Issues that came up in the discussion:

  • Time zones for international projects are difficult
  • Communication needs to be consistent or things get messy
  • Paid or unpaid work?
  • Setting expectations: response times, tool availability, etc
  • Clear instructions of where things are (e.g documentation, meeting notes, …)
  • Get the community to teach each other: building strength and sustainability through numbers, i.e. break a job down into small bits so the individual workload is small but combined effort delivers results; several people do the same thing, so that if one person suddenly leaves for whatever reason, you have some redundancy to tide you over

TIPS:

  • Be present
  • Be open-minded
  • Talk to people - but be aware that some people need formality and others need the opposite to thrive and feel comfortable to contribute
  • Allow lots of freedom in how things are done (focus more on outcomes than process)
  • Involve community in facilitation, designs, platform/tool choices etc
  • Community events (online/offline/blended) and competitions
  • Room for playfulness and experimentation
  • If you do meet online regularly, vary the times to allow everyone around the world to participate, but be clear where notes and meeting dates are stored
  • Build a small reliable core team that helps co-ordinate the next level of contributors/helpers/participants (whatever you call them in your project)