added a short session proposal
Let’s see what we can make of it in terms of a session: here is a session proposal in short. Tracks: either Upskilling or unConf - depending on whether we want it more practical or theoretical.
Upskilling with no money!
[K]senia: no, Primary Insight does not do marketing, but investment consulting. Typically not a need for small companies.
As for the session on barter/living and thriving with no cash: it seems like an interesting and useful skill, but remember the mantra, what we don’t build ourselves does not get built. If someone is up for doing a session on life after cash ([elf Pavlik] seems an obvious candidate) we can put in the program. If not… not. 
Open Value Networks
I’d suggest looking into ( Bob Haugen’s )
https://github.com/valnet/valuenetwork/wiki/Core
such as this implementation :
http://valdev.webfactional.com/
currently tested within Sensorica
more on Value Networks :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_network
and Open Value Networks
http://valuenetwork.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page
and also REA accounting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resources,_events,agents(accounting_model)
You mean ERs as an open value multidisciplinary network providing/exchanging insight&research or innovative fix (tech or less tech) or all of it if required to solve some particular puzzle?
question on Barter Upskilling Session
[Alberto] [Matthias] [James] Should we propose a session to upskill track then and see if the barter-wise ER’s are up for it? I’m rather profane when it comes down to this, but there seem to be a lot of ERs with expertise and the subject is exciting. If it doesn’t grow into the barter upskilling session as such it might grow into some interesting else. What do you think? Or should we make sure ppl are up for it first and then propose a session? (soz questions are a bit offtopic: better br in buildingLOTE3)
Spain Network is Here!
Hello Edgeriders!
I am Italian but I live in Spain for 10 years. In Spain things are happening with a huge potential for innovation. Here we discuss a lot about Commons and P2P Culture or Collaborative Culture.
The debates are not only on a theoretical level, but they try to get straight to the everyday fields to promote a real change in economic models.
Many people are involved in networked processes and collaborative works. The distributed organization, also experienced from the political field like Indignados (Occupy) movement, opens us to new work patterns.
Right now we have a huge problem: after the expansion of the community a few years ago, all these debates become too self-referential. Besides the corporate culture of the country still largely suspicious of the services offered by distributed organizations.
Our experience in distributed organization have taken advantage of the public budget for the culture policy, and now these resources have practically disappeared.
A possibly way out is the ability to expand the network and works on an international level. In Spain we have experienced a lot, but now we literally ran out of money or “investors”. We know that what we do has many value and can be offered to public and private sectors of other countries.
I say all this simply as an introduction, to show my great interest in what can be Edgeriders and from there start thinking with all of you about possible business models.
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Same same here.
Thanks for insights about the situation in Spain, [urbanohumano]. Personally I am very interested in developments in Spain as I see it as having one of the biggest innovators for reshaping the economy. Because it has lots of people, and these people have lots of radical thoughts (while here in Germany, we also have lots of people, but they’re mostly comfortable, not radical …).
As for the problem of a largely self-referential discussion about solving socioeconomic problems, and the suspicion from existing institutions: I guess that’s quite the same issue here with Edgeryders. Thanks for analyzing from the outside … . Because as [Alberto] says below, selling the “radical” kind of consultancy to decision makers is a hard sell so far, and so without others taking our input we can only talk to ourselves. So yes, it’s self-referential, and even an event like LOTE3 will be only self-referential except we can get participants from “non-edgy” institutions etc. to show up.
So in my view, the seek for an Edgeryders business model seems kind of stuck. In proper lean startup fashion, we should now pivot, that is, look for ways to morph our offer into something so that a valid business model results. Personally I don’t care if the business model results in money or other type of compensation (like in-kind, via barter) that allows us to provide the Edgeryders services to the community. But without finding such compensation soon, it will be increasingly hard to keep it all up. (My experience at least; as the tech admin of edgeryders.eu, I can barely find enough volunteer time to keep up with fixing critical errors, let alone doing meaningful additions.)
I propose to re-think the Edgeryders business model more openly. What else could we offer for compensation, if not policy consulting? My feeling is that it would be something that serves more basic needs. Because the higher something is in the hierarchy of meta levels, the less essential it is for day-to-day life, so selling it is necessarily harder and more dependent on people’s subjective evaluations. And policy consulting is more or less the highest meta level that I can think of. Higher even than government, as it’s about consulting government how to govern … .
Do I have any specific ideas? Well, umh, if you want a raw and wild one: Crowdfunding campaign for a Creative Commons licenced, yet unwritten, comprehensive e-book about no-to-low-cost food supply. A role model could be Jack Monroe, now earning money from her “Cooking on the Breadline” book. But we’d also include no-cost gardening techniques, food waste use technology and so on. Given the current European economy, such information is probably in high demand, so crowdfunding for this would have a higher chance of success than crowdfunding for something unspecific as “the Edgeryders online community”. Of course that book would get written using the edgeryders.eu site as a tool, so part of the money would go into maintaining and extending it accordingly.
(P.S. [Nadia]: This is a continuation of the discussion we started on FB recently. What you think?)
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Re-think => good
Rethinking business models is always a good idea! Maybe someone wants to lead a session at #LOTE3?
[Matthias], your book idea, I think, is a variant of the subscription business model as per my original post. Reason: you think like a publisher, focus on producing editorialized content, and sell it before you have produced it. It is financially sound; and it is a one-off, unless you can turn your book into some kind of ongoing paid subscription service.
My impression is this: we are now in the darkest hour before the dawn. Edgeryders is getting a lot of attention, but people are not really buying (yet?). So we have the workload of a successful business and the revenue stream of a bunch of unemployed people! Unfortunately, this is consistent with everything I know of growth in business (rule one: first you pay the price, then, maybe, you reap the benefits) and with our own strict zero-debt, don’t-need-funding attitude. But I am reasonably optimistic that – if we can hold out long enough – we will reap the benefits of our effort. This, of course, is just my own personal opinion.
subscription business mode
Hello Alberto y Matthias , I think the subscription could be an interesting part of edgeryders business plan. All of us we could pay an annual subscription. With this subscription I can lean on a paid professional staff to develop projects and at the same time have a community that have paid a fee to be really committed.
Should be open, no?
Alberto, I like your optimism, but I don’t share it 
When a business model hasn’t catched on for half a year, for me it’s outta the window. Gone for good. I don’t doubt that Edgeryders can provide great quality consultancy, nor do I doubt Nadia’s and your ability to sell the offer well. So if it’s still that hard a sale, it must be a problem on the customer side. Do we want to permanently deal with a bunch of customers who are that hard to persuade of a valuable offer?? Because it will result in a highly undependable stream of contracts and thus, income.
As for the analogy to the subscription model: regarding the publisher’s perspective it is indeed related. A business model is however also about who are the customers, not just the mode of selling. So producing advice for decision makers / government / NGOs and producing advice for our own folks (like the book project I proposed) are essentially different business models. And the latter one should be as open as possible to maximize the benefit, since those who can benefit are a diverse group: some can pay for the service, some can’t. That’s why I would shy aways from a subscription fee and closed-access content, since it deters many who could benefit, while open content does not deter anyone … . Of course you’re right that a book project is a one-off idea. But it can be serialized: if it works, the next book will be on hacking housing and urban space, and so on.
But I guess I should demonstrate what I mean. So, who else is up for running a crowdfunding campaign for a first open content product of Edgeryders?
Sure, go for it!
The whole point of open is not to waste any impulse in doing good things, so sure! Go for it. I’ll help as best as I can (which, with crowdfunding, is not much. I am quite intimidated by the beast!).
That said, this sort of slow-moving consultancy is what paid my bills for the last 13 years, AND it provided me with opportunities to learn new things and develop. Even Edgeryders came out of that! In my experience it is perfectly normal for a cycle of getting into business to take 6-12 months. What is not normal is that we are pushing harder than usual, so our potential grows faster but we take more pain from all of this still-unpaid, frustrating business development work!
Failing fast
Hmm, so it works for you. Cool. Which also means you’re the one with the experience to tell us when it’s apparent that the consultancy business model will not work for Edgeryders. Because “When you’re failing, fail fast.” Lean startup philosophy, and also personally I have had enough from the other case. I literally wasted thousands of hours for failing too late with business ideas, since I started self-employment in 2008 …
As for the crowdfunding campaign, I will gather some interest & expertise around it before and during LOTE3, and then see what kind of product and campaign we can come up with.
Redundancy is good for you
No, look: I think we are on track, and if we keep this up we are going to start signing deals soon. Already we got the Baltic Edge deal (15K in cash) that paid for some content and a little platform development earlier in the year) and the unMonastery deal (we get a free venue and about 80K in cold cash). So far, we have chosen to reinvest them immediately in the community, rather than try to keep some. This may have been a reckless choice, but we have been able to generate some revenue.
BUT that does not mean this is the best way to generate revenue. Far from it! I am terrible at monetizing my skills. So, the whole point of our partnership is that we all try to do some stuff. Each of us deploys the skills he or she has. We help each other as best we can. Whatever works is what we do. Redundancy and apparent chaos are features, not bugs. So, by all means do try whatever you believe in, and don’t be shy to ask for help!
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We’ve started to discuss crowdfunding LOTE4 here to make an upskilling session. I’m not crowdfunding-smart, but trying to figure it out: talking to CF wise people and my line of thought keeps changing. There are also crowdfunding-experienced people on the platform.
Sales and such
Hi, Today marked a shift for me in terms of how we go about working on Edgeryders, the social enterprise.
I don’t think that the discussion about business models is all that relevant to be honest. What it comes down to is sales. And that is a different beast. There are several parts to this. In part it’s a numbers game where you need to reach very very many different people, and make it easy for them to understand what you have to offer and give them a choice of things they can buy.
When it comes to working with consultancy in part it’s a matter of going at it, being in the game long enough so that by the time they hear about you, you have had time to leave enough traces about you e.g. online, in relationships etc so when they ask around about you, people confirm you’re legit and not some scammer.
So far my strategy has been to do outreach through keynotes that are recorded, one to one interaction, videos etc. Now it’s time to look at the product (what we’re selling) and how to speed up the sales cycle.
For the product i’ve put together this table as a first rough sketch to have something to discuss pricing, packaging, communication etc:
| Basic | Extensive | Customised | Tailor made | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pricing: One off / Subscription |
||||
Training & upskilling |
||||
| Communication and collaboration skills | ||||
| Writing for online engagement | ||||
| Reading and making sense of online data | ||||
| Building thriving policy-oriented communities online | ||||
| Social media training | ||||
| workshops and master classes | ||||
Services |
||||
Customised Action Research Tracks at events |
||||
| Networking assistance | ||||
| Research, articles, reports and books | ||||
| Consulting hours | ||||
| Proactive alerts | ||||
Tools & technologies |
||||
| in situ network analysis software | ||||
| in situ ethnographic analysis software | ||||
| social software |
Now for speeding up the sales cycle.
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How do we find the right prospects? How do we get better and more efficient at this over time? We need to start with a list of names of people and organisations, find out what their problems and needs are and identify the ones with a high likelihood of matching what we have to offer. But I can’t do this alone, I’ve composed a list but could use help going through it! Also not sure how to import a list here onto the wiki?
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We need to reach out to the prospective clients before they’re in buying mode. Find our how they prefer to communicate, get in touch and try to get into a meeting or call. Find out what their problems and needs are: listen 80% and talk 20%. telling them about Edgeryders. Find out more about them. Ask hard questions to eliminate non-prospects as early as possible. If you get a no, gently find out why. If not, follow up with an email or handwritten note reminding them of what was said, and what you both agreed would be the next step (for you & for the prospective client).
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If they ask for a formal proposal, don’t email it over…ask them to set a time for a meeting during which you review it together. Here I think we can use the LOTE tracks and session proposals much more effectively.
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Give them time to make a decision. Contact them creatively.
How do we package what we have to offer, in was that people recognise it’s value and are willing to move money out of their wallets to have? In the Long run we kind of sort of know, it’s the short term I am more interested in. Well because the long run is a lot of short runs in sequence. Here I think the crowdfunding model makes sense, as in we build a campaign, put together the material etc as we would a crowdfunding campaign, but run it off the Edgeryders site and not one of the crowdfunding platforms.
Im up for looking at this now I have had time to think a bit.
table.tftable {font-size:12px;color:#333333;width:100%;border-width: 1px;border-color: \#9dcc7a;border-collapse: collapse;} table.tftable th {font-size:12px;background-color:#abd28e;border-width: 1px;padding: 8px;border-style: solid;border-color: \#9dcc7a;text-align:left;} table.tftable tr {background-color:#bedda7;} table.tftable td {font-size:12px;border-width: 1px;padding: 8px;border-style: solid;border-color: \#9dcc7a;}This is getting exciting 
Nadia, thanks for sharing this: it feels good to read it black on white
Again, about the “how” I guess there is only one way to know, and that’s keep on doing it! “How do we get better and more efficient over time?” Try - get feedback - share thoughts - correct - try again, and so on! I’m probably very idealist, but I do believe that - especially in the beginning - it’s based a lot on relationships, first contacts, meetings, approaches… so it’s a lot about energy, gazes, how the content is expressed, intuition and all that stuff. I’ve seen you in action while speaking to Luca de Biase in Matera: the content made a lot of it, but there is something about the interaction which is fundamental, and you do it greatly… but as you say: not alone. And I guess this brings me back to the question you asked a couple of times on this platform on burnouts and keeping things going, ecc: I think being totally alone in doing stuff is, on the long run, a promise for burnout.
Enough with the digressions. Back to point 1 and 2. How I understand this it’s about mapping, then selecting a small kernel and start making contact. I’m really up for sharing the mapping work and eventually fitting in personal network, if needed. My mind is probably biased by ethnography, but could the point 1 be something like: mapping / seeing what challenges are uncovered-overepresented - selecting a small kernel / doing some interviews and coming back to think on the content? Or is this too long of a process?
Could the LOTE be a good opportunity to start conveying attention and illustrate the process while in action? What we’re talking about here is a much longer process, but there’s a lot to the making-of the LOTE which illustrates how ERs work, what they have to offer, and what they produce. Convey to the LOTE, if interested, and then - in any case - connect with after the LOTE to do what you wrote at point 1 and 2.
Had managed to miss this. I think it’s a solid idea
low2no (cost or money) guides to fullfilling basic needs is a great idea. Set up a wiki here. Would be good if reporting from all sessions at lote3 went into this wiki (some formatting and template for good entry needed).
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The jury is still out
Hello [urbanohumano], nice to meet you. We’ll see how this goes. My personal preference is for client work rather than “investment” or “funding”. But yes, the jury is definitely still out whether we can get any. Corporates speak a lot of “youth led organizations” and “empowerment”, but when it is time to buy expert advice they buy it from McKinsey. We’ll see.
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2cents
It would seem that the phenomenon of ‘bullshit jobs’ may have reached a saturation point. Advising on processes, trying to ride the coat-tails of top-down theatrics (‘so-called’ governance) by selling services that advise on ‘how to’ rather than to actually do, while claiming to ‘get shit done’, will draw interest only in so far as seeing through the fascade, and this is all it is when nothing is actually being done.
With UnMon there is a chance to change that reality, from the ‘process-pushing’ to actual output, real social value. Its very easy for a project like Edgeryders to be seen from above (i.e from those to whom you seek to sell services, or in the least by those upper houses whom Edgeryders seek to mediate between) as a kind of ‘Ship of Fools’ for the cap-in-hand precariat. In the absence of evidence to the contrary this will remain the case.
Edgeryders, and the 15m/Occupy/Las Indignados crew (and in general those whose efforts are based at the meta-level, without active substance on the ground, in the field, in the forge, growing or creating actual things) are in dire need of actualization into real organic processes. I don’t want to go into the abstractus of organic practical philsophical reasoning as to why this is as it is, but it is definitely the case. Without roots things don’t grow. Use material to approach the material, value is representative of exchange of the actual.
Things have a definite way. If you approach via meta-interface then things will so remain, no doubt about it. If you can do work at the community level that is productive, starting simply, then the rest can follow from there.
I would hope that the plan, Matthias, for your book, would involve the doing of the thing and writing about the doing of the thing rather than beginning with the ‘how’ of the thing.
My intention here isn’t to annoy. You each do great work, (yes ‘DO’!) in specific areas, and that counts- for those areas. The rest comes in the doing. UnMon is the place for ER to come to flower, and from there to bare fruit. It will not be by abstract information, meta-level services, or consultancy, but by the organic setting, ‘in situ’, that people can bare witness to how these things develop from Practice.