How to build a mass collaboration project (#Alt33c3 reflections)

“Crazy people will find each other even if they are separated by nine hills”
– Bulgarian proverb

This post is a summary of how we built an appreciated event in 3 weeks, and what we learned from it about building intense, collaboration and support. It is a relevant template for building OpenVillage house projects, and also the whole OpenVillage movement itself.

TIME AND RESOURCES REQUIRED

  • Community manager constantly monitoring collaboration channels, welcoming new people, and doing outreach. Time required: 4 weeks, full time.
  • Tech lead to interface with volunteers: Matthias was very helpful in quickly setting up hosting etc.
  • Program lead to interface with speakers, workshop leaders etc.
  • Cash for initial fronting of costs (deposit for venue rental, equipment rental/purchase, WP theme, Hosting, purchase of t-shirts and hoodies). Approximately 6k.
  • Comfortable accomodation for project team as close to event venue as possible. Organsing an event is exhausting. By the end of the day you want to isolate yourself in a calm comfortable environment, have a good solid breakfast maybe even exercise. Go upstairs for short naps when needed. etc

HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

1. SET UP YOUR COLLABORATION ENVIRONMENT AND MAKE IT EASY FOR OTHERS TO DO THE SAME

  • Set up your collaboration environment before making an open call for involvement. Choose the infrastructure you will be using for coordination and up to date communication, and stick with it. E.g. WIKI + Automatically updated WP site + Embedded/integrated self hosted RIOT/Matrix installation + Self hosted crowdfunding application.
  • Make it easy for people to set up their own instance of the collaboration environment. Craft a deal with a webhosting company to offer a pushbutton installation of your website/communication infrastructure.

2. PIGGYBACK, BUILD VALUE AND KEEP IT SIMPLE

  • Piggy back a BIG thing and find something that could solve a painful problem for lot of people to draw people in ( withe OPENandChange it was funding applications, 33c3 it was tickets , with others it can be some missing/special feature that would add to people's experience). Does it make something cheaper? Does it save you time ? Does it make something new possible?
  • Select your location very early in the game and make sure it is VERY convenient for participants.
  • Keep logistics around rewards very simple, low risk cheap e.g. create agreement with on demand services for Swag: Set up an online shop - Regular and limited edition collectors items. (MIXMAX had a good vendor I think but we need one in Europe and ideally run by community member).
  • Auto-delegate tasks: whenever an individual says "we/someone should do x" your response should be "Great idea! Can you help make it happen? Great go ahead and do it! you're in charge of that!" and quickly plugin our own resources to support their efforts. This leads to "These guys trust me, now I owe it to them"
  • Prepare excellent content relevant to people we wish to involve in our own projects: presentations, books and podcasts. I did a lightning talk at 33c3 as well as a longer in depth design discussion during alt33c3. Result: It looks like we have a collaboration with SHA , a summer event for the ccc community (hackers) to piggyback their event for the work of building the mobile demo of interoperable care projects

3. PROVIDE A CHOICE OF WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE

  • Get a list of the things you would need money for early on: Equipment, Supplies, travel, outreach, writing.
  • Prepare rewards to "sell" for contributions early: Produce special edition armbands, t-shirts and hoodies (different logo/design for every event edition).
  • Make many options for donating money: Bank Transfer, Crowdfunding App, BItcoins, Paypal type service
  • Make a big public announcement and call for money AND contributions of equipment. Make sure it annoys some people who will complain: nothing solidifies resolve like an adversary.

4. SET AN ENCOURAGING AND SUPPORTIVE CULTURE

If we want to engage a strong core group of people in driving something together as volunteers, we should include the following three things in our default interactions with one another:

  • Hire a community manager to welcome new people personally, coordinate the work, and interface with the edgeryders organisation (for handling anything requiring an administrative interface e.g. for renting venues)
  • Provide information about what kind of help Edgeryders can offer to the person driving the initiative and who to contact (community manager).
  • Build a budget of easily available cash to remove the small initial hurdles to getting started. Little hurdles early on can kill momentum. Make sure you have a bundle of small money (cash) available to cover small initial costs e.g. Deposit for venue rental, nice WP theme, server space. ca 6k. E.g Awsome fund.
  • Recruit a community manager to welcome new people personally, coordinate the work, and interface with the edgeryders organisation (for handling anything requiring an administrative interface e.g. for renting venues)
  • Encourage the first ideas: Make the default response when anyone suggests some new idea "great idea! I can put a little time into helping you to make it happen. Let's talk". Get person to do the first writeup and call to action, and amplify it through social media channels.

5. MAKE IT EASY TO BUILD LOCAL INSTANCE / FORK

  1. Produce push-button infrastructure.
  2. Produce a calendar of relevant events to piggyback (ones on which a critical mass of the people you want to reach/involve are focused)
  3. Produce easy to use/modify key template budget for people to fill in for event and crowdfunding campaign
  4. Produce easy to use/modify template communication material and gif snippets modelled on what we produced for alt33c3 (one call to action per flyer with cute icons of what is needed), and event checklist

LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT EVENT DESIGN

  • People appreciated a calm, intimate environment dedicated to deep practical learning (e.g. Varbaeks GSM sniffing workshop which ran for 3 days and the surface mount electronics workshop) and peer to peer connection.
  • People really liked the setup with several things happening in the same venue at the same time:
    • Divide room into four sections via projector stands: three for continuous livestreaming of interesting content, one for presentations and workshop visuals
    • Have drop in and hang out area as well as gaps in the program for participants to fill in by proposing sessions to do themselves or from people they pull in.
    • For running multiple live-streaming from the eventn we found a great technical solution:
      • Projectors getting video material via raspberry PIs, not laptops. Make instructable from material on Slack channel
      • Audio broadcast via FM radio (people were asked to bring a simple FM reciever (e.g. in their mobile phone) + headphones. Make instructable from material on Slack channel
      • We should produce little booklets for the different projects and fill with cases/stories to sell during events.
    • NB: we need to be mindful of the audio (people speaking) when we are organising things in the same space. Some conversations being too loud would interfere with eg. workshops.
3 Likes

Very cool!

Thanks, @Nadia , this is really great learning. Some chicken-and-egg problems: if you set up collab environment before you have a community you will end up with people pushing back because you are not using their tool of choice. But if you don’t, when people show up there is chaos and a lot of bickering about tools. I guess this is unfixable, and we have to live with it.

Did someone work full time on this for four weeks?!

Congrats! I only watched this unfold from a distance but it seemed like a LOT of resources were mobilized, not just the crowdfunded amount but mostly enthusiastic contributors of sorts. How many people did eventually attend alt33c3?

Had it been anyone else, then yes it would have taken that much

It’s easy to underestimate just how fast we are. I was in there doing light touch community management, helping people coordinate etc. In the end around around 100 in total but never at same time. 3 core drivers, layer of 10 people doing in out, spec ific tasks.