Edgeryders as Online Forum - Define each activity separately
I find the last posts of interest. Thanks.
I suggest with insistence that the different activities and approaches need to be called with different names, or at least a combination of names.
I personally feel this can be beneficial.
IMHO, from what I perceive, I feel that first and foremost, Edgeryders is the build up of a brand for a forum ( and technically speaking, an aggregator of attention and interaction )
I personally sense that the basic Edgeryders brand is about simply that : an online forum.
After that, several spin off brands can emerge, such as “Edgeryder Events”, or “Edgeryder Collectives” - though for now examples of such names / brands used for that seems to be Edgeryders Lote" and Edgeryders unMonastery. Yet I also imagine that these complemetary brands can be used separately / not necessarily connected to the Edgeryders brand, if and when it is not initiated and organized using the Edgeryders forum, or that they can choose not to use the Edgeryders brand.
I want Edgeryders as a forum to discuss ways of incubating various other tools that can eventually be reified as other brands, and progressively use these to continue building and connecting shared networked infrastructure.
I see Edgeryders as a brand that , apparently, currently builds itself on existing networks of people and projects who are already invoved and highly empowered. In other words, Edgeryders is not a brand describing each of these existing projects and networks. Edgeryders only describes a more specifically defined online forum as tool , midst other online forums, that eventually leads to processes of convergence and mutual facilitation. It does not generate what it feeds itself from.
IMHO, I do not want Edgeryders to become a brand used to describe me or my activities, simply because I interact using Edgeryders. I am not an Edgeryder. I am a user of Edgeryder - the forum. And I am connected to a multiplicity of people and networks of people, including through the Edgeryders forum - many of which I have been connected to before Edgerders forum, and many with whom I interact with without being dependent on Edgeryders.
In that sense, it is not like a coworking space, and even less so like a company. It is also important to me that it is not used to describe a community or a culture. Imho, from there on, some of the temporary communities can have the freedom to decide to describe themselves by adding Edgeryders as adjective, to describe the origins of their interactions, or the mutualised tools / infrastructure they may use, including the forum.
Also, the Edgeryders brand is not a culture. It is , again, imho, a online forum, where eventually some communities may form temporarily. Yes, some of the individuals using the tool may convene on using or expressing ( self organized, meritocratic, etc ) cultures in their interactions.
Edgeryders is also not a verb ( some may say couchsurfing, for example, may be considered as a verb ).
From what I read, some people may want to define Edgeryders as a market ? Between consumers and producers ? Personally I hope this is not what we use the attention that converges around the Edgeryders brand and tools for, but if that is what it is used for, then it should be called by a different combination of words, and not simply “Edgeryders”.
There can also be various other concepts using Edgeryders as attention and participation aggregator. For example, a syndicate. Yet the example of a syndicate may also require that we are willing to share the political risk of being connected to each other and mutually responsible for each other ( even if only in terms of public image ), if and when it is defined by including the term “Edgeryders”, with a specific social contract bonding people ? And personally this can only be done if and when there is sufficient trust, which for now is mostly superficial, despite the lovely interactions and lovely persons met through the aggregator.
