You are here: Foswiki>Community Web>MissionStatementDraft (17 Apr 2010, OzWi)Edit Attach

DRAFT COPY AND BRAINSTORMING TOPIC ONLY

Mission Statement Goals and questions:

from wikipedia:

"A mission statement is a brief statement of the purpose of a company, organization, or group. Companies sometimes use their mission statement as an advertising slogan, but the intention of a mission statement is to keep members and users aware of the organization's purpose. In the case of public commercial companies, the primary purpose must always be to uphold the interests of shareholders, whatever the mission statement."

Purpose and values of the organization
- (products or services, market) or who are the organization's primary "clients" (stakeholders)
What are the responsibilities of the organization towards these "clients"
What are the main objectives supporting the company in accomplishing its mission

Approach #1

"It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide an ideal collaboration environment for both enterprise and community applications. Our open development model leverages web 2.0 technologies while protecting existing investments from incompatible changes and vendor lock-in. Our community-driven approach encourages a robust user experience. We are a community collaboration! "

which came from the following irc conversation...

   TravisBarker: the press is so big in part because of the precedent that has been set for the greater OS community    <br> historically forks fail, but this one won't because its the entire community less one that has moved.    <br> stick with the plan, fill in the gaps and move directly forward    <br> </pep talk>    <br> i need some feedback on this Mission Statement thing    <br> the best ive come up with is ""It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide a community driven collaboration environment superior to but compatible with your existing TWiki(tm) installation"    Soronthar: Don't compare to TWiki    <br> It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best community driven collaboration environment, while protecting the coorporate investments against incompatible changes"    <br> or something like that    TravisBarker: yea    Rich_Morin____: corporate    Soronthar: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best community driven collaboration environment, while protecting the corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in"  :)    Rich_Morin____: I'd get rid of "the" before corporate    TravisBarker: yea    Soronthar: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best community driven collaboration environment, while protecting corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in    SeanMc: hmm, not completely buzzword compliant- need "leverage" in there somewhere ;-)    Soronthar: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best community driven collaboration environment, while protecting corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in, while leveraging cuting-edge web 2.0 technologies    <br> better? ;)    SeanMc: hehe, great    Soronthar: I forgot the users...    TravisBarker: too many "while"s    Soronthar: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best community driven collaboration environment, protecting corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in, while leveraging cuting-edge web 2.0 technologies to provide a seamless user experience    Rich_Morin____: <u>Soronthar</u>: It strikes me that TWiki fills a special niche of "enterprise" wikis, because of its scriptability, etc.  Semantic MediaWiki is heading in that direction, but is hampered by the fact that the MW folks don't want to do anything that doesn't support WP.  So, you might want to add in something in that direction...    Soronthar: I think that now I overdoit a little :)    <br> overdid it    TravisBarker: <u>Soronthar</u>: i think its great    <br> community driven enterprise collaboration....    <br> ?    Soronthar: scary    <br> we don't want to exclude the "non enterprise" people.    TravisBarker: what single word describes a non enterprise environment?    SeanMc: A slight recast: "It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best community-driven collaboration environment, to protect existing corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in, and to provide a rich user experience by leveraging web 2.0 technologies."    Soronthar: non-enterprise? perhaps community    SeanMc: non enterprise = community    <br> snap    Soronthar: :)    <br> great minds think alike ;)    SeanMc: :-)    Rich_Morin____: I think it would be better not to try to get it all in one sentence.    TravisBarker: so enterprise buzzword stays out?    <br> <u>Rich_Morin____</u>: it has a couple of commas :)    Soronthar: In the first paragraph, I think so.    SeanMc: I'd leave enterprise out- a corp pitch would be worded differently    Soronthar: Then we can say that it provides the perfect platform for entreprise collaboration, etc,etc,etc    Rich_Morin____: Long sentences are hard to punctuate correctly and make the reader work too hard to read them.  counter-0productive...    SeanMc: ask all the consultants here ;-)    <br> member:identifier:rich_morin____: could break it into bullet points, but it's probably not long enough for that    Rich_Morin____: What's wrong with a couple of short sentences?    SeanMc: not many outside people really fixate on mission statements- they're usually more meaningful to people within the community    Rich_Morin____: Or one "theme" sentence and a list of bullets that support it    TravisBarker: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best collaboration environment for both enterprise and community applications. Foswiki is a community-driven solution that protects existing corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in. Foswiki provides a rich user experience by leveraging web 2.0 technologies.    ***: Zenopus_ has joined #twiki_fork    TravisBarker: maybe too choppy now?    Rich_Morin____: +5    SeanMc: just a little    Rich_Morin____: "It was hard to write; it _should_ be hard to read!"    TravisBarker: lol    SeanMc: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best collaboration environment for both enterprise and community applications. Foswiki is a community-driven solution that protects existing corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in and provides a rich user experience by leveraging web 2.0 technologies.    Rich_Morin____: Besides, short sentences can have more impact than long ones (eg, Churchill, Heminway)    SeanMc: 2 sentences instead of the 3    TravisBarker: s/and/while    <br> i was thinking basically the same thing    SeanMc: yep, that works too    TravisBarker: s/and/while/ s/provides/providing    Rich_Morin____: works    TravisBarker: while is smother maybe?    Rich_Morin____: yep    SeanMc: the only thing is that the 2 sentence halves are not related points, so "while" may not be the right conjunction    TravisBarker: k im going to post it to MissionStatementDraft and let it soak for 24 hours    <br> see what other feedback we get    <br> i think we are onto it though    Soronthar: the mission should be something that denotes goals. I think that "protects" is something more like a characteristic than a goal.    Rich_Morin____: Foswiki is a community-driven solution that leverages web 2.0 technologies to provide a rich user experience and protect existing corporate investments.    Soronthar: (sorry, I can't find the words in english to explain myself better)    SeanMc: tis a fair point    Soronthar: that's an explanation... it should sound heroic and epic!    <br> :)    ***: Zenopus has quit IRC (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))    <br> Zenopus_ is now known as Zenopus    Rich_Morin____: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best collaboration environment for both enterprise and community applications. Foswiki is a community-driven solution that provides a rich user experience while protecting existing corporate investments.    Khalsa: I agree with Soronthar, Mission should sound awesome and great, and project should strive towards it    SeanMc: I think we need to reword the "protecting existing corporate investments"    TravisBarker: to protect    Khalsa: "Netwiki is" shouldn't be part of a Mission statement imo    TravisBarker: We are?    <br> s/Netwiki is/we are/ ?    <br> i dont know    <br> .topic    <br> oops    Soronthar: It is the Mission of Foswiki to provide the best collaboration environment for both enterprise and community applications. *being a* community-driven solution that protects existing corporate investments against incompatible changes and vendor lock-in and provides a rich user experience by leveraging web 2.0 technologies.    Khalsa: Mission statements should sound almost bullshitty, like "Netweiki strives to become the premire community-driven solution that prvodies ..." (at least in my experience)    SeanMc: <u>Soronthar</u>: getting closer I think    Khalsa: Someone unfamilier with the project/goals/etc. should be able to read it and think "WOAH I want in on THAT!"    TravisBarker: im taking what we have sofar (from logs) to the Draft topic    Soronthar: k    <br> goof    <br> good    TravisBarker: we should look at it for a day and come back to this    Soronthar: 50 heads think bettern than 4    TravisBarker: we made great progress

Approach #2.

The major problem with writing a mission statement for a project like this is that the goals are diverse; sometimes I think there are as many unique goals as there are contributors. FWIW I think a mission statement is only useful when it makes some clear statement that gives a common focus that links all these goals. Here's what I think the common goals are (or should be) today:

Create the most useful online application development and integration platform
Free as air
Useful for both community and enterprise
Fun to work on, fun to use; open to all
Low excise on end users, developers and admins (easy to learn, easy to extend, easy to administer)
Protect end user investment - no lock-in, no lock-out, no data loss, ever

We're not a company, we have no shareholders. It's not a goal to make profit. The goal is to create something useful and have fun doing it. So wrapping up the above goals, I propose the following mission statement for the project:

Coordinate volunteer efforts to create and support the most useful online application development and integration platform, that is free, fun to work on and fun to use.