Hey @howard_rheingold
We’ve been running a small scale attempt at what you propose above. Just setting up a flagpole and taking on the role of chorephraphers/djs for whatever comes out of it. It’s a fluid experience - I thought we would need a lot more to get it going…
Nadia, that is what I had in mind. I would add that a good question would be “What can we do to help your organization and to help grow a network of mutual aid efforts?”
(I tried to answer this in the forum, but I got the “answer these two questions” response to my attempt to post, but after I answered the questions, I still wasn’t able to reply, even though I was logged in.)
This is just to solve a technical issue for Howard:
Howard, I think you ran into an issue with our so-called ethical consent funnel required for our research work. I tried to reproduce the issue under your account, but couldn’t. I don’t want to pester you about more details, so as a quick solution I just completed that consent funnel form for you (since you said you had already answered the questions … means, it’s “ethically ok” ).
tl;dr Welcome to post on the forum now. You won’t see that issue again.
Speaking of this, I found out about this interesting project that’s working to create an open-source COVID-19 test kit, work carried out online on this platform Just One Giant Lab (JOGL). I didn’t know it, but it seems legit to me…
I am no biologist, nor a project manager, but I meant to share this opportunity with Edgeryders in case there is someone here that could help and is interested in sparing some time.
Great that this conversation has taken place. Great to see you here @howard_rheingold ! @johncoate mentioned an uptick in interaction at The Well. Is Brainstorms still around Howard? Do you see an uptick there too (I haven’t been in Brainstorms in ages).
Two observations I made in the past few weeks that touch upon this conversation.
Yes there is a long list of unconnected initiatives out there currently. Looking at a range of them here in the Netherlands, while some seem to have some substance, many others seem more a coping strategy that keeps one busy but has no impact or meaning on the originator’s scope of action or anyone else’s agency. Kind of like the way I keep a spreadsheet with case numbers in NL, providing a sense of control or something, but then announcing it to the world as yet another Covid dashboard for coders and designers to contribute to.
At the same time initiatives that might have a real impact are invisible and never mentioned online unless they become visible once creating such impact. (e.g. my brother in law’s 3d printer company has approached all businesses and factories that use their printers to donate printing capacity, creating a global networked printing facility, and now discussing with manufacturers (like Phillips) and health ministries how to deploy that network to print respirator parts and masks where needed. It won’t be publicly announced as a bottom-up initiative, and it may not be publicly mentioned at all ever.) How do we filter wheat and chaff on a list of initiatives, or do we have a role in guiding others to potentially more meaningful activities and away from the coping projects like my spreadsheet/ other’s shiny dashboards?
On working from home en masse. Most of my work is with government entities. A common tactic for people is to wait with doing something and ignore emails etc until the requester shows up at your desk asking about it . That escalation path is no longer available, showing up at one’s desk. As a result I see some civil servants withdraw on an island of clearly defined tasks, simply not responding to mails,calls etc about any other topic. A withdrawal. This means that all kinds of activities that depend on weaving together different acts by different parts of an organisation have more trouble building the connections and getting things done. This impacts precisely the type projects (around digital transformation, deploying new remote working tools, running experiments etc.) that would be of more interest now than before the current situation. Something to find a way of dealing with.
Great point. Anecdotally, I too am seeing people reaching out through personal networks. A lot is going on behind the curtains. In my case, it’s mostly systemic reflections in view of what comes next, but more practical people like your brother-in-law seems to be be will be taking action. Another example of action, which I would like to document next week, is @RobvanKranenburg’s initiative of spawning a disposable identity scheme to keep track of your susceptible-infected-recovered state.
Also a great point. I wonder if anyone has any evidence in support or to the contrary of it?
Btw, here’s a group of people, started by some friends of mine, collecting/pooling resources / experience on doing facilitation for groups/teams now coming online due to lockdowns f4c-response@groups.io | Home
this is super interesting @ton, do you think you could put us in touch? Would be nice to have a quick video chat to see how we can support their efforts ahead of this going public (still needs a bit of work on copy, broken links etc ): https://work.edgeryders.eu/
Sure, I can put you in touch with Nancy White (although she’s on US west coast time) and Beverly Trayner (who I think is currently in Portugal, so more or less on local time ) Sent you an intro e-mail.
This civil servants point seems like scenario where there is not a sense of purpose that connects people and gives agency. I do not have evidence of the contrary in government situations. Yet as my reply implies, it is clear how to avoid these scenario’s. I’m sure you know this too. Do you see groups working on that in parallel to their everyday work? Wouldn’t it take time to see the effects?
In the examples I observed it wasn’t so much lack of purpose but a withdrawal to one’s own defined tasks only. In part this is ok, given the situation. In part this will become an obstacle, because for a lot things / changes in an organisation depend on small amounts of time outside of those primary tasks of any given role. Remotely it is easier to simply shrug that off, which was harder to do in a f2f setting. There are scenario’s around it and as time passes new balances/patterns are sure to emerge anyway. But there is not much of a path around people just not responding.
My brother works in a business that interacts between state government and big project construction contractors. Up to this point it has all been paper contracts, lots of phone calls and face-to-face meetings.
Now they do tons of Zoom meetings. That’s fine. But the contracts portion brings up an interesting point. Whereas many industries already use DocuSign or SignRequest to legally sign documents (we do for example with the EC) or take it a step further a la Estonia and their Virtual Resident program (we also do), they not only do not have any history of doing that, they are prevented by statute to have anything other than “wet” signatures on documents. To change legally, the law itself has to change.
As food for thought, here’s an article from MIT Technology Review about the topic we have here. They don’t have an answer if the communitarian Internet is back … but they give interesting examples of what’s going on right now on the Net that is communitarian:
Heartening. Especially maybe for those of us who managed to keep the faith…
Another iteration of this I enjoy is “View from my Window” a giant newish group on Facebook where you show a pic of …the view from your window as you maintain your distance. It’s delightful.
Phil Agre had a mailing list long ago called The Red Rock Eater. It was a broadcast list for his often very interesting thoughts. One day, he asked people to send pix of where they sat at their computer. Since then, in every online community I participate in, I’ve started a topic thread on “where I sit.”
If you want to see where I sit, click on this link. When you load the page, hold the mouse button and drag to move around, click on the big round circles to zoom, and the smaller circles to see videos, text, links.
I used to have this idea of a WELL poster that was a grid of many WELLers at their terminals. Recently, in FB there was a reunion of the Habbo teens who are all now in their late 20s and early 30s where they showed each other their setups. Not so much art as you but multiple screens and good audio.
Was it hard to make that 3D image? Or did someone else make it? I noticed a name with a 707 area code. I could see a lot of uses for it.
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