What should I do this summer?
Behind the scenes, a lot has been going on in the OSP-world recently; some good, some bad. A couple of months ago, of course, lnxwalt decided to help out with writing duties. That’s great news. The reason why I went through another round of asking people to work on the project was not so great. I’m not going to get into those here as I’ve already mentioned them a bit.
One of the other bad things that happened is that the director of our major fund-raising project might be stepping aside. Nothing is certain yet on him stepping aside, so I’m not going to go into things in detail. The important part is that my June was set to work on the fund-raising project and now that may not exist.
Here are the options I’ve got on the table now. I’d like more suggestions!
Write and Plan Like Last Summer
While in respect to OSP, last summer was a failure, I certainly learned a lot. We came up with NEF as a project last summer and we came up with the fund-raising plan which is now running into problems.
I think this summer would be more successful based on what I learned last year. I learned, first, that I can get out more content by writing than by doing audiocasts. I also learned that an article a day was all that could be done I had thought I could write for Sportazine and then either a OSP or Lawcast article depending upon the subject. The problem with Sportazine was that the articles took a large investment in time to prepare. During the Euros I was often watching 3 hours of games a day and listening to the Guardian podcast. It was too much. I’ll want to do something with the Confederations Cup in June, but unless I can get some writers signed up beforehand, it will not be as ambitious as last summer. Obviously six months out, a lot can happen. Who knows what opportunities will arise during the summer.
We also have intern/volunteer help now. I don’t know how much Danny Jones will be doing during the summer, but he’s be a great help in the fall and looks to be a great help again in the spring.
Get an Internship at Future of Music Coalition
This is looking like the most likely option at this point. Obviously this has more to do with Music Manumit than it does with OSP. However, one of the recent internships includes this:
Policy Intern works closely with FMC Policy shop (including Casey Rae and Michael Bracy) to assist in the open source and legal research involved in thoroughly understanding all sides of current policy issues.
If I were to work with Casey, then I could potentially bring some knowledge back to OSP. If I knew now that we were not going to be able to do the fund-raising campaign, this is what I would do.
Push Through with Current Fund-raising Plans Despite Problems
The director of the fund-raising campaign is not going to step-aside without trying to find his replacement. I can at least attempt to do the stuff he is doing, particularly at this point in the project.
Start learning a Portuguese, Spanish or Russian
For those of you that are unfamiliar with our fund-raising project, it is a documentary about fan culture at the 2014 World Cup. With the help of our director, I was sure this was going to happen in 2014. However, with him potentially leaving the project, I have thought about pushing the project back to 2018, when the World Cup will be in Russia. One of the problems we are running into with the documentary is our lack of knowledge of Portuguese. Perhaps if I spoke Portuguese I would feel more comfortable taking a crew down there without our director. Obviously if we push it back to 2018, then we have four more years to plan and to learn the language. Right now I’ve got Portuguese podcasts in my podcatcher, but I rarely get around to actually listening to them because I am so busy with school.
Get an Internship at Software Freedom Law Center, EFF, etc
The problem with most organizations is that they are not in the DC-Baltimore area. Formerly, the EFF took DC interns, but no longer. Wendy and I’s living situation is not really a subject of this blog, but suffice it to say that at the very least it would be financially beneficial for me to live in Baltimore (or DC, if required).
What other things would you suggest? Obviously the decision ultimately comes down to what is best for my future. However, I want to know what the OSP community thinks would be best for OSP. Knowing that will help me decide. Thank you for your comments.
