We've been working to make the behind the scenes tasks of Folding@home better communicated with FAH donors. In the last few months, there have been many recent changes, including making the beta team forum open and making our v7 client bug tracker open for all to read. Today, I wanted to talk about another experimental change, the formation of a Donor Advisory Board (DAB). We've in the past gotten lots of feedback from donors on our Forum site (http://foldingforum.org). Based on discussions with many donors, we have been working to expand these discussions to a broader group of donors and have formed a Donor Advisory Board. The DAB is currently comprised of: rjbelans (folding@evga), kendrak ([H]ardOCP), zodac (Overclock.net), ChasR (www.overclockers.com), and Michael McCord (MaximumPC), Bruce Borden (Forum Admin), and myself.
The goal of the DAB is to improve communication in both directions and so far I think it's been helpful in that regard. Pasted below is the first set of agenda items that we have been working on.
1) Improving communication: What can PG do to help improve communication?
2) Beta testing plan: How to improve transparency without lowering the quality of beta testing.
3) Points consistency: How to make PPD more consistent.
We've made changes in all three areas but none of these can be considered "done". My hope is that the DAB will help feedback in both directions, giving us broader perspectives of donors concerns and also to better communicate what we're doing to improve FAH and push towards greater scientific achievements.