yesterday we submitted the Che Fare application for unMonastery: an Italian contest on the lookout for culturally innovative ideas. On the 14th of January results are coming out: if we are shortlisted, we have 2 months to get as many votes as possible for our project (last year 42.000 votes!). The jury will then select the best one between the most voted ones.
The unMonastery project was presented as a joint venutre between the Matera 2019 Committee (lead partner) and Edgeryders. One of our strengths is in the collaborative dimension of our communication, which can also be backed-up and enhanced by old media, partners of Matera 2019.
So my question is: is there anybody willing to co-lead this unique opportunity to design a 2 month communication movement, going wild on creativity, strengthening the tools we already used (Twitterstorms) and maybe coming up with something new?
If so, I guess the 14th of January is not so far away
[pacheca] did a lovely work with the graphic, and I can tell you more about the content of the bid.
Hi @ilariadauria, I hope 2014 is looking up for you and your projects
Haven’t forgotten about this post, and with 14th of Jan coming up, I was wondering what the expectations are from the Edgeryders community. Is Matera2019 or someone in there leading this or should we?
Dearest, thank you for coming back on this. How I understood it, we (as Edgeryders) are taking the lead. However, the deal is to work with both communities: MT2019 and Edgeryders. I cannot deny that the MT2019 is not at its best, so there will be quite a lot of work to do on repimping the mods at loca level. I am ready to put some time on this, with the Social Media Team.
Hope 2014 is treating you well so far. Can you point me to where the budget you produced for the project is? Whenever there is money involved it is of utmost importance to make it clear to everyone what resources would be available and how they would be allocated before reaching out. Transparency enables people to harmonise expectations and gauge what effort they want to put where. If it’s not already done, please finalise this within the next few days. If you need help I am available from tomorrow.
This was supposed to be my next point, that if Edgeryders will be running the show and if commitment is required from community members it’d be more than necessary to know where the commitment is going and what we’d be doing with a successful result.
Hey Nadia, best wishes to you too for this 2014 and all the exiting things that are going to happen
[admin_AD] and I had a skype call on the budget (eventual prize of 100.000€) but that was it. Nothing concrete came out of it, that I know of. The memorandum of understanging between MT2019 and Edgeryders was taken care of by [Alberto]. I was in charge of wirintg the bid (the link is in the post above). Hope this answers your question!
@ilariadauria, I think it is important that you make a budget. The reason we need a budget is that if we win this it is very easy to get disappointed and argue about “sharing the cake”; also, if we get through to the voting phase, we will need to ask people to make a big effort in getting the project voted. It is a different thing if you can tell a person “if you help me with that – for example by deploying an effective social media strategy – and we win, I will hire you to do social media for the project”. You can only make that promise if you have run the numbers. The reason you have to run the budget is that this is your project, and it has to work for you. @arthurd’s role is to make sure it also works for Edgeryders LBG, but that’s a residual part paying for centrally produced community services (legal, finance, platform, social media engagement etc.). Most of the money goes towards activities that are exclusive to this project.
Also, people tend to become muche more litigious when there is a pie to share. Doing a budget before you win is going to be much less controversial.
Thank you for making this clear: there were a couple of mentions on the budget, but I was to concentrated on the content of the bid to go for it. I will make a proposal in the next days, time to wrap my head around this: energy has been quite low on my side, and it actually still is. I wouldn’t want to make a “classic” budget as I think this is not a classic project. I spoke to one of the evaluators of the Che Fare application, and he told me the project was definetely in line with the values of the application. The only thing that wasn’t clear to him was what we needed the money for So I guess this is the tiòe to make up for it.
Knowing that there will be a budget for the Social Media outreach, if while I make the budget interested people might want to come up with a fun strategy to keep momentum up for 2 whole months?
I think it is a design flaw in the CheFare call itself. They don’t ask for a budget, so you don’t feel compelled to do one when you “focus on the call”. But this is a mistake: a budget is a great tool for figuring out what needs done, who can do it, what resources it needs, what priorities are involved. No budget, no project. I have said so many times in the course of the application process.
What the evaluator told you, however, might solve the problem. Not having explained what we need the money for is likely to get the project disqualified – so we don’t even go to the next stage, and that’s the end of that.
here is the link to the open budget we are working on for the unMonastery. However, while we’re going on on the budget let’s keep in mind that tomorrow we are getting the official answer for the Che Fare application. Chances are we could be shortlisted. This means keeping the momentum up for 2 months. In any case, this is an excellent way to communicate the unMonastery: after the Twitterstorm, I guess this could also be an occasion to test other fun ways to get attention, engage more people and produce further content.
Is anyone ready to take the lead on this? If we are shortlisted we will get clear instructions of the do’s and dont’s, as well as precise indications on what type of material has to be produced. If there are other questions raised, don’t hesitate!
Ok ping me when you have the results of shortlisting
Well done on doing the first iteration of the budget. It’s a good starting point for a discussion. In order to finalise the budget the activities it is aimed to cover I suggest it be broken down into further detail into an estimate of the number of hours needed to perform them, and pricing them with a reasonable hourly rate. Then you can see what/ how much work the prize money covers and adapt expectations or process based on that. It’s a healthy exercise as it’s easy to paint oneself into a corner with over-optimistic budgets. I know I’ve done it more than once and it’s no fun :( I find this is something that is hard to do on one’s own, because it needs a discussion with the people one wishes to engage in doing the work. If you ping me and [Noemi] when you have a shortlisting result I think we can help facilitate the discussion with aim of getting a solid budget. Matera2019 and the first batch of unMonastery residents should be involved in this conversation too I think, no cc [Ben]?
Maybe a google hangout to flesh out a shared budget everyone is happy with?
