SOMUS – an open research group work case study

Open Symposium, Helsinki 5.-6.11.2009

Auli Harju – auli.harju@uta.fi Teemu Ropponen – teemu.ropponen@tkk.fi

Pirjo Näkki – pirjo.nakki@vtt.fi http://somus.vtt.fi

What is SOMUS?• ”Social media for citizens and public sector

collaboration” • Funded by the Academy of Finland (2009-2010)• Multidisciplinary (and geo-distributed) research

partners: – VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland / Media

Technologies– University of Tampere / Dept. of Journalism and Mass

Communications– University of Jyväskylä / Dept. of Social Sciences and Philosophy – Helsinki University of Technology / Dept. of Media Technology – The Open Research Swarm / http://parvi.fi

Project themes

• Study citizenship and participation in social media environment

• Prototype social media based concepts for dialogue between citizen groups, public sector, mass media

• Create and validate a model for open Internet-based research

SOMUS subprojects

Somus methodology• Project management and research group work • Tools

– Social media communities and services, applications for online collaboration

• ’Ideology’– Values (democracy, equality, research ethics)– Key principles (openness, deliberation, agility)

• Practices– In communication and research (information sharing,

participation, collaboration, retrospective evaluation)

SOME OF OUR TOOLS (AND PRACTICES) FOR OPEN COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION

Openness

• Work and communication are open and available on the Internet (by default)– Project plan creation– Brainstorming, planning, article drafting– Online discussions, meeting agendas,

microblogging and minutes • Wiki, Qaiku, Etherpad, Skype, Delicious, blog

Openness since day 1

We started finding researchersand planning SOMUSopenly on Jaiku

Promoting the open data agenda – Apps for Democracy Finland competition

Deliberation

• Discussion is democratic, open, inclusive, tolerant, respectful– Presentation of different views, listening,

argumentation, debate, empathy– People, networks and interaction important

• analogy to good open-source communities?

Agility

• Agile and reactive project management and execution– New theoretical concepts and ideas– New collaboration parties

• Participation in the society, current issues• User groups• …Even researchers

– Redefinition and reprioritization in software development, based on constant co-design

Framework for participatory design

ImmigrantsStudents

Media

Citizens

NGOs

Public sector

Researchers Needs

Ideas

Concepts

Services

How can we make this frameworkopendeliberativeagile?

Nice, but NOT in my research field?!

• Openness - ”others will steal our ideas”– how do you know other will steal your ideas?!– so what?! ideas come and go? isn’t that great?!– how would that feel, if someone ”cheated” and ”stole” my

ideas?! (a ”crashing” learning experience?)

– to the audience: has anyone stolen your work!? Please explain!

• Deliberation – ”talking too much never gets anything done, someone must take responsibility”

• Agility - ”an euphemism for no project planning”

Preconditions for SOMUS methodology

• Shared values– democracy, ethics, equality, openness

• Self-organization• New ideas allowed and actively investigated • Some budgeted “flexible” money

Challenges• Doing actual research AND method development

simultaneously• Swarming and new research tasks -> the big picture lost?

– New issues gain interest, sometimes at expense of old ones– What extra value do new research tasks bring in?

• Self-organization doesn’t always work in practice– all the tasks need to be addressed to someone(s)

• Openness and information overflow– need for organizing, summarizing and analysis

• The big question: How to develop the dialogue between citizens, the public sector and the media?– How to understand the problem, cannot be solved alone

Benefits

• Transparency of research – Availability of research problems, ideas, and

results to the public => science’s societal function!– Outside involvement: help, ideas, expertise

• Minimize risk– Re-focus according to changes, priorities

• Societal value through collaboration and networking

• Continuous learning, teamwork and spirit

Experiences from a researcher

• Key findings– new kind of publishing is difficult but rewarding at best!

• ”perpetual beta” – publishing and admitting own incompleteness• enriching own thinking through collaboration

– social (digital) networking is fast, direct and far-reaching– online interactions: how to fit time & fitting into ”scientific

work”– new competences: new culture, communications,

technological tools

Methodology development next steps

• We see a need to develop this into a more defined framework of practices– similar to agile software development => Scrum

• Evaluate this framework in practice, e.g.,– resource allocation issues in cross-organizational swarming

and collaboration– dilemmas in participation motivation and compensation– fit with academic culture remains unproven – e.g. forms of

publishing, proceding as planned, reporting mechanisms

THANKS!