This document describes what Independent User Groups are and what can or should be expected of them.
Definition
An Independent User Group is a community of individuals with a commonality (language, region, industry, etc.) who regularly discuss one or all OMIMO modules and share their knowledge and experience in that area.
The following are examples of commonality and scope:
- Japan’s independent P3.express user group
- Istanbul’s independent P5.express user group
- North America’s independent P5.express user group
- Spanish speaker’s independent OMIMO user group
- Healthcare’s independent OMIMO user group
These groups are run independently of OMIMO and only have to follow a minimum set of rules described here.
Rules
All Independent User Groups must abide by the following rules:
- The group’s name should reflect its scope (OMIMO or a single module) and commonality, and nothing more.
- It must be clear to the public audience that the user group is independent of OMIMO.
- There must be a clear leader or contact person for the group, so that OMIMO and potential members can get in touch with them.
- Leaders and members of the group should respect human freedom and avoid engaging in discriminatory speech or actions related to matters including but not limited to gender, age, race, nationality, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and beliefs.
- Politics, religion, and any topic not related to the project ecosystem must not be discussed in the user group.
- There must be at least one person in the leadership team certified in all modules of the scope of the group (when such certificates are available) to ensure the correctness of the content published by the leadership team.
- Content published by the leaders of the user group must comply with the OMIMO Style Guide.
- The group should have at least 12 active members.
Variations
Apart from the minimum rules described here, everything else is up to the group leaders to decide, such as
- Groups are usually open to the public, but it’s possible to have private, invite-only groups.
- Group membership can be free, or users can be asked to pay.
- Groups can be completely non-commercial, or they can be involved in commercial activities.
- The common place for discussions can be a LinkedIn or Facebook group, a group an instant messaging application such as Matrix, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp, a forum on a website, or anything else.
- The group may have a fixed leader/owner or a dynamic, elected leadership.
- Decisions in the group can be made by a single person, by a majority of votes, etc.
Directory
Groups that meet the requirements described here will be listed on OMIMO to help them find a wider audience.
Overlapping
Groups may overlap with each other and a single person may be a member of multiple groups.
If there’s an existing group for a certain scope and commonality, potential leaders are encouraged to join the existing one instead of starting a new one. However, if some people don’t agree with the policies and leadership of a group, they are allowed to start a new group with the same scope and commonality.
Complaints
Members who have a complaint about a group are encouraged to resolve it with the help of the group leaders, but if it doesn’t work, they can submit their complaint to OMIMO and we’ll help.