Horner Transcript 7

From OER Commons Wiki

Interview with FHSST Founder Mark Horner

Movie 7

What are the barriers to volunteer productivity?

One of the biggest points to remember with volunteers is that your conversion rate- turning a person who says that they want to help, that they're keen to help into a meaningful contribution - is very, very low. So it's essentially very hard to take that good will-- and there's a lot of good will for a project like this, it’s very rare that somebody says that they don't think the project's a good idea-- but turning that good will into a contribution is very difficult. And you really need to cater to volunteer's needs. The technical barrier is one of the worst barriers to overcome. Originally when we first just had our CVS server with LaTeX files on it, firstly many of our users who were windows users or not scientists just had no idea what CVS was. Then once we got rid of CVS then we moved on to the fact that very few people knew how to use Latex. So if these barriers can be overcome, that can play a significant role in improving the ability of the project to include volunteers. Another important thing is that if you have a small admin team, especially if you are doing it in your spare time, you can spend a significant amount of time just catering to the needs of an individual volunteer.