Community call Wednesday 11 am, all welcome!

[noemi]

You know you're in hands of a community when you see people inspired and willing to take a project so much further than you thought yourself.

Reaching new heights: so Daniel thought some people can’t contribute their time, but they would gladly give small amounts of money instead. He put up a post with suggestions. Days later we, collectively, found a way for where those contributions would go. They would support other community members who want to join, but can’t really afford to.

Maybe we can find solutions like these to harvesting LOTE5 into valuable insights for ourselves and those not attending? Read what was discussed last week on harvesting… Other points to discuss in this community call are:

• surveying who else wants to contribute but hasn't found a way (weekly tasks)
• insights from last week's FuckUp Nights where LOTE was announced - any lessons to improve our comms?
• onsite logistics? do we need design and printed materials or can we diminish our carbon trail to a minimum?
• add yours in a comment below, ahead of the call?

Everyone is welcome to join the LOTE5 conversation, we make our own agenda based on what people want to bring by. Tune in at 11 am via this google hangout!

Date: 2016-01-27 10:00:00 - 2016-01-27 10:00:00, Europe/Brussels Time.

[irene_1]

Wrap up of the call –> we’re getting there

We had a pretty silent community call, I had problems with my loudspeakers, but managed to come up with a plan for  the week.

Let’s start with the good news:

Communication outcomes: we’re having the desired activity (bw 150/250 visitors per day, 55% new visitors). CountOnMe is still working well (15 subscribed) and we’re up to the level of visits we targeted.

A tip in order to involve more newcomers and beyond: make sure you ping them. You can find a list of newcomers by looking into this admin feature and select for “Member for”

What’s next? Push the quality of content forward. We need more content around each session. @Alberto will redo the writeup for Ezio Manzini’s session. @Noemi will work on the ECOCs session. @ireinga is working on the writeup of the community currencies.  We still need a write up for this session:

Talking in tongues: what disruptive financing models mean for development and policy making, talk by Millie Begovic, UN innovation specialist.

@Natalia_Skoczylas @KiraVde ?

Travel grants: all updates here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gu8N_UZt0dmcHBAb2PljdIMz2SzEgS9mkC-O97Pl7MU/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0

Edgeryders could match the amounts raised to support people’s travels. In this way we could already offer 5x200€ travel grants. The target is to make it double but in a short term. We cannot release travel grants too close to the date. Also, AH could make use of the FuckUpreneurship support ticket to the cause, it adds up to around 150€.

How to engage locals?

We’re having an apéro on Thursday 11 (proposed date @KiraVde @Nadia  ?) at the EdgeSpace in order to catch up with locals, create momentum and understand how we can go the last mile with the Brussels participants. Alberto fears that some people might perceive LOTE as a closed event. The problem is the participant-only policy of the event: registering doesn’t mean filling in a form but getting through a much more complicated streamline of information. Alberto suggests that the participant rule can be more relaxed as we go towards the event, at that point the most active people already engaged and we might as well allow more people in.

A solution could be to write to several people/organizations that already heard/are interested in LOTE this:

hey, we’re very keen on meeting more people in Brussels. Let us know if you’re coming, and here’s what’s on the menu. And by the way, come meet us at the Apero.

I mean more elaborate but this is the message.

Logistics onsite: how do we arrange rooms so that can host the right amount of people? The same for lunch/dinner. Noemi: how many go to which session is not so big a deal, you have assigned rooms and people go where they fit. They can always move chairs around if there’s need. Meals are at fixed times, so what we’ll need to do is approximate the number of participants every day the best we can. Irene: Rooms are on different levels, it might be messy. For foods ok but we cannot afford a 50% error on the expected number. We still need to go for groceries before.

Documentation task: @Nadia is involving video makers for the Storytelling workshop. We could try to include them in the overall documentation too. On documentation  @Kaja is on it. Irene has a Skype call with Noemi in order to create a specific dedicated task to who is documenting and how.

Brussels visits: @Dorotea is here this weekend and can animate her Bxl folks. Would also like to visit the venue on Monday.

TASKS

1. Help draw attention to SESSIONS and so some writeup: Noemi ECOCs, Alberto Ezio’s session + OpenCare?, Irene complementary currencies sessions. @Noemi @Alberto @ireinga

2. Call for travel grants beneficiaries: announce 5 grants to the community @Noemi

3. Organize a LOTE5 Apéro vol.II and send out invitations + wrap up to Brussels folks @KiraVde @ireinga

4. Launch the documentation tasks @Noemi @Nadia @KiraVde @ireinga

GOGOGO

[alberto]

Couple of comments on my side

The Manzini workshop writeup is done – courtesy of @Ezio_Manzini himself and a little help from me. I also added @Yara_Al_Adib to the speakers page.

Are you sure we should do the apéro at the Edgespace? Would a public place work better? Or would it be too dispersive?

There is a final step that needs to happen for people to be able in order to use the common fund. @Pehr_Mårtens is trying to claim support, he asks basically “is it OK?”, and if no one answers he will take it as a “no”. Also, the spreadsheet does not give notifications, so maybe the donors have not noticed. @Kaja, can you broker this, making sure Pehr understands what to do and gets in touch with the relevant donors? Once that is done, we should push the story onto social media, to engender imitation and good vibes. Also @Alex_Levene is offering nonmonetary support: he can take someone from the London area to Brussels, for free. Again, At this point people are not yet in the habit of looking at the spreadsheet, we have to lead them to it by putting these small acts of kindness out there.

[kaja]

yay self organisation!

Hello

I don’t see the need of anyone brokering anything on that sheet. Maybe it wasn’t clear enough, and I assumed that “happy self organisation” was the normal. But as I wrote in my first reply on the funding thread, wenn you Alberto, asked me to do organize something around the fundin: “I don’t feel like being the broker” - and in my 2. reply: “all I can offer is this sheet”. And I mean that. So no further brokering is about to happen from my side. I added now a little bit on “how to become matches”.

Need: I need something and see it offered: I write to the donor(s) and apply for it.

Offer: I see someone needing X - if I feel like I’d like to support the person, I will contact them.

So in my view, if @Pehr_Mårtens hasn’t written anyone of the mentioned donors, he hasn’t asked for anything.

The plan was that people find themselves in a Couchsurfing style. There are donors, and people who’d like to be sponsored: Talk to each other and find your match! I updated the excel now a little bit, and think that people should be responsible enough to read what it says there. So if anyone feels like clarification on “how to become matches” is needed, please add whatever you feel would be helpful on the excel. I tried my best.

Cheers

Kaja

[alberto]

Yay indeed

My comments come from some experience. It tends to work like this:

YOU: “Here’s some stuff. Change it, remix it, move it around, it’s ok.”

SOMEONE ELSE: “Uhm, I would change XYZ.”

YOU: “Yeah, right, do it.”

SOMEONE ELSE: “Really? But then your stuff would be broken.”

YOU: “Not broken. I said it’s OK” [Wiki variant: “We have revision history anyway.”]

SOMEONE ELSE: “Uh, OK. If you say so.” (makes the change)

Most people think in a nonpermissive kind of way. Most time banks I have seen fail because people offer stuff, but no one ever demands anything. Does this means there are no unfulfilled needs? Generally, no. It means people do not feel it’s really OK to use the system, despite what it says on the package. Even on ER, which is a fairly radical community as these things go, you see plenty of comments to wikis – some are appropriate, but most should really be edits. It just takes time for this kind of protocol to become second nature. We tend to take the approach to “teach” these things human-to-human (hence our world famous “call a human” button).

But hey, who does the work calls the shots. You did this, @Kaja, so you have a right to do it the way you want. No brokerage it is.

[kaja]

I see what you mean, Alberto.

From what you wrote about your experiences with money time banks, I hear some questions:

“How can we encourage people to engage with each other and stand up for their needs?”

“How can people need money from others and still feel good and as equally valued members?”

“How can we make sure the offers are being used?”

“How can needing something be de-demonized?”

Those a good and important questions, I think. And I don’t want to negate that they are in the air.

The inhibitions to use Couchsurfing or whatever other plattform that is organised in this way, might be lower, because no hard cash is involved, but wouldn’t it be a more rewarding process to help people get over their feeling of awkwardness regarding their needs?

I still won’t broker, respecting both my time available and the reasons I’ve written about before. But maybe there’s some other way of support that works. I will look through the spreadsheet once per week (on mondays) and contact the people who entered a need that has not been crossed out yet and ask how it’s going and encourage being bold, heroically needy and go for it. And ask what they need to dare asking someone (or another kind of support that I feel I’m capable of giving). The direct contact and organisation would still happen between the two parties, then.

Then there’s always the option of donors contacting people with needs directly - smooth version of getting around all the “I’m ashamed to need something/use the sytem” etc. bugs mentioned above, I hope. I will write the donors with “open” offerings a short encouragement mail on those mondays too.

Cheers to daring greatly!

Kaja