In computer science, separation of concerns (SoC) is a design principle for separating a computer program into distinct sections, such that each section addresses a separate concern. - Wikipedia
I would like to touch this topic in attempt to start clarifying better which concerns we want to address as unMonastery, and which ones we could consider as out of scope. For concerns which we may define as out of scope, I hope we can always suggest various peer initiatives which focus on addressing them. Here creating high quality directory of peers, with clear explanation of relationship including similarities and differences comes very useful!
Now from my very personal perspective, what I would see as specific to unMonastery:
aim: Enable change-makers, people who work for common benefits of the society, to do their work!
Great! But noting very specific to unMonastery, I guess all of us could list at least 50 different initiatives including very Edgeryders with such aim. Let’s try to narrow it futher:
means: Creating coliving / coworking spaces which provide all the basic infrastructure for change-makers to do their work.
This one I see much more specific. We use simple reasoning that to work on changing the world everyone needs some basic living and working conditions. Here we can also reference Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Still I could find quite some residency based initiatives, maybe we can go even more specific:
trick: Instead of getting stuck on money, securing all the needed real world assets by re-purposing currently unused ones, finding in-kind donations, using assets in collaborative way (sharing), DIY
During lote bar camp session in Strasbourg, we started with conversation about grants and then started imagining other ways of gaining support. In my opinion we manage ok-ish with that in Matera prototype, I can say rather good for the first try! We received, semi-renovated and furnished building plus all the utilities (water, gas, electricity, internet) in-kind, maybe still in indirect way since not actual providers donate them 
Travel, food, personal hygiene items, drugs, entertainment etc. we still manage through monetary grant and purchases. And of course we experience turbulence worrying about future of the project and falling back in thinking ‘where to get monetary grants’… We already received small donations of food and some drugs but IMO so far we don’t do that well on tracking it and asking for more support in-kind…
One more aspect which I see may give more specific take on unmonastery:
values: horizontal, open, participatory, transparent, green, …?
In situation where more people working on projects would like to use infrastructure provided by unMonastery than its capacity. We can ‘filter’ by looking at values which interested people practice in their work. Do they stay transparent about what, how and why they work on? Can everyone can join collaboration or only people from some closed circle can play along etc.
As one of the triggers for thinking about concerns and scopes of unMonastery, I see my attempt to understand work @Lois does with Food Supply Unchained. First of all I acknowledge it as very creative and important work, as many other important projects people do in Matera and around the world! At the same time I have some doubts how well it fits what unMonastery can offer. Of course I can miss noticing many things here, but so far I see intersection mostly around small stipend allocated to Lois. I remember her couple of times visiting us in Matera, but I didn’t get impression that the physical infrastructure we make available over there comes of any use for her and her work. On other hand while I really don’t know how I, or some other not directly involved person, can see here contributions to Food Supply Unchained, I also can’t recall (which doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen!) particular contributions to other activities in unMonastery. I remember that @Cristiano Siri received some help from Lois’ brother (please correct me if I confuse something) with visiting some farm. On the other hand I must say I find it bit surprising that she didn’t take initiative in helping with securing food supplies for unMonastery.
Just to clarify, I simply let myself thinking aloud here and most likely I miss many aspects of this collaboration. Still if connection between Lois <-> unMonastery (which I see very distinct from Food Supply Unchained <-> Edgeryders) boils down to small share of financial grant, I would propose to set such cases in a future as out of scope. Which would happen automatically anyways when we reach state of operating with close to none or at some point no finances…
As I said, most likely I miss a lot of the context here, but while I do, people who don’t stay seriously involved must miss even more? Checking Lois online activity in various online collaboration spaces we use:
- Edgeryders platform 0 activity: "This person doesn't have any activity on the site yet."
- unMonastery mailing list - 1 email
- Trello - "No actions in the last 30 days"
- GDrive - 2 activities (or at least i couldn't find others...)
I guess that @matthias and @ilariadauria have more insights into developments around Food Supply Unchained. I wonder in situation when unMonastery wouldn’t get into field of offering financial support, what other intersections exist?
And once again, I don’t criticize in any way what Lois works on and how she does it. I just find it unclear how unMonastery fits into this picture, assuming that we don’t want to get into role of intermediary in getting financial grants where initiatives like Edgeryders and other peers can offer more support here…
Actually formally I understand that finances flow: Citizens of Matera -> Municipality of Matera -> Committee MT2019 -> Edgeryders and then it goes into stipends (~1/2 of which which residents put back together into food budget) and various expenses related to unMonastery:Matera operations. Personally I would prefer if forwarding financial grands would stay as concern of Edgeryders but out of scope in unMonastery 