Re: FN-FORUM: This collective/cooperative/consortium thing

date posted 11th September 2007 17:05

On 11 Sep 2007, at 3:52 pm, Ian Piper wrote:

> I was interested when I saw the discussion thread recently about
> gr0w, the agency in Bristol that is run along cooperative/
> collective lines. That seemed to me like a model that could work
> well. I contacted them with the idea of talking to them about how
> they make it work but sadly no-one has come back to me.
>
> So my next port of call is here. Someone else must have been in a
> similar position, and maybe others are interested in exploring ways
> of putting together cooperatives, consortia or project teams. Has
> anyone experience that they would like to share (preferably on-
> list, but off-list by email if you prefer)?

Actually I'm going to answer my own posting with a concrete example.
Today I picked up a call for expressions of interest for a new
website, for the V&A Museum. I don't have a problem mentioning it
because as I said before I am not presently in a position to apply
for it, but I think it illustrates the dilemma pretty well.

Here is part of the OJEU Contract Notice:

"Work package 2 (for lifelong learners) involves a range of online
tools being developed to enable users to document how the museum
partner collections have inspired their own creative work and
process. These are currently known as Creative Journeys. Users will
be able to create and post these journeys on the partner museum
websites. Using web technologies to help present their journeys,
users will be able to author their own content incorporating text,
images and other media. They will be able to publish and share their
journeys with other users on the partner websites as well as comment
on others journeys and interact online. This will further develop the
community environments that would have built up on the individual
websites. The contract requires a supplier to have experience and
good understanding of web 2.0 technologies and their possibilities.
The budget is to include a suitable and sustainable application which
can be installed across the partner websites, development of a front
and back-end design, production of 30 example Creative Journeys,
training and searching engine optimisation."

Well, that strikes a chord with me: I have a lot of experience in e-
learning for lifelong learners, design of interactive web services
using Web 2.0 technologies, front and back end web design. I can do
the requirements gathering, the information architecture, metadata
design and accessibility, and I can design and develop software in
various languages. And it looks like an interesting job. But this
feels like it is more than one person's work (even though the
contract notice says "individuals or companies", and even if it were
I don't have enough of the other things I would need to provide a
credible bid:

o Training skills
o SEO (I know it reasonably well, but it isn't a core skill)
o Experience of MLA sector
o Design of specialised content creation services
o Professional level application development skill (I'm reasonably
good but this would need polish that I don't have)
o Content creation skills and domain knowledge to create the examples
o Creative skills and graphic design
o Project management

So I would normally just leave this to the big consultancies or
design agencies that usually pick up this kind of work. But I know
those skills exist in the heads of other people in similar positions
to me, so wouldn't it be great if there were a way to tap into that
and identify a team who could come together for the purpose of doing
this job? This feels like the sort of thing that a team of, say, 4 -
5 people with complementary skills could take on and deliver a better
result than the big players.

As I say, this is just an example that came up today. I see things
like this most days though, and I feel sure there should be a way to
enable groups of individuals to have the credibility to win projects
like this.

Thoughts welcome.


Ian.
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Ian Piper
Tellura Information Services - the web, document and information people
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