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2025-07-30 BizDev WG Meeting

2025-07-30 BizDev WG Meeting

Agenda for Open edX Biz Dev Meeting

  • Meeting Details:
    Open edX WG-BizDev
    Wednesday, 30. July · 17:00 to 18:00
    Timezone: Europe/Berlin

  • Meeting Link: https://meet.google.com/xxd-cntx-mjv

  • Bring your creativity and energy - let’s make it count!

Please review this agenda, prepare in advance, and contribute your ideas beforehand.

Objectives for Today:

  1. Post-conference alignment on community priorities

  2. Strategic focus areas for BizDev based on community polling

  3. Define/Build initiatives for AI adoption, personalization, and community engagement

(Poll results to be shared by @Angie Ruíz in the #wg-biz-dev)

Few Insights on basis of the Poll results

  1. AI-Driven Personalization Is a Top Strategic Priority

    • Poll Finding: "AI for personalization" ranked highest across use cases.

    • How can BizDev WG help prioritize this or pilots around personalized learning tools?

  2. Awareness Around Proposal Submission Process

    • How can we lower the barrier for submitting product or business development proposals?

  3. 3rd-Party AI Tools Are the Preferred Approach

    • Poll Finding: “Market-share extensions” beat “integrated” and “in-house” AI solutions.

    • What are the most viable 3rd-party AI tools to integrate into Open edX with low overhead and high value?

  4. Content Creation and Authoring Tools Need Stronger Support

    • Poll Finding: "Empowering Authors and Content Creation" was high in both actions and AI priority.

    • How can we better support educators and institutions in scaling content development?

Meeting Notes:

Date: 30.07.2025

Facilitator: @Jaimin Pavashiya

Participants: @Mahnoor Sarwat@Marco Morales@Stefania Trabucchi @Santiago Suarez @Angie Ruíz @Asma Ahmed @Juan Camilo Montoya @Jaimin Pavashiya

Poll Results & Strategic Themes from Conference

Insights presented by Jaimin (Abstract Technology GmbH):

  • AI Personalization was the top strategic priority based on post-conference polls.

  • Angie has shared the poll results, which will be formatted and circulated later.

Next Step:

  • AI discussions will dominate the direction of both the BizDev and AI working groups going forward.

https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/5085364228

Challenge: As of now: No central calendar/invites to join AI WG meetings.

@Santiago Suarez’s Proposal:

  • Start with a common use case across providers.

  • Avoid turning meetings into only discussion; focus on co-building or consensus documents.

  • Suggestion to collect problems AI could solve via asynchronous Slack threads.

Case Study & Pain Points (@Stefania Trabucchi)

  • Shared example of an AI plugin (chatbot for learners) that stalled due to:

    • Lack of data

    • No clear process for proposal advancement

    • Unclear investment value for clients

@Marco Morales's Response:

  • Acknowledged recurring issues:

    • Lack of visibility into product proposals.

    • Proposal process complexity.

    • Overlapping efforts across community.

  • Past proposals (e.g., mentoring app category, activity service) also failed to progress.

  • Need for clear platform boundaries and a shared infrastructure.

Proposal Submission Process Reform

Current Process:

  • Draft on Confluence → Create GitHub issue → Share via Slack → Assign coordinator → Get feedback → Approve or backlog.

Key Issues Identified:

  • Process too heavy for small changes.

  • Too many tools (Confluence, GitHub, Slack).

  • Lack of visibility and ownership.

Proposed Improvements:

  • Fast-track flow for small changes via GitHub only.

  • Feature ideas forum category for lightweight validation.

  • Stakeholder matrix in templates for faster routing.

  • Add TL;DR summary and 2–5 min video pitch in proposals.

  • Encourage submitters to self-coordinate their proposals.

In-house vs. Third-party AI Integration

  • Polls indicated preference for third-party AI tools over building in-house.

  • Next Steps for AI WG:

    • Identify viable third-party tools with high value and low integration overhead.

    • Discuss at next AI Extension meeting.

Supporting Content Creation & Authoring Tools

Poll Insight:

  • “Empowering Authors & Content Creation” ranked high in priorities.

Questions Raised:

  • How can we better support educators and scale content development?

  • What authoring tools are missing or underdeveloped?

Suggestions:

  • @Marco Morales:

    • Improve course checklist tools (v1 too basic).

    • Enable collaborative course editing plugins.

    • Improve tagging, content libraries, taxonomies.

  • @Santiago Suarez:

    • Use Slack thread to brainstorm AI use cases for authors.

Final Reflections & Business Development Priorities

@Marco Morales:

  • Conference clarified that different user types (MOOCs, CBE, K-12, etc.) share more overlapping needs than previously assumed.

  • BizDev WG should identify shared priorities across verticals to guide proposal efforts.

@Mahnoor Sarwat:

  • Providers aligned on the difficulty and cost of building on Open edX.

  • Urged that BizDev WG raise this challenge with Axim, especially with AI needs ahead.

  • Improvement in the developer experience is a priority itself.

Action Items

For AI Extensions Working Group:

  • Define and select common use case(s) to pilot.

  • Set recurring meetings with visibility (calendar links, invites).

  • Start Slack threads to collect AI-solvable problems.

  • Identify promising 3rd-party AI tools for integration.

For Product Proposal Process:

  • Use GitHub Fast Track for small features.

  • Share updated process materials (PDFs, Figma) publicly.

  • Encourage community members to submit feature ideas in forums.

  • Add stakeholder matrices and video summaries to templates.

General:

  • Prepare AI WG update for next BizDev on August 20.

  • Raise provider dev-cost concerns to Axim as joint proposal.

Transcript

Mentimeter Poll Results from the conference (BizDev Presentation)

NEXT MEETING:

Aug 20, 2025