[drupal-docs] [research] Maximizing Drupal's Impact on Communities

[farsheed]

Hello, 
I'm looking for some feedback from the Drupal
community on some research I will soon be performing. 
It is an effort to maximize drupal's effectiveness as
a community building tool.  I have chosen to research
artist communities due to their desperation for
resources, lack of formal attention, existing
community framework, and their dependence on emerging
internet and media technologies. 
- Farsheed
------------------
Connecting the Dots: Research Efforts to Maximize
Drupal's Effectiveness on Communities

Purpose: 
  To start bridging the communication gap between
Drupal developers and communities by performing
research on a specific community (artists) and
establishing their needs.  Documenting how drupal
development can help meet the needs of artist
communities while keeping development broad enough
that the tools can be used with other communities as
well.  Hopefully spark similar research in other
community types.

Research Goals:
1) Establish and define the key challenges artists and
musicians face as workers in their respective
industries.
2) Engage the drupal/civicspace community members that
have built or have an interest in building
artist/music community building tools.  Identify and
analyze challenges they have met, determine if and how
they solved their problems and what (if any) problems
they anticipate in the future.

Analysis Goals:
   Effectively establish formal research stating what
different artist community needs are (in general) and
how Drupal might be able to solve those problems. 
Develop several key art and music business models that
could benefit from Drupal's current and possibly
future functionality.  Build a roadmap that shows what
Drupal development is necessary to create
functionality, keeping in mind that development should
be broad enough that it can be applied to other
community types and will benefit the Drupal community
as a whole.

Research Methodology:
One-on-one interviews, surveys, analysis and
discussion with Civicspace/Drupal members, observation
of existing community with analysis

Deliverables:
Generate report detailing research purpose, methods
and conclusions and possible future research.  Develop
audience analysis, personas and scenarios (business
models) to help connect Drupal with target
communities and cater development to maximize the
impact of Drupal development for all communities.


		
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