---
title: Heartbeat
---

## Heartbeat

### Motivation

This pattern can help project participants stay in touch, and stay motivated.

### Context

A number of people have a shared interest, and have connected with each
other about it. However, they are not going to spend 24 hours a day, 7
days a week working together, either because they are busy with other
things, or because working separately on some tasks is vastly more
efficient.

### Forces

>  **Differentiation**: the time we spend together isn’t all equally meaningful.
>  **Entropy**: something needs to hold the project together, or it will fall apart.

### Problem

How will the effort be sustained and coordinated sufficiently? How do we
know this an active collaboration, and not just a bunch of people
milling about? Is there a *there, there?*

### Solution

People seem to naturally gravitate to something with a pulse. *Once a
day* (stand-ups), *once a week* (meetings), or *once a year*
(conferences, festivals) are common variants. When the project is
populated by more than just a few people, it’s likely that there will be
several <span><span>Heartbeats</span></span>, building a sophisticated
polyrhythm. A well-running project will feel “like an improvisational
jazz ensemble” <span class="citation">\[1\]</span>. Much as the band
director may gesture to specific players to invite them to solo or sync
up, a project facilitator may craft individual emails to ask someone to
lead an activity or invite them to re-engage. Two common rhythm
components are weekly synchronous meetings with an open agenda, combined
with *ad hoc* meetings for focused work on <span><span>A specific
project</span></span>. The precise details will depend on the degree of
integration required by the group.

### Rationale

The project’s heartbeat is what sustains it. Just as *people matter more
than code* <span class="citation">\[2\]</span>, so does the life of the
working group matter more than mechanics of the work structure. Indeed,
there is an quick way to do a reality check and find the project’s
strongest pulse: the activities that sustain a healthy project should
sustain us, too (cf. <span><span>Carrying capacity</span></span>).

### Resolution

Noticing when a new <span><span>Heartbeat</span></span> is beginning to
emerge is a way to be aware of the shifting priorities in the group, and
contributes to further **differentiation**. This may ultimately be a
good source of new patterns. On the other hand, if a specific activity
is no longer sustaining the project, stop doing it, much as you would
move an out-of-date pattern to the <span><span>Scrapbook</span></span>
in order to make room for other concerns. The power of the
<span><span>Heartbeat</span></span> is that the project can be as
focused and intensive as it needs to be, working against **entropy** in
the ways that start to be required as time goes by.

### Example 1

The yearly in-person gathering, Wikimania, is the most visible example
of a <span><span>Heartbeat</span></span> for the Wikimedia
movement.[^fn1]
may run additional in-person get-togethers.[^fn2]
Also of note is the twice-yearly call for proposals for
individual engagement grants.[^fn3]
other shorter cycles. Each day a highly-vetted Featured Article appears
on the front page of Wikipedia, and is circulated to a special-purpose
mailing list.[^fn4]^,[^fn5]^,[^fn6] articles for deletion lasts at least seven days.[^fn7]

*University Farm: al-Biruni University, Kapisa province, Afghanistan.*

### Example 2

Although it may sound quaint, some variant of the University Farm could
help to physically sustain peeragogues, while putting the project’s
<span><span>Heartbeat</span></span> in tune with that of the seasons.
In the current distributed mode, we tend our window
boxes and allotment gardens. New developments should unfold in a
*logical order growing out of the needs of the community* <span
class="citation">\[3\]</span>.

### What’s Next in the Peeragogy Project

> Actual meeting times to be added

Identifying and fostering new <span><span>Heartbeats</span></span> and
new working groups can help make the community more robust. This is the
time dimension of spin-off projects described in <span><span>Reduce,
reuse, recycle</span></span>.

### References

1. David M. Dikel, David Kane, and James R. Wilson. 2001. *Software architecture: Organizational principles and patterns*. Pearson Education.

2. Linus Torvalds and Steven Vaughan-Nichols. 2011. Linus Torvalds’s Lessons on Software Development Management. *Input Output*. Retrieved from <http://web.archive.org/web/20131021211847/http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Linus-Torvalds-s-Lessons-on-Software-Development-Management/ba-p/440>

3. Booker T Washington. 1901. *Up from slavery*. Doubleday & Company, Inc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[^fn1]: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania>

[^fn2]: <http://wikiconferenceusa.org/>

[^fn3]: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG>

[^fn4]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article>

[^fn5]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates>

[^fn6]: <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l>

[^fn7]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion>