Brainstorming ideas for next user base discussion

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi,

I took the meeting minutes from the user base discussion meeting last
week and wrote up a blog post on the meeting -
http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2013/04/09/fedora-board-fedora-userbase-discussion/

I had promised in the meeting to provide a list of potential
brainstorming games, one of which we could 'play' at the next meeting to
make further progress. Here are the ones I think have the most potential
to be useful for us. They come from the book 'Gamestorming' by Dave
Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo.

1) "Who Do"

We start off with a goal or vision statement. In this case, the
statement could be:

"Fedora will be an awesome platform for building things."

Then you come up with a list of 'whos.' Who will use it to build things?
Who in the Fedora community do we need to help make this goal happen?
Who has the skills / resources to make it work? Who will be an obstacle?
Who needs to support it?

Then, for each who, you come up with at least one 'Do.' What does this
person need to do, change about how they do what they do, or what action
do they need to take to get us closer to the goal? The do's need to be
stated in the form of actions. Not "this person needs to agree" or "this
person needs to understand," but actual action like, "these people need
to rebuild their packages," or "this team needs to redesign the Fedora
website." That sort of thing.

2) "3-12-3"

Depending on how many people show up to the meeting, we might want to
break out into groups, but it should work for up to 10 active participants.

This one is based on timing. We start with a topic, again it could be:

"A platform for building technology"

the first 3 minutes
-------------------

Each person writes down as many nouns and verbs related to the topic as
they can within the 3 minute period. They can just be posted to the IRC
channel as they are thought up.

12 minutes
----------

We break into pairs. (Could be sub-IRC channels or just /query windows)
Each pair of people will randomly grab 3 words from the pool generated
in the main IRC channel. Using these 3 words as discussion starters, the
pair needs to develop a concept to present back in the main channel.

the last 3 minutes
-------------------

Each team will have 3 minutes to present their concept back to the group
in the main IRC channel.

voting
------

Everyone gets 3 votes. Out of all the concepts presented by the various
groups, each person can put their votes towards the concepts they feel
are most promising (if you really believe in one of them you can put all
3 of your votes towards it.) The top three concepts then get discussed
by the larger group.

3) "Cover Story"

Pretend that we've reached our goal of being the ultimate platform for
building technology on top of, and that we're being featured on the
cover of a prominent mainstream magazine. As a group, brainstorm what
the magazine issue's content will contain:

- What is the cover headline and the leading story?
- What are headlines within the cover story?
- What sidebars will be part of the cover story?
- What quotes will people provide in the article?
- What kinds of images will be part of the story?

4) "Pre-Mortem"

Pretend Fedora failed and is dead, and we need to come up with an
obituary of the achievements it accomplished over its life and how
things went wrong. There's going to be two main threads to the
discussion on this one:

- What did the project achieve, how did it do well, how did that go, how
did it get to success?

- What are the risks that led to its demise? What went wrong?

5) "The 5 Whys"

You start off with a problem statement. Our problem statement could be:

"Fedora is not the best platform for building new technology."

As a group, brainstorm a set of reasons why the problem is a problem.
Number each reason.

For each reason, come up with a reason why that reason is a problem.

Continue until you have a chain of 5 whys from the original problem as
to why the problem is a problem.


Okay, I hope these are a good variety of potential games we could play
to get further on this issue. As I noted in the meeting, I feel like
having an artifact / goal / game to focus on will help drive the meeting
forward and result in a bit less chaos.

~m