I was wondering if the community (forum or website) could have a skill looking to/looking for board for people who want to contribute and people/projects who need contributions.
I am quite new to the community and was a bit daunted by the forum. I have also redirected other people over here but it is not easy to put those extra hands to work.
I think it would be useful both for specific projects (e.g. looking for: a circuit that can sense x / looking to: provide electronic circuit support) and for managing community stuff (e.g. looking for: someone to take notes about y / looking to: help draft documentation).
Let me know if this is something that is helpful and you also see it is needed, and how we go about doing it.
Also: not particularly sure about the name or if it is relevant in another categroy.
Hey @ChucklesOS this sounds like a great idea! Also, if you have any ideas on how the forum can be made less daunting please let us know - we’d love to make some changes for the better
So how about a category called “Skills Exchange” and two subcategories within that “Help Offered” “Help Wanted”? If someone has better ideas on titles, please post.
It may be worth talking to the JOGL people (@Tholand) about this as their platform it designed around this concept. Of course the negative is the problem that by using more tools/platforms we end up fracturing the discussion further.
Hello @ChucklesOS and @jcm80, as a part of the OPEN!NEXT project we are working on developing an open source skills ontology which anyone can integrate into their respective OSH platforms. The idea is to enable collaboration based on skills and interests. We are just starting of with it, so it would be great to collaborate on it.
Sounds like there are lots of directions/improvements that this suggestion could take and +1 to learning from JOGL, they have exactly this but in a Slack channel and also some very active community coordinators who make direct links between people.
@ChucklesOS what do you think? @Jay_ozone feel free to post in the “Help Wanted” category about mentorship! @Sonika keep us updated with progress on the ontology!
I was thinking less about the slack channel but more the actual app.jogl.io page allows projects to list their needs. There is then a page that collates them so people can look for projects to help.
What I really like is that there are specific “programs” which have their own subsets of projects and needs, for example. What I think would be cool is if we could make a JOGL program but some how integrate that page into the GOSH website. As part of the “Grand unification of GOSH online resources” it would only really work well if you could use the same login as for the forum.
Anyway, all of what I said is pie-in-the-sky. A forum category is the right way to for now.
The category looks exactly what I was trying to find when I directed someone to this forum. Maybe keep a watch on it and if it gets used look at how that works. Then if it gets used but doesn’t work look at the other options people suggested.
