Community Interview for OpenMRS Director of Community Candidate - Third Candidate

Hi Everyone -

We are now in the final phase in our search for a new full time OpenMRS director of community, and we are holding open community interviews with three final candidates.

We are holding a one hour interview Monday at 2pm EDT with our third finalist. All who are interested in learning more about her and weighing into this decision are welcome. The forum is open for questions from anyone who joins. If you are unable to join, please feel free to post questions here for her to answer via Talk.

Her CV is available upon request.

We will use the OpenMRS Uberconference for this: www.uberconference.com/openmrs OR 1-888-510-4073

Thanks, and hope to see you soon!

The call will be at 11am Seattle, 2pm Boston, 20:00 Berlin, 21:00 Nairobi, 23:30pm IST, 2am Manila. See more time zones.

Here: Director of Community interview 25-Jun-2018 on www.uberconference.com/openmrs OR 1-888-510-4073

Notes: available here

Recording: (interview begins at 3:15)

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Thank you @janflowers , @paul , @terry , and @dkayiwa for your time yesterday! I’m happy to continue the conversation here with the wider community and answer any additional questions.

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It was great talking to you @tenlysnow :slight_smile:

Just a couple of questions. Some could have already been answered at the times when my connection cut me off.

  1. While working as Community Manager, have you had any failures? Would you like to share them?
  2. During your term as Community Manager, do you have any innovation that you brought up? Something that you can call your baby? That which was not in place, and you initiated it?
  3. Have you noticed anything that the OpenMRS Community lacks? One such a thing that you would love to put in place?
  4. Have you seen anything that the OpenMRS Community has done so well and hence should keep up?
  5. Do you have any advice for improving our volunteer contributions and retention?
  6. Have you ever attended any Community Leadership conferences like those organised by OSCON?
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Hi @dkayiwa, thanks for your questions. I did answer a handful of these during the call but I’m happy to add more detail here:

  1. While working as Community Manager, have you had any failures? Would you like to share them? Of course I’ve had failures! I don’t think I’d be a very good person or CM if I hadn’t! Failure indicates that you’re trying, which is the most essential - and hardest part - of community management (and of life really :slight_smile: ) If I had to describe one major challenge that is a continual struggle, it would be staying optimistic personally in the face of the slow progress that open source communities make. Open source communities are a democracy…and democracies are slow and they take a lot of work! I face a daily struggle to find fresh ways to engage members and stay motivated as a leader myself.
  2. During your term as Community Manager, do you have any innovation that you brought up? Something that you can call your baby? That which was not in place, and you initiated it? Yes! It’s funny that you put it that way - I call this project my “baby” all the time. When I first started as the CM for OpenLMIS, our website was really minimal - just a basic little wordpress site. One of my first major projects that was personally meaningful to me was the full refresh and overhaul of the website (openlmis.org) as well as the logo. This was a process that took several months and hundreds of hours of content development, almost all of which I led and managed. I feel really proud of the website now and of that accomplishment.
  3. Have you noticed anything that the OpenMRS Community lacks? One such a thing that you would love to put in place? This was brought up by @terry on the call - looking at at the longer term strategy for OpenMRS around presence and messaging. OpenMRS is such a vibrant community now, I would like to find ways to capture all the great experience and impact of the software and to message that within the framework of Global Goods.
  4. Have you seen anything that the OpenMRS Community has done so well and hence should keep up? So many things…one of the reasons I’m interested in this role is because of how impressive this community is! I think OpenMRS has done an incredible job engaging and retaining volunteer developer interest all around the world. Finding ways to connect with developers based all over the world isn’t easy, and this community has done that admirably.
  5. Do you have any advice for improving our volunteer contributions and retention? We talked through a couple ideas during the call, but some additional thoughts:
  • Reviewing community structure and incentivization. Are long-term, stable participants really being supported and incentivized to stay in the community? Do they have access to the right tools to transfer their knowledge?
  • Reviewing knowledge-sharing platforms. Are we using the most effective platforms to maintain our knowledge base? Are pieces from key forum discussions being publicized, or turned into collateral pieces?
  • Share a photo/bio of the volunteer of the month
  • Send them a handwritten note or a small piece of OpenMRS swag (a sticker, for example)
  • Create a “volunteer hall of fame” where top contributors are featured
  • Recognize at an OpenMRS community meeting with a special lunch/dinner/gift certificate
  1. Have you ever attended any Community Leadership conferences like those organised by OSCON? Yes, I attended the Community Leadership Summit in 2016 (which is associated with OSCON but usually held the weekend before) and will be attending again this July in Portland.