How does the proposed LOTE#3 serve the convergent goals of Edgeryders, Matera and the unMonastery?
On a recent collective video hangout, I was twice told that LOTE#3 and the unMonastery were to be considered two different things - I understand the genesis of this understanding, but this does not strike me as optimal project management. I’d like to air an alternative:
Surely there is a deeper rationale for placing LOTE3 at the location of one the ER community’s first major projects? I can spot some obvious ones:
— forces afoot (administrative?, economic?, both?) have pushed back the unMo launch date another 4-5 months to mid-winter, it could be valuable to maintain momentum by demonstrating our presence. — At the same time, exposing a broad selection of Edgeryders to the potential of Matera can help distill both general enthusiasm and a useful flood of fresh concrete projects.
It is at this point my questions of strategy arise: How specifically can LOTE#3 be angled so as to nourish the unMo both in its practical infrastructure/logistics challenges, and as an interactive social organ in the broader community? Should it ideally mark the arrival of our first ‘permanent’ residents? ( It likely desirable that we don’t mirror the pattern of descending northerners there for the scenery. – nor of course repeat versions of drunken revelry by the canal.)
I suspect this can be adressed by refining the conceptual narrative of the event from something like:
ER is investing in unMo by injecting energies in the unMo space; this cannot help but to make unMo thrive.
- to - unMo has invited ER to come and initiate our local activities in their own special way.
Having appointed myself a guardian of theunMo spirit, I strongly support some version of the second storyline. The problem then being that while ER actually exists, unMo doesn’t. This may leave my belovéd second scenario a bit of a needless fantasy; what will happen will be a compromise between the desirable and the managable with a heavy weight upon the latter. However, I feel strongly that this need to use the LOTE#3 event to root the unMo in the realitiies of the community becomes a collective central tactical concern. That as yet undeveloped elements of unMo culture determine the quality of the LOTE, rather than the imported culture of, say LOTE #1 + #2 descend upon Matera.
The unMonastery is more than a conceptual home of the ER spirit, it is its practical manifestation - if, and this is an uniformed, but not an unlikely if - the volunteer committee charged with kitting out the unMo location needs some practical guidelines (and deadlines), placing LOTE#3 in the unMo location (Drafty and dusty as it may be) gives us some leverage. If we accept this choice of test drivng the unMo location, it flavours others. The descent of dozens of ERers to initiate the unMo space has practical and symbolic power. We could easily do a mop & bucket brigade and remove 95% of the cave dust in an afternoon. A light show and some flag unfurling might just render us visible (amid the other flags and light shows) to the Materani that something is finally about to happen. Addressing the plumbing, cooking and sleeping logistics would require that we address plumbing/cooking/sleeping logistics; more sustainable solutions might not be that much harder to solve than temporary ones (especially when they need to be done anyway.) This may effect economy of scale - 45 workers might be more flexible than 145.
The suggested primary goal of LOTE#3 is to create a catalogue of the combined skills/excellence of the ER community. I suggest that by building the unMo as an organ for ER research we get something beyond a catalog of current skills, we get a laboratory for refining new ones. A motto might be experience first, then reflexion. The very minimum, before we risk diluting our already taxed resources, is to create a project management spread sheet that slots in all activities and actors to ensure that everything is building in a coherent effort.
At this point the unMo is lagging behind.
Bembo,
Bergen
