective mentors because of lack of experience in working with communities like ours.
Publicising Metakgp
Measurable: 2.5
Calibration: 1 proposal doesn't talk about failure, here the failure modes are also very apparent, the VP, SWG or both might decline to cooperate
Coherence: 3.5 the goal and the steps are well defined
Aligned: 3.5 publicity not only brings us new contributors but it also increases the impact of existing projects.
effectiveness: 3 both of the defined steps can be very effective.
-- Hargup (talk) 23:57, 18 March 2017 (IST)
(Siddharth, @icyflame on Slack):
1. start with asking the VP Gymkhana to give a short introduction to the first years during the orientation programme: I see where you are coming from, but what incentives do you plan to offer to the VP for mentioning Metakgp? Basically, what's going to be your pitch?
2. Getting a professor as our mentor: Yeah, we should work on this no matter if you get elected or not. We already planned and failed once, let's not let it happen once more!
3. Involving more people to contribute: Considering that the attendance to the in-person events is so less, how do you plan to get the message out? Maybe the stickers and posters idea that Naresh suggested in his SOP can be added to yours, and we can get better results? I am just brain storming here.
4. Increasing the scope of Metakgp: You should talk a bit more about _why_ the book club doesn't meet as often as you suggest.