Present: Dorotea, Michael, Manuel, Noemi, Nadia, Alberto and… surprise: in the call we were lucky to have Natali Arslan and @chara.oikonomidou back 
The core of the conversation was how to even start to think about a Living on the Edge (LOTE5) community event this year, if we are to build ever better, ever new, ever creative. We need open minds and open processes, that much we know. We also need leadership and commitment, and helping ourselves and others fall easier into roles without putting too much burden on anyone. This ties nicely with previous community calls about community ownership (ping @Adela_Militaru).
We said we will each write a paragraph with our thoughts from our conversation, so here it is, fill away by Editing this wiki. @mishek, @Dorotea, @Manuelpueyo please confirm you are seeing this wiki.
Your thoughts
Noemi’s thoughts:
Lote is valuable for me individually, so clearly I don’t question if it’s worth having or putting work into. However, I think it’s important that we don’t risk having the same people running the coordination, for reasons that have to do with 1.limited capacity of those same people and 2.concentration of sorts (resources, control etc) and unfair expectations. I am up for helping just as before, but under the leadership of a community member, someone that;s not from ER LbG.
//unstructured notes here
Nat : half Turkish half Brazilian, degree in Journalism, currently resides in Örebro, Sweden. Wants to gather more experience and have project when goes back to Turkey. Interested in citizen participation, smth related to online platform for democracy. Democracy OS. Pia Mancini. Online platform to increase citizen participation in political decisions. Example in Spain, Podemos. Similar thing in Greece, the Hub in Athens- not sure how that worked there, wasn’t working before the elections.
Chara: was engaged in Edgeryders in the beginning, was working at the HUB in Vienna back then… doing communications. Now working in London in a very corporate environment. Actively participating in Syriza- department in London. Doing General assemblies and trying to help.
Jeff: moved to Athens in 2011, but moved permanently a year ago to see what was going on in grassroots movements and social innovation projects (new term). A few months ago started to get involved in department of invitations, doing it with immigrants in Athens. Started meeting individuals with skills we thought would be interesting to share with the community/city. next one is Monday- Eritrean pop up restaurant in exarchia? Most of the things, the dinners, I am paying with my own money. Public transport is not ok, and people risk getting beaten up if they don’t look greek enough so I pay for their cab. Payment in kind for transport and food. CSR and bonus points. Not counting on funding but covering these small expenses so Jeff doesn’t have to cover it all out of personal finances. Had meeting with CEO (of what), they like unMonastery, but they are very slow. Also they want to see how newcomers play with the existing ecosystem- its very slow and formulaic.- events, podium, people clap and no one sees each other again.
Jeff: problem with social media- necessary but an impediment to get things done. Same thing with sending in applications etc - 90% time wasted.
https://edgeryders.eu/en/department-of-invitations
http://www.unitedinvitations.org/
Jeff: would like to build a kitchen hack space in Athens for people to come in book a time and use kitchen to do these events. People from every country, so could be very varied and interested
Chara: Have a friend who’s a layer working with Syriza on immigration policy. Maybe can help. Will talk to person.
Jeff: Meetings are better because it’s immediate feedback as to whether something is happening
Manuel: in the process of dropping previous job, will have sometime to explore new projects and collaborations which he can get involved in for skill development. interested in digital communication, creating and managing communities in order to do things in collaborative ways. Have been running a project in Brussels called open kitchen- private space. Hidden district- is an online wineshop delivered by eco-transport. EC project Eures. Spending some days in Madrid, next 4-5 months running open kitchen and hidden district. Want to go to events or organize things.
LOTE5
Noemi: Some of us are already thinking about what we want to do this year. We never ask, but maybe we should: Do you want to do it? Should we do it? Running the lote events, and the community calls? Is there enough for you to get involved in making it happen?
rough consensus in that nobody said no.
Nat: I would like to help, but cannot find a way in. Maybe we are shy or do not know which ways to offer help.
Dorofia: I understand your view Nat. we need someone who can help people to get involved
Noemi : For me it’s the tension between leading a process but then becoming vulnerable in that position
Ideas:
-a good idea to have small ones too maybe in Berlin in the summer ? Dorotea offers to help
-Bezdomny: what about a greek island? would be great to have it somewhere mild
-couple with with a larger event, soo many things happening this summer anyway.
-Michael: an event that has real local context, meaning and possiblity to involve/engage the interests of local people, something neighborhood based, probably an unmonastery type model again, that still seems to be the ‘thing’ that inspires many of us to want to continue evolving, inventing, re-inventing …athens? other cities with a bit of unmon potential, anyone?
Dorofia: callfor taking leadership on things in collaborative ways could work ?
Noemi Salantiu: Ok. so not asking who wants to participate. But at this stage ask who wants to take a leadership role?
nat arslan: do we have a list of major responsibilities for previous Lote’s
Noemi Salantiu: yes. we have all documented
Chara Oikonomidou: can you share that doc?
nat arslan: maybe matching a new member with an old member as a team.
Dorofia yes setting a theme ?
nat arslan: so both can take care of a specific task
Chara Oikonomidou: I’d be up for pairing with some existing members to build something new for LOTE
Dorofia: I think hared ownership questions could be relevant; wants to help building teams by talking to people and helping them defines roles. Then matching them with others
Manuel: You have a platform that has been running for some years now. You need to find new people that bring new energy and motivation, using the channels we’ve already built to keep doing nice projects in the future. I identitfy with this because on a smaller scale it’s the same thing that’s happening with Open Kitchen. The platform is there. Want to find new people who lead the project.
Manuel likes the idea of a blank slate and thinking about formats with which to do this. Like open processes, like the Skype call.
[everyone trying to synthesize something Nadia said]
Manuel: You’re looking for people that want to lead project and use platform of edgerydrs to make these projects happen.
Alberto Cottica: Also: there is a risk that people refrain from leading, maybe thinking it’s not really allowed.
nat arslan: the process is consist of taking notes and analysing them and putting them into a compact way so that people that could not participate can catch up easily
Doro: People complain and demand a lot instead of taking responsibility and improving things. It slows things down a lot and creates a lot of conflict in stead of improving things it is just damaging things.
Doro: It is good if more people take leadership and create support network instead of competitive…how to bring more collaboration and avoid unproductive competition and exclusion.
Nat: Other than Edgeryders and Lote, is having new leaders that would take responsibility is the main point.
Michael: some new ideas and concepts about group gatherings, organizational formats, collaborative forms and leadership were beginning to emerge in the conversation. a few of us were beginning to voice and develop these…the silence was evident as signs of actual imbibing, serious digestion in progress… indeed, it was just starting to get interesting for me, but alas due to our limited cyberspace meeting technology, the time to really sit and think better together was not with us, thought forms ended up drifting off into the cyberstratosphere …though i am hoping a couple of these ideas/concepts to still be retrieved, some few words (maybe starting with nadia and dorothea) captured here for further development and collaboration… a paragraph or two? …maybe even in exquisite corpse style… an evolving artifact in testimony to minds actually engaged in some form of collective intelligence? …an artifact as in a piece of parchment we hand around to one another in our evolving search for that compelling statement, compelling vision/inspiration… compelling questions for that future lote to really want to be birthed…