Background
Based on a conversation we had on Feb 6, as well as different conversations with @Zmorda and @BlackForestBoi , @hugi @MariaEuler and I are exploring the following: How to shape our the work next year as setting foundations of a structured process for peer to peer incubation of mission-driven entrepreneurship. We depart from two things: A proposal for a collective intelligence incubator originally intended as an application for H2020 funding. As well our experience in setting up and running a first iteration of the OCI Lab.
The key challenges to figure out for this first iteration are:
- Fundraising outside institutions: Both the original proposal for the collective intelligence incubator and the OCI Lab have been reliant on institutions as a source of funding. Oliver is committed to do fundraising in the tech sector and I am happy to support/co-drive these efforts. .
- Incentives design: In the original proposal as well as in OCI Lab, there is a strong financial incentive for participants. Here, we would need to find a different engagement engine and drivers for people to participate during the period where we do not have money to offer any of the stakeholders.
- Curriculum building- We need to develop an effective l incubation methodology and curriculum that sits well with what Edgeryders does well. OCI Lab is generating some interesting results, perhaps we can integrate some of it into a first run of the incubator.
We will develop, and test, the above through a series of in person workshops. Each workshop will be preceded and followed up by online discussions and video chats to prepare. The online discussion will take place on a dedicated area of the edgeryders platform with its own funnel in to simplify communication and engagement + onboarding.
The physical meetings and the online video discussion leading up to them are open to all but access-restriced. In the sense that people who want to participate will be required to demonstrate that they have read up on the online documentation from previous phases of the process.
March 9-11, Stockholm: Strategy and planning
Maria, Hugi, Zmorda and I will participate to look at how we can build synergies in the next 9 months between ongoing Edgeryders projects and these efforts.
Desired Outcomes of the meeting
Overview of the current ER Ecosystem
- What’s happening within ER – overview & key elements of current projects
- What are the strands and current focus areas
- How are they relating to each other?
What: Defining the scope of our own work
- Presenting to each other, clarifying questions, seeing complementarities and inter-relations of the different NEW Ideas and Projects and EXISTING ones
- Look also at Areas of ER and common ground
How (vision): Deepening ideas for each project/ line of work
- Starting with a first Brainstorm/Mapping of possible realisation pathways.
- Sustainable Resourcing and Viability:
- Offers and requests for ER community and/or Organisation
- If appropriate use a SBMC (Social Business Model Canvas) incl.
- Networks
- Beneficiaries
- Clients,….
How we work together
- How we support the individual and project needs?
- Rhythm and Timeline
- Communication Flows
- Time engagement from everyone
- Financial requirements and plan for resourcing
- Task list per person
- Open questions
Key points from meeting on February 6:
1. We need to be explicit about our individual objectives and drivers for our work. In order to better align the work we do together. A rough description to dig into in the March meeting.
- Hugi: Develop the ecosystem around blivande. He wants to focus on build work opportunities in Stockholm/Sweden. Internetdagarna is a good outlet for reaching a broad range of possible clients, funders and collaborators. Would like us to work as a team on internetdagarna interventions in such a way as to generate and follow up on business leads.
- Maria: Design and drive a process with a tangible output. Outside of ER she is currently working on projects to get corporates to engage people in design practice with a final exhibition where they will present their work and multiple science communication projects.
- Nadia: See a situation where 1) people come in at one end and come out at the other having defined a concept, found their people and completed an MVP 2) Translate lessons learned into demand for the scifi economics lab work amongst political/institutional and business leaders. As much for NGI as for POPREBEL.
2. The work with the Webkit needs a revenue generation strategy and dedicated team to pursue it. Perhaps also graphryder/edgesense. E.g if we are thinking thinking a SAAS venture (which includes training as revenue generator) then that is a totally different route than say pursuing a strategy where it is the “cheap and fast” generator of business leads for larger consulting or research gigs. And we need a process to help us figure this out… I feel like we are out of our depth. So where to go from here?
3. Lessons learned from last year
- Festival: Having many very different things happening at the same time in different places spreads attention. Moving forward it make sense to cluster events around themes, or around geography, and work more sequentially. Also, in the case of MENA based events, we found that events that are centred on helping drive a specific project forward, e.g developing the AI engine for a sea turtle rescue NGI, generated better results. There is a need for designing a framing, structure, process, language and materials (curriculum of the collective intelligence incubator) that makes participation meaningful and easier.
- Community engagement: In a parallel development Maria is testing an approach where calls are centred around helping an individual community member to develop their idea or project. E.G Erik Lonroths mission to get open source into the swedish teaching curriculum. People show up to help him figure stuff out.
- Content management: There is quite some copy rot in the NGI Forward and POPREBEL category intro texts, category structure etc. on the edgeryders.eu platform. Especially POPREBEL, where parts of the intro texts for the language sub-fora are not translated even, and others are still using automatic translation. Would be good to get this fixed in the near term, and if you guys can come up with a process to keep it maintained.
Agenda for 3-day Design Sprint:
DAY 1 mapping and ideation:
- map the current situation of NGI network/projects/OCI/Collective Intelligence Incubator/… their existing and potential relationships.
DAY 2 Ideation and connection:
- Sketching out ideas for the development of the platform in the next year
- Call with Oliver & Collaborators on Collective Intelligence Incubator (blackforestboi)
- Call with Chris & Collabors on Collective Intelligence Climate projects and how to help them (MrChrisadama)
DAY 3 Articulation and communication:
- Articulating the goals and outline for the net year in written form
- Deciding what to communicate to whom
- Crafting communication messages of the plan
