Hi everyone,
Thank you so much for a beautiful lote. I am so happy we finally managed to find the time to really meet one another and have an open conversation(s) about many questions and issues. Including where we want to take things looking forward together.
After our conversations it struck me that one of the fundamental errors I have been making is forgetting that there is a huge information asymmetry between those of us who have been involved in Edgeryders for the longest and more recent arrivals. Step one to honoring our pledge to bridge that divide so we have more of a level playing field is online: https://edgeryders.eu/en/blog/lets-adore-and-endure-each-other
To honor the care and attention that went into our coming together, I thought it might be a good idea to put together a simple overview to remind us all of what was agreed (before we forget :)) and make it easy for others to contribute towards the shared goals/initiatives. Can you guys help compile this here so that we are sure everyone understands the same thing (when we speak it is easy to misunderstand because of language differences or miss key information when your mind wanders):
The big picture: What we agreed on
1. A key aim of Edgeryders is to facilitate and encourage mutual support between community members and collaboration on projects.
So over the next year we are going to focus energy on
A. Harmonious Hackathons: making them happen on a regular basis (several times a year) and making them an economically sustainable line of activity (ensure people organising them are paid). We also agreed that we need “our own” space to do this as hackathons need to run for weeks rather than days to “complete” work, but still keep money and time costs at an acceptable level. We would do a number of themes one of which could be HackCare continuing on foundation set at lote4.
B. Edgeryders/ Makerfox integration: the experiment with using barter to build lote4 using makerfox produced promising results. In order for us to use it for more activities the integration with Edgeryders needs to be smoother, so we need to specify what needs to be done and find resources to cover the cost of the work.
C. Building stronger community ties: We aim to grow the number, thickness and quality of Edgeryders community members social ties with each other, members of other communities and networks and with members of organisations with resources and need for their skills/projects. We will do this online with regularly updated content like Jeffs posts and a newsletter (who knows how to do this well?). If and when we do organise physical meetings, we commit to ensure they are properly documented online so as not to fragment the community or exclude others from the conversations. Core team: Ben Vickers (UK) and Nadia EL-Imam (Belgium) and you (wherever you are).
2. The unMonastery prototype was successful and we want to continue developing the existing site and set up new ones.
It was agreed that the time is not mature for setting up a separate unMonastery organisation and that Edgeryders LBG should continue to be the “home organisation” for the unMonastery project.
A. Continued presence in the Palazzo Casale complex: it was agreed that the next step would be to produce a credible plan for running the space including revenue streams/fundraising activities in order to present to the Committato Matera2019 before they are dissolved (i.e. before end of the working year).
B. New possible unMonastery sites: Edgeryders LBG has been approached by with two requests for new development projects which could involve setting up new unMonastery sites. After discussing the matter with community members in the room one proposal was sent off to Fabrizio Barca.
3. We would like to experiment with different formats for community events
A. Produce lote4 community report: To get an overview of the value generated from this event in a format that is easy to understand and spread ( also for those with little or no time to wade through a lot of material on the platform). This report should cover :
- Content- (what was learned about stewardship and what new insights/ideas for projects and new questions were generated).
- Organisation- budget, allocation of resources, how decisions were made and what are the constraints we acknowledge.
B. Call for proposals of new event formats (and teams to drive them): Proposals 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). The key thing being that whatever the format it has to not exclude people with disabilities if they want to join, and honour the commitment to great documentation.
Where to begin?
Think about how you can align your own interests and work with any of the above.
If you cannot make it this time don’t worry, just leave a comment below and maybe join us another time? we do the calls the same time and place every week!
xxx
Nadia
P.s Thank you @Björn_Ekblom for the photo!!
There are no tasks on Makerfox, though, just offers to purchase from. So the person wanting a task to get done looks through through the Makerfox market and orders what is required to get it done. (The details: We had a “task” feature once in Makerfox, but removed it because Makerfox is meant to work for collaboration between users who don’t know or trust each other yet – so you wouldn’t want to allow anyone to take your task, making people very busy with applying for tasks and accepting / rejecting these applications as the Makerfox needs 10-20 alternatives for each task to find one match. That just wasn’t practical …)