Our team at Organizational Mycology are developing a mini-MBA cohort-based course for Open Source and Open Science Leadership skills. We’ve received a lot of feedback in our facilitation and consulting work that there aren’t places where people can learn about organizational structures, leadership models, standing up governance structures, running teams, and so much more.
We’re taking submissions from people interested in this kind of course. We had hoped to start a cohort in late March, but it will likely slip another month or two before we can start. If this is of interest to you or pepole in your circles, please share it with them so we can see how this idea is resonating with people and tune the curriculum to expressed needs.
MBA means “Business”, and Business means “Money”. In mushroom world, shrooms are essential part of the ecosystem. Part that thrives on abundance of resources and produces resources for other agents. In open source world we as well produce resources for ecosystem, but we also “parasites” on our families, parents and companies. Unlike shrooms, we can not reproduce ourselves through the same DNA - when one open source developer dies, he doesn’t pass the genes. We “parasites” because we need to consume resources, but we don’t produce them, and we are getting punished for not producing the resources. So, for your “Business” part, what are you going to teach students?
Thank you for your interest @abitrolly, there are many ways an open source organization could run itself like a business (or not). We use “mini-MBA” more like a metaphor of the pedagogical approach to discussions, projects, and practical experiences around operating models and case studies that are often used to rapidly develop and grow learners mental models and translational learning in an area. An MBA doesn’t tell you exactly how to run a business you create, it exposes you to many models of business operation and critical looks at case studies around them, then builds up basic skills, finance, marketing, strategy etc.
You can use “business” in the capitalist sense or organizational sense. Or you can dispense with existing models entirely.
Some open source projects run like an anarchist collective with limited formal currency transacting, others like large corporate behemoths with infrastructure, anual budgets and policies. Our goals aren’t to push one way or the other, but to expose learners to a wealth of research and content about ways projects can be run, have been run, and the challenges and opportunities in various approaches. Thanks for your comments.
The Organizational Mycology Team (Jonah, Beth and Dan)