Integrate collaborations and project life cycle pages

[GBKS]

We have two very helpful markdown pages in the meta repo around collaboration types and the project life cycle. The concepts in there are pretty helpful for myself, Mo, and others who regularly facilitate projects. I also think these frameworks are helpful for contributors so they can more easily navigate project dynamics.

I don't think the pages are easily enough accessibly in the meta repo. So how about revise them and move them to the website? We already link to them in the projects page.

This is also related to the education initiative for creating a curriculum for designers to learn about open design/source. The content on these two pages is a great match for that.

[yashrajd]

Updating this after I had a great chat about this with Christoph last week... specially the collaboration types which is top notch, and should be ported to the main website in a suitable form. Turned out this issue already exists! Let's get this one going!

[yashrajd]

Got a google doc going with the content from the abovemetioned GitHub page + some edits/updates... what would folks like to see on the page?

[yashrajd]

Once we get some consensus that the content is indeed like what we want to see for, I'll open a PR for a collarboration page on the website! @ConorOkus @GBKS what do you think?

[GBKS]

Let's get this done.

Collaboration types
Generally, the content is fine and does not need much work.

The most important thing to me is the framing. The community is not a consultancy and you can't just "book designers to fix your project" or anything like that. There is a community of people that you can reach out to for design support. There are a few community coordinators that can facilitate, but those coordinators are by no means required to be involved. And this page is a loose framework for projects to help them articulate their design needs and what might be good ways to engage with the community (and the resources it provides). The better a project can communicate its situation and needs, and understand what is needed to address them, the more likely it is a collaboration will happen and succeed.

That's how I'd frame it, and if the framing is right, it will be much easier to write the rest of the content.

As for the nav, I'd make it a sub-page of projects.

Project life cycle
I like the part on this page about the project life cycle, how things start small. Maybe this can be combined with the collaboration types?

The other part of this page about a project dashboard with up-to-date issues has not happened in practice, and is hard to pull off. Many projects collaborate more loosely without structured project boards. The collaboration issues in the meta repo are somewhat useful, but also typically not kept up-to-date over time. I spend a ton of time in the community and paying attention to projects, but it's just not possibly to keep up if the projects themselves don't pro-actively keep things organized and push information out. So maybe we ditch the idea of this central dashboard? Instead, if we're talking about helping designers find stuff to do, we should invite them to poke around (also see the Open Design Guide), and encourage projects to pro-actively, regularly share.

[yashrajd]

This is great @GBKS, captures a lot of context the google doc or issue description do not, and your point about the framing is well-taken. I'll edit stuff to avoid giving that impression just in case.

But also, isn't there stuff we'd like to see adopted etc. that we do want to be consulting with projects for? BIP-352, payjoin, silent payments come to mind.

And this page is a loose framework for projects to help them articulate their design needs and what might be good ways to engage with the community

IMO a Collaborate (or Collaborations) page can go beyond this, and speak more directly (marketing so to speak) about engaging with BDC. Sort of THE one page you can share with projects which we might want to engage with us.

A section highlighting marquee engagements in the past as proof-of-work but also for building credibility might be a good idea. We can also link to Projects page for a more exhaustive list.

We can do the same for certain features BIP-352, payjoin, silent payments etc. Just link to existing pages in the guide...this is popular stuff we want to work with the community to improve adoption.

IMO a couple sections like this might prime the reader to go through the 6 ways to engage that we want them.
The sections I mention would be concise and visual like so:

.

Regarding the project lifecycle stuff: IMO that stuff is quite important but not very pertinent for the website. I'm happy to skip that entirely.

Instead, if we're talking about helping designers find stuff to do, we should invite them to poke around (also see the Open Design Guide), and encourage projects to pro-actively, regularly share.

We have already have lots of contributor-oriented content on the website that does what's described above.

As for the nav, I'd make it a sub-page of projects

If one of the priorities is encouraging projects to engage with BDC and improve adoption, then IMO a more prominent/discoverable location is warranted. The Projects gets little traffic (see below). The Projects page could still have a link to Collaborate page right in the intro para. I guess it could still be nav you mention, but prominent placed. Perhaps it could replace the Projects in the top bar * (removed sentence on Project page linking)