As a follow-up to the DEF application, I'd like to open a discussion about what should be our expected process to applying for grants. @tfmorris and @abbe98 would have liked to be put in the loop about it and did not appreciate discovering it after the fact.
I see essentially two ways to address this problem: either we work on grant applications in public, or we make sure that @tfmorris and @abbe98 are part of the closed group that writes grant applications (currently, the advisory committee and project manager).
Working on grant applications publicly does not seem too hard to me. It's not such a common thing to do, but there are definitely projects doing that. I guess there can be a certain fear of competition with other projects, or that parts of the drafting process could reflect negatively on the project, but I don't see those as big risks.
We could go for a rule of the sort of: "Intents to apply for grants should be shared on the forum at least two weeks before the application deadline, to give the broader community the opportunity to comment." @Martin as the person who is currently leading our grant applications, do you think this would be doable and helpful?
Another way to improve on this situation would be to make the advisory committee more accountable to the broader community, for instance with elections (as I proposed in this thread about contributor onboarding). That would give the community more control over those applications, although only indirectly.
As we discussed during the advisory committee meeting and as outlined in my roadmap here, I suggest that it would be more productive if we first clarify the Mission, Vision, and Value of OpenRefine before starting this conversation. This will help us establish a common understanding and enable us to navigate any differences of opinion that may arise during the grant writing process.
I think for within Mission, Vision, and Value... we'd want to start with terms that hold value for users when describing OpenRefine's benefits. This is also how consulting and marketing companies start this process... jotting down on a big whiteboard all the keywords that come to mind...then narrowing down to the essentials...and finally building statements using those value keywords (mission statement generators online are abundant).
I'll start:
OPEN SOURCE
DATA CLEANING
INTERACTIVE
INTUITIVE
EASY
FRIENDLY
GRAPHICAL
INFORMATION
WORKFLOW
STABLE
SCRIPTABLE
EXTENDABLE
I'd say that I already see 3 of those keywords that are great candidates to go into the VISION.
INTUITIVE
WORKFLOW
EXTENDABLE
Of which we have already applied for grants to enhance the greater value towards those 3 as well as future (VISION) user requested and team acknowledged enhancements: