Fundraising for LOTE4: The Stewardship

[nadia]

LOTE events are an important part of an indirect strategy for regional and local development: attracting bright people with empty spaces for free, to stay.

Why do we do this? Because there is an urgent need to create infrastructure that supports much needed creative solutions in response to systemic crises, and p2p collaboration on a massive scale. We have been prototyping this approach with the unMonastery this year and are convinced that this is worth investing in, scaling up and replicating. As well as creating the conditions that enable more big ideas like it, increasing the capacity to execute them and enable them to emerge.

This is not about events, but about permanent changes of the population. The long term strategy of the LOTE events: they are part of a local/regional/national development package in which Edgeryders come to a place and stay if government/foundations/private sector provide break-even support for two years, and a space.

In addition to its role in triggering “grounded spaces”,  we would like to make LOTE a well-known brand described as the “Davos forum for the alternative / edge economies”. We would like it to be used:

• to connect current or past projects of funders with other projects to make them more successful through synergies.
• for live-testing and evaluating prototypes and proposed projects "from the Edge for the future".

On a longer time scale, we sell projects to cities, as part of that package we integrate LOTE4 into the budget as a place for:

• live demoing
• express project development / high-level troubleshooting 
• greater project resilience
• completing a cycle of up scaling. 

We are interested both in becoming part of local communities, and drawing interesting people into them (under certain conditions). This means both connecting with powerful partners AND supporting our peers who already live and work in the cities hosting the events. While English is our shared working language, many people in the community are multi-lingual and interested in including local contexts, cultures and languages in the events whenever possible.

We already have two success stories.

1. Edgefest was started as a side event to LOTE by us in collaboration with local partners in Strasbourg in 2012, and is still running strong in the city.
2. LOTE3 was set up in Matera,and was supersceded by the unMonastery being set up in the City (with one highly technically skilled person having formally moved to the city and collaborating with peers at the local University and schools). UnMonastery itself is set to reopen as a school in Matera.

EdgeRyders tries to ensure that no one is excluded from community events for financial reasons. In addition to it being consistent with our values, we do this because we know that creativity is combinatorial. In striving for maximum manageable diversity, we are creating the conditions for truly brilliant and inspiring things to come out of our gatherings. As well as barnraising around projects that make a positive impact on the local community who play host to the gathering.

Everyone willing to contribute to the topic and event is able to participate. Everyone comes away with new perspectives and relationships they may not have otherwise had access to. The city or town hosting gains local development support and locally anchored projects driven by local-international teams.

For this year’s event we are collaborating with the local administration in Matera, a spectacular city located in southern Italy and one of the oldest settlements on the planet. They are supporting the event with a venue, and enough money to cover some of the costs (30K Euros).

To explore how you or your organisation can support LOTE events write to nadia@edgeryders.eu or call +3225881268.

[ben]

!

I copy edited this. Will add thoughts later today.

[nadia]

Ok: Look at how these guys work

Example event (send us your problems). Super corporate/large org-ish. Got this sent to me from someone who works at an IGO. I happen to know Frank Piller, one of the people organising it (I ran a succesfull event for him once). The way they do things is by anchoring their events to prestigious universities and “big names”. And they get both academics and practitioners to submit papers. For a high registration fee:

Perhaps a model is to price tickets to a high “value”, be clear that they cannot be bought, and give instructions for getting hands on one. Make it a key part of our communication?

[juanjo_pina]

Voy a intentarlo

Maybe i am missing something important, or just disagree with the scale, or well… I dont know what the hell is happening. But let me play a little bit, and the only way I can play is in spanish

Veamos. Yo no estoy seguro de la escala adecuada para que el evento sea productivo y se alcancen los objetivos (uno de los cuales debería ser encontrar siempre mejores rutas y mejores objetivos). Realmente no lo sé.

Pero allá voy, y cuidado, porque voy a hacer de manager del diablo ;)

Si se busca financiación para el evento y que el evento esté realmente alimentado por los mejores que se puedan encontrar, es muy posible que algunos de los mejores no tengan recursos para hacer el imprescindible viaje, por lo que tendríamos que aumentar la apuesta. A veces, un producto pierde ventas por reducir precios, y al revés puede pasar lo mismo. Y un producto de alto valor tiene un margen mayor sobre el coste que un producto de menor valor. Obvio, ¿no? De acuerdo, pero necesitaba una intro

Quiero decir… Buscamos a lo mejor, ¿no? Y, además, intuímos que gran parte de “lo mejor” puede estar viviendo al filo… pero al filo del fracaso o incluso más allá. Pueden estar viviendo entre la incomprensión, la pobreza, la persecución, o quizá con ideas y proyectos asfixiados por entornos hostiles.

Si es así, uno de los objetivos sería conseguir financiación para que esas personas también vengan y traigan consigo esas cosas que no pueden sacar adelante de forma local porque no logran alcance, pero que, quizá, podrían ser exitosas en otros sitios, o incluso a nivel global.

Y para eso, quizá haya que pasar por invitar a estrellas asentadas, figuras que justifiquen una inversión más fácil. Lo sé, ahí parece que está el diablo. Pero si el diablo viste de Prada es porque está en los detalles.

Y en este punto, ¿cómo mantendríamos la calidad y evitaríamos que los sospechosos habituales y las grandes estrellas ocupasen demasiado espacio? Creo que es cuestión de diseño.

¿Y qué diseño me viene a la cabeza, así, pensando rápido?

- Por un lado, mantener el formato. Y moverlo muy poco, muy poco, consiguiendo que la única diferencia que se pueda percibir desde fuera sean los participantes, y, claro, sólo si te sabes sus nombres. Así que hablamos de un evento en el que tanto las estrellas como los outsiders tendrán el mismo formato, los mismos tiempos, invitados uno a uno igual que el resto y sin privilegios. Por poner un ejemplo: el chico que viene de Uber y la chica que viene con Carpooling. Esto me parece la parte obvia. Así que el mensaje para las estrellas sería "Ey, ya es suficiente privilegio para ti tener la oportunidad de interactuar con gente que puede darte grandes ideas así, por la cara, gratis, y ayudándote a pensar de nuevo “out of the box. De manera que los laureles no te los traigas, te los tienes que volver a ganar aquí, con los aspirantes al título”.

• Por otro lado, ser honestos. Hay, por definición, una confrontación entre lo establecido y lo outsider. Así que no la invisibilicemos: presentémosla como algo normal, sano, como algo que podemos demostrar que no es excluyente. Al fin y al cabo, es maravilloso que la grasa de ballena fuera sustituída por el queroseno (rich guy, Rockefeller), y también lo es la creación de los primeros teléfonos móviles, hace más de 100 años, y un aparato de rayos X portátil que salvó a más de un soldado en la Primera Guerra Mundial (poor guy, Mónico Sánchez). La creatividad es más rentable cuando coincide con el dinero, pero sin dinero es la misma creatividad.

Así que una especie de “confrontación” amable, controlada, saludable, planteada persona a persona con buenas dinámicas, puede terminar siendo un sano intercambio. Es decir: “Tendremos en este evento al presente y al futuro, al centro y a los márgenes, a los que no saben cómo desarrollar sus ideas y a los que pueden hacerlas realidad”.

Por último, dos cosas:

- Estudiar su interacción puede ser muy útil.

• Podríais decidir a quién se venden tickets y a quién se financia, y ahí entraría vuestro arrojo y valor

Resumen: invitar a un pequeño número de estrellas establecidas y sospechosos habituales, pero de uno en uno, no con comitiva, en igualdad con los outsiders. Creo que apuntando más alto se puede conseguir mucha más financiación. Y también se puede, no sólo mantener, sino potenciar el objetivo original.

[nadia]

If I have understood, the main points are…

Hola Juanjo,

An attempt at summarising the main points:

• Go for high quality and high value. Signal it through a high cost and don’t do “discounts”. We are playing with the idea of having tickets that are very high monetary value, but cannot be bought- only earned- either by contributing to the building of a successful event, or by helping one of the projects in a direct way with tech, design, communication, business development or relationship brokering.

• Fundraise to cover costs for cash-strapped participants travel.

• Make one of the aims of the event to raise funds for people’s projects/ connect them with resources. Especially promising initiatives which are not getting support where they currently are based but have alot of potential and applications in other places/contexts. In order for this to be viable, you need to involve “stars” or “high profile” participants. Stick to the same format, everyone gets the same treatment (no special treatment for high-profile participants: “Hey, enough privilege for you to have the opportunity to interact with people who can give you great ideas so, face, free, and helping you to think again” out of the box. So laurels are not to bring, you have to return to the win here, with the candidates. " (Not sure exactly what you mean or how to translate this, so using machine translation.

• Be clear and explicit about the conflicts of interests between the established players/ members of establishment and those who pose a challenge to the order of things. Frame it as a healthy exchange. At times tough, but friendly, healthy and respectful. Ie: “We will have this event in the present and the future, the center and the margins, those who do not know how to develop their ideas and who can make them happen.”

• observe the interactions between everyone because you can learn alot from it.

Now some questions:

1. I did not understand your last point, can you explain a litte more? " Podríais decidir a quién se venden tickets y a quién se financia, y ahí entraría vuestro arrojo y valor ;)"

2. Agreed a good idea is to aim to secure resources to fund projects if possible. For example through an award that comes with a serious bag of money. The question is how to raise those resources between now and the event? The long way is to try to deal with large organisations. Is there a smarter/ faster way you can think of?

[juanjo_pina]

It was a boxing metaphore

I think, more or less, could be…

“So let your laurels at home, cause you’re gonna fight for the title here, with that new contenders, in a new ring, with the same tools, your fists, and you start here with the same score that the oponnent have”

Im a little bit belic with metaphores

Now, the questions

1. “Podríais Decidir a Quien Se venden boletos ya QUIÉN SE Financia, y Ahí entraría Vuestro arrojo y valentía ;)” -> You can value and appreciate (quality) each project and decide who fund and who is funded. And, having in mind that you are an agent of creative destruction and that you cannot change and improve nothing in this captured world without fucking up with someone, you are gonna need to make important and difficult choices.

2. I think there is a way. First, go both crowdfunding and asking for money to private sector. Sell them the inteligence that you are going to concentrate at the event, and the intelligence that you have in your platform too. Make all the offers at the same time, and make this movements fast.

Then, go to the large and fucking slow organizations with a smile and another message, kinda “Hey, you huge guys: you can participate now, cause maybe tomorrow will be too late”. They can do it fast if they really want.

[nadia]

A pop-up, demand driven, DIY Lab?

Ok some loose and fast thoughts.

If we’re crowdfunding and selling intelligence to private sector organisation we need to do two things

1. Decide how to communicate what lote is, especially this new format. Ok yes it takes place of various channels: online conversation, and then physical event then online conversation. We know good things come out of it. But what is it? How do describe it in terms of what it does/ outcomes it generates.E.g. could it be a version of this- a kind of demand-driven, pop-up lab? Is it an accelerator? What do we calls something which draws many people to get together, build something, and then disband?

Victor was onto something in our community call yesterday:  The interesting angle and strength of EdgeRyders is in combining offline and online in community stewardship of assets and communities. Hybrid commons projects that acknowledge what’s the right tool/strategy (online&offline) for each context. EdgeRyders itself is exploring how you take largely online community to do offline things- how to close the online offline loop/cycle effectively is A) very interesting B) very timely C) something that Edgeryders has experience with."

2. embody the outcomes in some form that makes the value visible. Ideally tangible.

Some examples:

1. “Global Stewardship on the Edge: The Alternative to Problem-Solving Leadership in Times of Crisis". E-book, video interviews etc.

Call for contributions being designed here as a followup to the discussions we had in this community call. Once call is finalised it will be published on Edgeryders, FB, Linkedin, and other appropriate fora. We will also experiment with FB and linkedin Ads to reach beyond our network.

Maps, Posters and Factographs:

An app

Methodkits

Social Coin and Smart Citizen kits

Any other ideas? Really what we need to do is to brainstorm and fill in this template. Should we have a google hangout dedicated to it?

[alberto]

It happened

Fundraising more or less happened.