Inter-Organizational DSP Sync Up Meeting

Hey everyone! In an effort to better receive feedback from and to better inform the community, we’re tentatively aiming to have bi-weekly meetings to discuss Resonate’s potential collaboration with Justifay, a fellow music cooperative, as well as other organizations. There is potential to share technological resources/assets, accounting features, open source code, and more!

To avoid meeting overload, we’ll make the Product Check-Ins bi-weekly as well (especially since the topic of Justifay was often touched on at those meetings), and have them on alternating weeks. Anyone from the Resonate community is encouraged to attend!

Please vote in the poll below so we can find a time that works for everyone who would like to participate (for next week):
https://www.when2meet.com/?17427491-EvYEK

@brndnkng @richjensen @jeremy @ode12 @tshiunghan @LLK

Edit: Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll. Created the event above, bi-weekly on Mondays. Hopefully I got the timezone right, if not I’ll fix it.

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Happening in 30 minutes!

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Digital Zion Proposition

Looking forward to this session.

A couple topic areas I’m interested in (not prioritized):

  • Update regarding Justifay collaborative

  • Is there a Roadmap for Managing Artist/Listener/Artist member/Listener Member UX (web and device versions) during DSP build? (TBH, I’m feeling out of the loop on what the current UXs flows are. Is there a way for casual participants to come up to speed on the current status and impactful items in the dev backlog? If not, I’ll just try to do my own research.

  • Are there any currently existing plans for deprecating certain services during DSP build? Until last Monday, I had thought that this was a common sentiment among the dev contributors but apparently not? Maybe we could get a temperature reading? Or maybe work toward defining terms if people are talking past each other?

  • Operationally, I believe there will be a significant amount of essentially permanent administrative labor and specific workflows related to responsibly on-boarding and managing rights in the works distributed through Resonate. Have these workflows been identified? Is there a roadmap for securing the resources that will be required to set up and maintain this labor?

These comments were incorporated in the Product Manager Tasks Doc.

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I really wish I could make this!!!

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Is this still happening? @brndnkng @psi

I have never been involved in these calls! They were intended to be the Justifay sync up calls for the people working on them, but others brought up other groups to sync with, and I think that’s why it was renamed.

But I haven’t been involved in either project

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For context, @piper started these meetings to update non-maintainers on the progress of the Justifay project. @LLK and I asked for more updates since this was such an important project for the co-op and that wasn’t reflected anywhere in the forum.

Now that @piper’s stepped down from his role as tech liaison for the project and Karim’s been hired as project manager, I imagine it’ll be up to Karim to carry on these meetups. But in the last product check-in, @brndnkng said that Karim is putting together the project roadmap. I think we won’t hear from him until that’s ready.

But partnerships/pathways with other organizations (like Digital Zion) could be discussed. Someone will have to facilitate that discussion since no one is currently doing it.

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Notes from Dec 12 session Justifay/Resonate

Karim Product Mgr.

Agenda Template:

I sent you the invitation for the next weekly meeting.

Also, I propose the following structure to get the most out of our meetings.

  • I will distribute the summary notes of the Monday meeting every Wednesday.
  • You will receive the agenda of the topics to be discussed every Friday. If there is any specific topic you would like to share or discuss for Monday’s meeting, please feel free to write me at any time, and I will be happy to include it.
  • Please note that the idea is to have a flexible agenda as a baseline.

Regarding the following meeting, please find my suggested agenda:

  1. Presentation of Karim about the progress achieved and the next steps. - est. time: 10 minutes
  2. Discussion & feedback about the progress presented - est. time: 10 minutes
  3. Resonate: Points to be shared or discussed - est. time: 10 minutes
  4. Justifay: Points to be shared or discussed - est. time: 10 minutes
  5. AoB

SESSION NOTES:

Meeting notes

Date: December 12th, 2022

Attendees: Brandon (BK), Rich (RJ), Ivan (IM) & Karim (KR)

Topics:

KR presented the following:

  • Proposal of the following platform definitions from the product management perspective:

o Platform Vision

o Platform Mission

o Problems to solve (pending to be completed)

o List of user personas (pending to create profiling for each user persona listed)

o Proposed solution. Explanation of the components scope definition, an initial list of services to be provided through this component, and impacted user personas. This part is still a work in progress; the idea is to create a map that identifies the User personas, the processes, tasks, and requirements for each component; this part is under construction in the Miró board presented during the meeting.

o Assumptions & Constraints (pending to add more info)

o Open questions (pending to keep adding points)

During the meeting, KR explained that the information presented is the first approach and still required to invest more time to keep completing the definitions of the user personas profiling the journey in the platform and how the components will contribute to offering the desired experience.

KR mentioned that in some cases, the components would require a specific operational separation because Justifay and Resonate will have to identify, with the help of KR. In these areas, both organizations can work independently together.

KR described the approach to reach the definition of the MVP; in this process, it was explained the requirements definition process and how KR will bring to discuss the points where both organizations will require to decide according to their individual needs and where they will need to cooperate.

Additional Key topics:

Go-to-market strategy: The importance of this point was mentioned because both organizations present different levels of experience in the market, and the approach to execute the rollout and go-live of the platform may be different for each organization. This is a point that will require a definition of a rollout plan because, in the case of Resonate, they will need to decide how to handle the transition of their existing clients to the new platform. In the case of Justifay, the organization needs to formulate the strategy it will execute to address the market and audience they want to focus on. This point will be addressed once the definition of the MVP is almost completed. It was mentioned that each organization should discuss this as something important individually.

Operational separation: This concept was introduced to describe in which cases the platform components will be shared, separated, or just different. The operational separation will result from identifying the product requirements that present specific operational needs related to the nature, jurisdiction, or business objectives. E.g., accounting systems, subscription models, regulatory or legal obligations.

Regulatory complexity: this point was highlighted as the most challenging part of all these implementations because it was mentioned that this is where there is a lack of clarity. Some organizations sometimes need to define their formula to address this challenging requirement. This scenario was showcased by discussing the complexities around the properties of song rights, i.e., owner of the recording vs. owner of the composition. The conclusion of this point is that the solution to address this aspect will be one of the points considered in the definition of success within the implementation of the platform because this is a worldwide pain point in the industry.

Product trajectory: This point was exposed as one of the outcomes of the definitions because once the MVP is defined, then each component of the platform will have its trajectory that shall be aligned with the rest of the scopes to represent the value that the platform will provide in the following months after the go-live. This product trajectory is not a list of features or a roadmap; this is the mid-term vision required to define how the product will deliver value. The metrics, milestones, or criteria to measure the success of the implementation will be described along with the MVP implementation plan.

Definition of Success: this aspect is something that both organizations need to define according to their interests and aligned with their corresponding go-to-market strategy because depending on how the organizations would like to address their related markets or users, the definition of success will need to be proposed to identify aspects to improve and areas to reinforce.

Next steps:

  • KR will continue defining the profiling of the user personas, the journey, and the interaction with the components.

-KR needs to continue its research and discovery about the domain knowledge related to the music industry needs and problems to address.

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Is this happening today?

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I think folks took a ‘Day after the 25th’ holiday. There was a session with Justifay later that day though. I’ll look for link and notes.

The Justifay sessions took a break for New Years and will resume next week (about three hours after this Sync-up Session).

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Good huddle today with @brndnkng regarding state of the entity and communicating with DSP collaborators.

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Thanks to everyone who joined the Product Check-Ins meeting today, where Karim (our joint Resonate-Justifay Product Manager) and David from Justifay joined our call to discuss progress and our ongoing inter-organizational work. Here’s the recording and work updates from the call:

Here’s Notes (by @psi):

Click to read notes

meeting with karim

introduce himself give a little bit of context around this approach that he’s taking. a product manager, have experience in different industries in regulatory / financial industry / different saas companies. steps we’ve done so far, the sense we have on this approach and give a high level overview about where we stand where we want to move from a project and a product perspective and what the expected outcomes are.

my contribution is to help gather the objectives and needs that are from the part of creating a sense of a product. the final end of this work is to offer a platform where artists can get a solution where they can meet the needs of reaching their audicence inside this ethical model.

we have identified certain problems that the artists have. we want to address those problems through the platform that we have. If we find a motive or a reason to address the roadmap of our platform, this will help us really identify the vision of our project.

here’s the doc

different users - subscriber, artist, label user, admin. what are the modules or group of modules needed for addressing these tasks. Created user personas.

broke down the activities and tasks in an information architecture kind of view. the information architecture is a living document that we have to keep updated. this will help us define an MVP. then we’ll be able to define the timeline based on all of this. We can then look at the different components to build out.

We can then build out a backend first that will enable merging justifay and resonate based on the needs of both organizations.

Si: How are we defining as an MVP. “Compete with Spotify” is not an MVP.

Karim: Once we have something that in a minimum way can do something. Focus on giving the current userbase a platform that keeps on working. To have that baseline, we will need to understand what is the current state of the current system. Possibly the current system already has components implemented we want to keep. Just to manage expectations, this is not going to be a big bang. We’re going to do this in an iterative way.

Si: good to know that the current state is going to be taken into consideration

Karim: what we are searching for is a way to give order and insight into all these feature rerquests and handle them in an appropriate way. We know that users requests and features on the business side have specific interests. Even the team proposes improvements and changes. Trying to handle that in an orderly way and give it a sense of product. That kind of approach will give us a chance to improve the product. It’s alligned with the philophy of the organizations.

David: from the Justifay point of view our interest is to deliver an MVP as fast as possible. We want to drag out that much the development. We want to have something the sooner the better. So of course that doesn’t mean we don’t care about the design. We want to focus on the core component to get started. We don’t want to invest two or three years if we can do something in a year.

rich: that timeline theoretically is revealed in the process of the work that Karim is working on. We don’t know what that timeline is now that timeline can become apparent.

Si: pointing out that dev estimates are hard but also that since we’re in an open source community, self dogfooding is a real thing for contributors.

David: we are looking for money. We’d hope to pay the people who are already working on it full time or part time. If we then still have money left we will hire other developers. All of these people should be working on the same approach. I think that’s how we grow stronger.

piper: boundaries between what’s going to be mvp and what’s not. iterative approach. referencing Jeremy’s doc

rich: specific question for Karim, research you’ve done so far with Jeremy’s documents and any study you’ve done of old documents and the current Resonate offer.

Karim: have done very high level research based on what I’ve been through based on what’s available in the community. I still haven’t developed a strong opinion on the current state of the stack. I haven’t reached that point yet. Once we have a better idea MVP wise we can identify the gaps and build on top of that. want to identify something that isn’t over-engineered.

side chatter about over-engineering.

brandon: I’m wondering just with this information being shared and then going back to our community with the notes and everything, how do we see this process moving forward, and how are we gauging the questions to help us inform how we formulate this MVP.

Karim: next is really to define a roadmap. It’s not realistic that we’re going to do everything. Idea is to have progressive delivery with one minimum baseline to build on top of that. In some cases to leverage on stuff that already exists. The final result of all this exercise is to also have a roadmap for the subsequent stages that we want the platform to evolve. That roadmap will need to continue living that needs to keep updating. The community evolves and the industry involves, and that needs to be adapted to those needs as well. The usual practice is to review roadmaps quarterly on the needs that stakeholders raise.

rich: I would like to reflect also on the history of the relation of justifay and resonate. as you define your mvp can you define to the aspects that are different between justifay and resonate?

Karim: definitely that’s a very good point. The platform gives service to both organizations. We know that there are going to be items and elements and components that will be common to both organizations. Some aspects can be shared. There are other specific components that will require organizational separation. Depending on the business model of each organization the general paradigm will be the same. We’re going to work together independently.

Anything we need to expand on? How do you feel about this overview.

rich: like to see some interaction in the future between the team that is building and talking about building in the Resonate context. Figure out how to have more conversations like this.

Karim: my expectation is that the more near we are for the definition for an MVP the more we’ll need input from community members. As a product manager it’s impossible to build a product by a product manager only. We need to do research, get input from users, the other stakeholders, the team that’s involved in building. All that information is very valuable and is part of the product.

rich: we’ve switched from a client relationship to a collaboration process. I know we’ve got people with really high expertise in the resonate community who I really hope do find a way to get involved in this process.

Karim: yes absolutely, this is part of a community that is bigger than us.

brandon: we want to get this in front of more people. Bring people into the conversation.

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i liked Karim’s framing of an “iterative, progressive approach” rather than a “big bang implementation.” Karim also seemed a little taken aback at the notion that Resonate would be competing with Spotify any time soon. @psi’s question and Karim’s answer made me think of the questions and comments that were coming up in the Which Way Forward meeting regarding Resonate’s comps. is it Spotify? or Bandcamp? or both? maybe it’s shifted over time… if not for everyone, for some people.

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I think there’s potential in seeing the “roadmap” not just as one product, but as potentially a series of products that work in concert with each other. That way maybe we can stop thinking of Resonate in terms of existing products.

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A post was split to a new topic: Beam and User Stories Checklist

social session w/@honeyanhibiscus & @richjensen

good points raised about ‘serving the interests of professional independent artists’ as a matter of defining the minimum service to be provided… NOT as an exclusive qualifier.

Perhaps there has been some confusion around this.

‘Professional’ here means that the service should meet the business conditions that a typical independent musician or song-writer operates within for their current livelihood. It is not intended to define certain standards of ‘quality’ or ‘seriousness’ or specific ways of approaching the work. It is not intended to exclude any people or musical work they hold rights to.

The point is that the service should handle current international conventions around the typical intellectual property transactions relating to music, ie separate standard accounting protocols for sound recordings and the songs (compositions) they contain, with geographic specificity as needed and a reasonable standard of diligence that the user holds the creative rights in what they post.

More about these minimum service factors here: What does a Professional DSP (Digital Service Provider) Look Like?

We also discussed the value of ‘non-technical’ aspects of the coop, the social significance of the Dismantling White Culture at Resonate sessions, for example.

We shared some of our persynal journeys and interest in cooperative spaces and reflected on the various institutional legacies of coops, both as a legal construct that might be traced to Britain or other sources in the 19th Century and as a body of social conventions that have developed in societies across the planet since time immemorial. We also explored tensions between those social legacies and how they may be relevant to conversations we have experienced at Resonate.

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Hi there!

I’m David, from the Justifay team. Just in case anyone has questions regarding our involvement or part in this, I will be hanging in this thread and I will try to join the calls, if you consider it valuable.

So, feel free to ask me, contact me or mention me in case you want to ask or discuss something regarding Justifay.

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Welcome @DavidHernandez! Great to see you here!

Notes from Justifay/Resonate Session Jan 23

@honeyanhibiscus @brndnkng and I joined today’s call with Karim and Justifay collaborators. Karim shared an update of his process and invited Justifay and Resonate reps to set work sessions for each of their teams the week of Jan 30 - Feb 5.

The purpose of these sessions will be to analyze and critique the user personas and assumptions of his work to date from the specific perspective of each collaborating organization (Resonate for Resonate and Justifay for Justifay).

The goal will be a refinement of the components in his documentation, first confirming that they identify the needs of each organization and then ranking them in terms of their priority for inclusion across initial versions of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

The object will be to identify and sort:

  1. What MUST be included in the first iteration of the MVP (version 0)
  2. What SHOULD be included in the first iteration of the MVP v.0
  3. What COULD be included in the first iteration of the MVP v.0.

Karim intends to help guide each team to apply this ranking across a series of versions extending into the future while also defining what components may be common to both collaborating organizations and which represent components which may be unique to one organization or the other.

More details from Jan 18 Product Check-in.

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