Title: Founding Proposal for the Wild Idea Preserve


Jonathan Riehl, Katrina Riehl

Abstract:

The Wild Idea Preserve will be a non-profit organization dedicated to the discovery and dissemination of interdisciplinary research. The structure of the Wild Idea Preserve will rely upon as well as foster new technologies, especially technologies related to computer science. By providing a distributed forum for proposal submission and collaboration, research will be facilitated across many groups including the private and public sectors. The Wild Idea Preserve will strive to provide a habitat for the creation and application of novel ideas.
 

Resources:

Process:

The Wild Idea Preserve should function on one primary principle: the process is a project, projects are the process. The process is served by members submitting proposals. Proposals will provide some criteria for initiation by stating estimated project resource requirements. Members bid resources until all project resource requirements are met. Upon the full allocation of project resources, projects are initiated and run under a process described in the project's proposal. Projects must have a set time frame, upon which time, the project results (even if incomplete) must be disclosed and any follow-up action must be resubmitted as a new proposal.

Proposals will be posted to a group database of project information. The database will be used to track project status and capture project documents. The current document is meant to be an exemplar for Wild Idea Preserve project proposals. Project proposals should therefore define the following information:

Members should be notified about new project proposals. Members will then be able to review a new proposal. Members will then bid resources to fulfill the project's resource requirements. Once a project has obtained the required resources, the project must have an inception document submitted for it. The inception document should consist of (at least) the following sections: Once a project is initiated, those responsible for enacting the project should follow the process outlined in the project's proposal. Ideally, the process results in the generation of the outputs described in the proposal. These outputs should be announced and integrated into a organizational knowledge base. However, no matter what the outcome of the project, each project is required to terminate (in the eyes of the Wild Idea Preserve) upon the passage of the full time in the proposal since the project inception.

Due upon the termination of a project is a project conclusion document. If no project participant is available upon project termination (i.e. the project was abandoned,) it will fall upon the Game Warden to generate a project conclusion (which will state to the best ability of the organization the circumstances surrounding the project's unfinished outcome.) The project conclusion may include some or all of the following sections:

Legacy projects may also be added to the project list, with project documents (proposal, inception, and conclusion) added "posthumously."

The Wild Idea Preserve process will be facilitated by not only a public database of projects, but a knowledge base. The knowledge base should function to capture information relevant to any Wild Idea Preserve objectives, projects, products, and information contributed by Preserve members. As a part of the founding proposal, the Game Warden should oversee the submission and inception of a project to create the knowledge base and a public interface to the data.

Information submitted to the knowledge base will be copyrighted by the Wild Idea Preserve with the explicit understanding that the information will be licensed under the GNU public license (GPL) and should be freely available for perpetuity. Where applicable, the Wild Idea Preserve will seek to maintain authorship records for submitted information. All information held by the Wild Idea Preserve must be open to full public disclosure, with no information withheld upon completion of the Wild Idea Preserve's founding project.

Project members should seek a similar license for any "soft" products generated (data, publications, and software.)
 

Outputs:

Timeframe:

This foundational proposal must expire within one year (365 days) of the project's inception.

Related Documents:

The GNU Public License, XXX.
WikiWiki Web, XXX.


Document History:

12/9/1999: Document originated by Jonathan Riehl.


Last modified 1/22/2000, jriehl.