Thursday 6/11/2014
Present: Jeff, Alberto, Noemi, Katalin, Maria, Dorotea, Matthias, Nadia
We agreed that we would set up the wiki where we summarise community calls (you’re looking at it). We also agreed to break down the things we want to do into specific tasks and allocate them to the people who said they were interested in working on them. This way everyone know what is happening that they can get invovled in, and who to get in touch if you want to join in.
Looking forward: Things we want to explore or work on
So how do we retain the sense of being community after the face to face meetings? The following are some areas that we are going to be pursuing…
1. Improving/ producing new community content: Maria, Jeff, Katalin, Nadia,… you? [add edgeryders/makerfox url]
2. Cohousing, coliving and coworking settlements: Jeff, Maria,…you? [add edgeryders/makerfox url]
3. Setting up an Edgeryders Homebas: Matthias, Nadia, Noemi, Alberto…you? [add edgeryders/makerfox url]
4. Building Harmonious Hackathons Dan, Nadia…you? [add edgeryders/makerfox url]
5. Setting up a Project Clinic Katalin, Natalia [add edgeryders/makerfox url]
What we discussed:
Looking back on LOTE4: What happened? What did we learn/discover? Personal/professional development? Community development?
Maria: was good to meet everyone and learn from each other. Started out very confusing, lots of things happening. Good to get more background info on budget, economy and organisation. Thinks things could be easier to access on the platform, and looks like they are being addressed on platform post lote4. Community calls work really well for things that are uncomfortable and complicated. Met a lot of people that maybe can collaborate with in future
Jeff: I think its very effective in strengthening ties between members, important for virtual communities. Should have more of them. It took about a day to get head around what was going on and learn. Not enough time/opportunity to learn from others in the group…e.g. based on their skills etc. I learned a lot, don’t know what, but a lot.
Katalin: it was really nice to meet people with whom have been communicating on platform. Meeting creates trust. For understanding each other and creatint trust it is important. Once a year is not enough especially when there are so many people on the platform. I felt divided a little bit because we pledged to cook and manage the building and host guests when in parallel throughout the day so many sessions and discussions were happening. It would be nice to have more time to follow up on those discussions and people. So glad the documentation is there so I can follow up. I have in my head that I should write about experiences.
Noemi: for me there is this feeling that we are getting better from one year to another- Lote becomes easier to organize because we know each other. Community members naturally seem to take on responsibilities – small roles that mean so much and feel so easy because everyone finds a role they enjoy eg cooking. Last year it was more difficult making a clear argument for documentation. Why it was needed and why on the platform, why the need to continue conversations- was harder, but this year it happened - and very high quality. Meeting unmonks with whom I have been in touch for long and did not know - except ben and pavlik. This was new. I am trying to put together serious reflections on how communities grow-- how to steward global online community-- that is a personal obsession.
Dorotea: for me it was different from lote3 because this year I knew almost everyone from online or irl. It was a bit like a family meeting, community coming together. Somethings are more easy for community that gets more mature together, and some things are harder. We need to upskill alot on understanding each other and find synergies for how to help each others and do things in most efficient ways now we know how we all operate.
Alberto: I also feel like I missed the most interesting sessions but I always do, it’s a good sign. Im currently going though documentation and leaving comments here and there and continuing conversations. Especially the conversation about tribe A and Tribe B. It worked well from organisation and content point of view. Also we scored a major goal in Palazzo Lanfranchi- with the exception of lote1 we haven’t made much effort to get in touch with local crowd- but this time we had a public facing event for over 200 people in italian that came and stayed for over two hours, so Im happy.
Nadia: things that worked well were that Noemi and Natalia and especially Katalin did a spectacular job of the organization and making us all feel relaxed in the space – not conference, but community coming together. Tech conferences are boring and cold. The thing we did with tickets- couldn’t buy but had to participate before-- contributed to us all being in the right mindset- not just consume – but building something together.
The content this year was better, well facilitated, well prepared, well documented. I think we did a better job of time management-- last year you would easily miss sessions- you didntt know when they started or end. On the other hand that is good because sometimes end up in something you did not know you were interested in. Also the curators were helpful: It’s useful to have “outsiders” somehow synthesize and help you see things you don’t. Fabrizio’s point about fascism highlighted the importance of always having mirror on what we do. We also had a community meeting afterwards, looking forward on what we want to do, with unmonastery but also other projects. That was first time this thing happened and it felt like we transcended into a real community- from loose networks to people talking to each other – LOTE4 was a phase shift.I also think we did better job of including others, in Italian as well. Things could have been better: we started too late in year to organize- to get it up and running-- need to be organizing a year in advance-- build of work needs to be done before- did not know we had travel grants until a few weeks before- super stressful chaotic.
Nadia: what ccc does is they have close off point for content 3 months in advance- wired for deadlines or just after. another thing that did not work-- fundraising was mainly nadia – felt like a lot of pressure and doing it on my own. Got in resources from other projects-- need strong fundraising team get better and smarter or more efficient – buy selling stuff or filling in grant applications.
Noemi: Budget is relative because we don’t have funders properly funding the event per se. so we can do a budget before, then fundraise, then end up spending a specific amount.
Nadia: if someone does outreach in Basilicata does that fulfill obligations to the funder? We negotiate that on a case by case basis/ per project. Don’t know what we can say in public, don’t want to give money funders or clients idea we misuse funds or spend them on wrong things.
Katalin: So many people go to conferences to present ER/UnMon… perhaps that could be documented, could be relevant.
Nadia: Synthesizing what was learned from discussions/orga/impact. what was final result. Not just LOTE, all events. Challenge in funding: no comprehensive report on trackrecord. All that in a nice format could influence others to create reports as well. in this way we can learn from each other. and have something to present to “shareholders”
Jeff: maybe we could do a collaborative writing because it’s more fun when we do things together- Katalin: like a conversation or interview?
What things are already in motion? What is needed to do them in ways good for people involved and for community as whole? Next steps?
What is needed to build stronger community ties? Our hypotheses:
Community Content - Intellectual and practical knowledge development. Inspiration and pleasure. Being part of community everywhere. Community magazine? App?
Thousands of pages and documentation on the platform, hard to keep track.
Are we using content at its best potential?
Input:
- reflections on how community works. Really important to have reflective writing based not on talking but active listening
- post LOTE4: short way of packing it eg 3 min animation
- “Hiring” like historians or storytellers or inviting people to be storytellers not promoting their own activities, but actually reflecting on correlations between projects. E.g. reflections on e.g. why not most interesting content gets more comments...,
- Noemi: What would be suggestions to do this when resources aren’t there (yet)?
More opportunities to work together, some examples: (just general ideas, without reference to being part of unMonastery or sth. new)
Harmonious Hackathons. Focus on facilitating inter-project collaboration (better Edgeryders / Makerfox integration?). If so: how to resource this? It felt more like a work session- which wasnt bad. you were meeting new people, people worked on the platform? . it didn’t feel too special, but maybe that’s a good thing.?
MAtt: if there’s only geeks around and no one else, it was nice non-geeks were around, within meters. Not uninterrupted, took breaks, up to two hours. Nad: do differently. MAtt: inthe future the format has to change. task incomplete. still needs 2-3 days. was too optimistic about workload. But in computing you never know this. A flexible format to allow you to finish what you start. People contributed but don’t see the results; don’t feel rewarded. Nads: do you think a space, like homebase, continuous access, lowering costs and allowing for extensions without raising costs? Matt: yes, but what would the motivation be to work on to other peoples’ projects. I think a big driver was being there, meeting people. Geeks like this. Wouldn’t be same environment in “homebase”, why work on other projects for two weeks? Maybe a distributed task load, working on diff. projects “together” but not on altruistic projects.
Nadia: make longer? Matt: extending will not get same people to do same things
Homebase - people coming together to collaborate for weeks or months at a time, also hosting events like community gatherings, residencies, harmonious hackathons (“harmonathons?”), residencies, and LOTE events. Specifically: we could use the unMonastery building, or rent a part of the Calafou space (1 EUR/m² and month).
Cohousing, coliving and coworking settlements - get space and move in to be in physical proximity of each other. Maria: were you thinking about unMonastery settlements or something else? Nadia: We didnt make the distinction.
- Does everyone have to have the same unifying force: e.g. benedictine rule that harmonises relationships between people living together is underwritten by believe in God?
- Alberto: in order for community to be calm you need people to bhe working very hard. It is a very gruelling schedule and life though
- You need to have a motivation engine, so that even when you disagree there is a common strive to do the work.
- “strong powers of mental suppression, could be equated with "god". christians love needless suffering, they think it makes you more human”.
- Katalin: there is the difference between running a marathon, preparing for it, and just being a runner.
- Nadia’s experience of living on an icebreaker, a boat in Stockholm: there wasn’t an intentional community or unifying goal, only a bunch of very diverse people with their own jobs and lives. yet a strong sense of community developed over time just because there was care for the space.
- Jeff experienced similar thing in people living in disused icecream facory?
Collaboratively building businesses - ecosystem that creates solid revenue streams.
Securing More interesting paid client gigs - gives community members more paid opportunities (this approach is informing how the Edgeryders company works).
Producing lote4 community report
Content: What was learned about stewardship and what new insights/ideas for projects and new questions were generated? Work in Progress here.
Organisation: budget, allocation of resources, what and how decisions were made.
Impact: How to measure this?
Next year’s event: We love our annual community get togethers. They are an important opportunity where old and new friends think, work and celebrate together. Proposals presented have ranged from piggybacking existing events like CCC and making ourselves visible as “Edgeryders”, to making them more harmonious hackathon focused, to doing a walking format (we organise a long trek and people do lectures/host conversations while walking or during breaks). Should we keep the same format or try something new? How do we raise the funds to cover the expenses involved and build a strong core team?
Feedback from this year: we need to get organised a year before, we need more than one person doing fundraising, to avoid burning out in 3 months time.
Jeff and Maria: Content and Coliving. At a lot of conferences you just report it and it’s too cut and dry. if you can somehow compress it to a 3 minute animation and we could draw caricatures…entertaining and animated. (like courtroom drawing with captions)
Katalin: packaging of content into a report for the future could be rather storytelling than throwing information out. Everyone in the unMonastery
Alberto: what kind of people would you like to involve/draw in?
Katalin: The experience of the case studies is most people don’t consider what they do to be stewardship. make it in a way so its relevant to active people who do things, and good at doing things, without being great at talking about it.
Noemi: for one thing you want people to talk about whatever they want to talk about and make them feel listened to. For community managers, it’s a tradeoff between encouraging conversations or curating content. What do we focus on, who can do what? Also how to manage communication afterwards- so many voices
Katalin: what I had in mind…there were so many conversations around unMonastery, many things just don’t add up. We could have as a small project if we could have had an active digestion of 2 years of content and what contradictions are there. Should we do a community digest?
Dorotea Mar: i would like focusing on some soft skills, that give more community feel and improve community interactions, also upskilling in collaboration and supporting and caring about each other, also in co-working, co-living and harmonious part of the events
Jeff: I would like to learn more about fundraising
Maria: video interviewing each other and then transcribing. Then discussion in comments. Maybe we could do that in athens. Nico collected alot of thoughts, dont know if they’ve been transcribed.
Nadia set us summary, breaks down tasks and allocates to the people who voiced interest in them during the call.
Blogpost sprints: set up a date with a hackpad. Writing together is more fun. Especially with alcohol. Later on this evening after Jeff. 17:00 CET (18 Romania, Greece time)
Thursday 27/11/2014
Present: @Bezdomny,@cjd, @Dorotea,@msanti,@Nadia, @elf_Pavlik
We are setting up an Edgeryders Assembly during #31C3
We agreed we are setting up a food//drinks centred space during to host conversations about mapping what people are doing, which parts of the puzzle of well being they are contributing to, what is missing. Collaboration is happening here: https://edgeryders.eu/en/agora/wiki-setting-up-the-edgeryders-assembly-at-31c3