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:

The Wild Idea Preserve will require a proposal (currently served by this document.)
The Wild Idea Preserve will require proper government recognition as a not for profit organization.
At the time of foundation, the Wild Idea Preserve will require at least one member to be designated as Game Warden of the Wild Idea Preserve. Such an individual must first volunteer, and then receive a majority vote of the membership at foundation. The Game Warden will function as the organization's chief executive. The Game Warden will be responsible for enacting and serving the organization as proposed below. The Game Warden will be required to hold the position until the founding proposal expires.
The Wild Idea Preserve should also have members. Membership will be free, but will also need to be renewed upon foundation expiration.
The Wild Idea Preserve should also accept donations for the purpose of enabling and enhancing the organization.

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:

Authorship: Proposal author(s) and contact information.
Title: A project title.
Abstract: A brief description of the project and its goals.
Resources: A list of required and optional resources to serve as project inputs.
Process: A detailed description of project activities.
Products: A list of proposed outputs to be generated by the project.
Time: A fixed time period for project completion (which starts upon project initiation, unless noted otherwise.)
Related Documents: A list of documents related to the project, including other projects and material that the authors found inspirational.
Document History: The date that the proposal was submitted, and any revisions made to the proposal between the first submission and project inception.

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:

Authorship: Inception author(s) and contact information.
Title: A title for the inception document.
Summary: A review of project goals and resource requirements.
Resource Fulfillment: A restatement of project resources and how the resources are to be fulfilled. Ideally, the document should explicitly name the source of a given fulfillment bid.
Inception Date: The date upon which the organization should recognize the project as initiated.

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:

Authorship: Conclusion author(s) and contact information.
Title: Conclusion document title.
Abstract: A brief summary of the project outcome, including any major accomplishments and embarrassments.
Narrative: A description of project activity from project inception to conclusion, including the date and details behind any production.
Product Evaluation: An optional list of products identified in the proposal and evaluation of the products actually delivered.
Lessons Learned: An optional evaluation of the project's actual process.
Participant Comments: A section that must provide project participants the ability to make individual comment on the project.
Close Date: Date of document submission, and termination date (if different.)

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:

The Game Warden will be responsible for writing a project conclusion for the Wild Idea Preserve itself.
Before termination of the founding project, the Game Warden should resubmit a proposal for the next iteration of the Wild Idea Preserve.
The Game Warden will be responsible for seeing that all project and knowledge base information is captured and available online for as long as possible (this will extend even under the event that the Wild Idea Preserve is not renewed.)
The Game Warden should also generate proposals for any infrastructure deemed necessary for operation of the Wild Idea Preserve.

Timeframe: