This month, the Opencast Matterhorn project was awarded a $30,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to focus on improving organizational effectiveness. The grant is specifically set up to bring in outside expertise to assist the organization to focus on management, governance, or leadership.
While preparing the proposal, the working group (represented by UC Berkeley, ETH Zurich and University of Osnabrueck) identified development of strategic alliances and external partnerships as a key priority to addressing some of the long-term governance and sustainability challenges facing Opencast. These partnerships include other community and open source projects, academic networks and consortia, and commercial vendors.
The bulk of this grant will fund an "Opencast Strategic Alliances Summit", at which a facilitator, project leads, and subject matter experts will come together to define a strategy and roadmap for developing alliances and partnerships. Following the summit, the plans will be shared with the community, and the proposed governance model will be presented to the community for feedback and adoption.
