Divakar:
How can we get researchers and participants to engage in LIRNEasia activitites? And sustain these relationships?

Money?
-this is tough, since we have limited funds

Professional development?

Look at Shared values.
LIRNEasia has a set of values, that can we abstract from these values that will get people to participate in our activities?

Open Source community is a good example
Highly capable ppl who work across the globe to develop code that is shared freely with anyone. It is very unstructured, but very successful. The participants don’t get paid fro it, but they get the advantage of its use, and its participatory development. How do we resonate from that?

Rohan:
Property right imposed on you in Open Source (according to the Success of Open Source) where you can make money from it, but you are obligated to share source code with everyone else: it cannot be restricted from anyone.
LIRNEasia should take from this, and not restrict its output from anyone else.

Luxman:
Question is why Open Source evolved? B/c MS had monopoly

Divakar:
No, it has evolved b./c of the Internet: it allows code developers to work together where ever they are

Rohan:
To fix problem, you had to go to MS; Opensource overcomes this, allowing users themselves to fiddle with the product to their liking.

Divakar:
Weber asks hwhy OS’rs collaborate:
1. Gallery modely – OS is like a gallery of work, people across the world can see it, and comment on it. It works b.c it is an OPEN system ofcommunication – automatically promotes excellence.. medeocraty is sqeezed out of the system – LIRNEasia should take from this.
Harsha:
We haven’t been around long wnough to get that confidence to ‘show the world’ our work.

Rohan:
Vicious attacking of bad work at software forums; do we have this in our system?
Our website seems to be going in that direction.

Harsha:
we haven’t been arounf long enough to reach that level of excellence yet

Rohan:
Not got the audience yet

Sujata:
‘Community of practice’ where you are bound by a similar set of keywords. We have to break out of our CoP

HdeS
World Bank discussions generally only have about 40 (max) comments per week. Have we come to a stage where we can compete with them at this level yet? Even WB finds it hard to generate sufficient discussion.

Divakar:
We are different from WB in that the process is just as important as the end product.
Back to Weber:
2. Sharing: sharing has no costs, but great benefits. () Only thing with sharing per se is free-rider problem. BUT, Knowledge products don’t disappear. There is and ‘anti-rival’ problem – users who, even if they don’t contribute in the development (free-ride so to speak) give feed-back which betters the product at the end of the day.

RS:
Like public consultations

LS:
In SL, most people criticise

HdeS:
In academic work, most people free-ride anyway

RS:
But if you open it out before it is finalised, then that’s ok, b.c all these people actually did contribute

Sujata:
If someone takes our product, and polish it and then re-publish, credit doesn’t come back to us.

LS:
If we are working to a common goal; as long as the end goals are reached (values) then what does it matter

DG:
Our values need to be set out.

Sujata:
WB doesn’t have these underlying values, so maybe thast why they can’t generate discussion.

DG:
Weber:
In the academic set-up, only the finished good is published – aftetr peer-review, etc. For fear of being criticised,, and being plegerised.
Our process is different b.c its opened out to review from the starting point.

HdeS:

RS:
In a university, you don’t open out your work out, only to a very small close community. You don’t give half-done work. Only once its complete and polished, you publish.

HdeS:
In SL, not a lot gets written altogether, generally speaking.

DG:
3. Joint enemy – MS—keeps community motivated

Sujata:
What if MS disappears? Will the community go away? Don’t think so

HdeS.
It’s a common goal, not enemy. Will keep it going.

Sujata
Common enemy comes under ‘values’

DG:
OS developers usually have a day-job also. They say that working on OS gives them extra skills, connections and leverage.

DG:
Major differences between LIRNEasia and OS:
- is code similar to research?
o Good code works, it runs; good research is contentious. Can we create the kind of single-minded approach that will define ‘good research’

RS:
Can only figure out if something is good or not (Sayer??), the test is practical adequacy; does the trap catch mice?
There’s not really such a thing as ‘good code’ or whatever it is. One may have flaws, or many diff ones may do the same job

DG:
Linux says whats good and whats not. (before) Now, it’s a broader (but restricted) community that decides/approves code – processes and procedures to decide.

LS:
Cannot compare code with our kind of research.

DG:
cannot always expect to have agreement. But should that be a stumbling block to participation? No. need common values to work within as parameters – not just moral values, but procedural as well. Need a value system, this will

RS:
Need to work on our review process

Sujata:
But how? – get the values out? Money?

RS:
Money is secondary. We need to make this bigger in SL, and everywhere.

Project: (a) Look into Google scholar and look at everyone who has done work on Infrastructure reforms in Asia. Take those in that subset those who are living in Asia – potential customers. Then establish relations with them and put on mailing list. (c) go to the universities in Asia and support them to improve research, teaching curricula, etc. basically improve performance. ? new, better students. Give them incentives (via graduate fellowships) . Basically get them into our ‘community of practice’ Need common values to engage them into our CoP

HdeS:
There are always two opposing views on everything. Someone will always be against our work.

DG:
Measure of success shouldn’t be whether it changes govt policy immediately, but how well the process went.

HdeS: if thats our output, then that measure is ok, but if policy change is the ultimate output, then our measure of success is whether the policy change was made.

DG:
We can’t ensure that policy will be changed, but realistic objective should be that we get people to react.

RS:
Realistic objective should be influencing policy. Don’t expect that all your ideas (nor your enemy’s) ideas will be accepted, but the policy makers will do something with influence from both sides. Policy is the avoidance of the worst outcome.

LS:
Harsha’s Saradiel work prevented the worst from happening, not necessarily the best.

—Goodbye!!—