Our engagement strategy has been in part – at least temporarily – modified by a decision of the Stockholm consortium meeting, as we wait for answers to some administrative questions. As far as I know, the fall will be characterized by a focus on events organized by almost all opencare partners.
Focus in the fall: offline events
Please remember that events should produce data. What constitutes good data for opencare is outlined in our data strategy – we have already submitted its first version to the EC. Slides 10-11 describe an ideal case and suggest mitigation measures in case the situation is not ideal. I stand ready to discuss with you any situation not contemplated by the data strategy.
Edgeryders will be organizing three events, all in collaboration with Opencare fellows (people we have already engaged). Fellows will tap into their networks to draw in more practitioners. Each event will specialize in an area that seems to be “hot”, as demonstrated by the presence of several interesting initiatives working on it. Dates and themes below are subject to variations. At a later date we will announce a partnership with a local open care initiative in each city.
- Brussels, 10-11 September. This event will focus on intergenerational care (pensioners living with students etc.)
- Berlin, 17-18 September. This event will be dedicated to "Caring for carers": support systems that prevent burnout and help community carers to keep doing their work sustainably.
- Thessaloniki, 24-25 September. This event focus on nutrition, and specifically DIY/community ways to produce healthy, cheap food.
To make participation more attractive, Nadia has come up with a great idea: we come together to build a decentralized proposal to be submitted to an initiative called 100 and change. In order to do that, however, we need to gather information about the existing initiatives of open care on the ground, which is exactly what the opencare project needs to do. The final details of the process are still being worked out, but I think it is a solid idea. We are shooting for 50 new challenge responses and 150 new comments.
UBx will be involved in Hacking Health Bordeaux, 21-23 October. @melancon , any instructions on how to participate? Do we need to pay the ticket, and is it only for the hackathon or for the conference too? Any thoughts?
ScImpulse is preparing an event in Geneva at CERN. There does not seem to be a date yet (ScImpulse blog).
WeMake and the City of Milano, I think, will continue with their event program. @Costantino is working on a calendar.
So, this is not so bad. We are looking at 6-7 events in 6 countries. Of course we maintain a common opencare calendar, to make ti easier for people to engage with us offline, by attending the event nearest to them. Each partner will take charge of communicating her own event, as per the communication plan contained in the proposal. Good work everyone! Please keep us updated, by posting even short updates on the stuff you do.
Other things you can do to help engagement
- Read and comment the challenge responses! They are really inspiring, and one of the best things about opencare is that we get to hang out with the people spearheading all these fantastic initiatives. These people can be lonely or overstretched, and they will appreciate your feedback.
- If you can spare 30 mins a week, we would appreciate you signing up to the CountOnMe list (most of you have already done it, I am repeating for new additions to the team like @Franca and @Maria ) and help spread the three tweets indicated by the list curators. The list sends you about two messages a week.