This post was co-written by [elf Pavlik], [katalin] and [Ben], the others trust in the process. Given our silence, we wanted to give a comprehensive overview of what we’ve been up to and the challenges we’ve faced.
We’ll be doing a hangout later today, 17:00 CET.
(We tried to embed a video here but it didn’t work - here’s the link)
How we’ve been organising:
- Liturgy - Our Daily Routine
We fell into a daily routine proposed by Cristiano fairly organically. The “Liturgy” allows us to eat meals together, be present at the circles, and still be able to organise our time to work on our individual projects. Newest additions are the morning bell (at 07:00, rung by [Marc]) and morning practices (led by Bembo). Nobody is required to do anything they don’t want - but we trust in the process, that everyone seems to want to participate in the things we consider important.
- Decision Making Process; Morning Circle, Consensus Circle - Our Tradition
[Bembo Davies] (as is our tradition), has taken on the role of scribe to the archives. You can find a more extensive post here on the subject.
- Trello and Google Groups
For the most part we’ve been using Trello to organise the day-to-day running of unMonastery, our organisation is open, so all our tasks, discussion and planning are in public view, if you’d like to get an insight into what we’re doing at any time please feel free to view this activity. As projects, processes and proposals become more substantial, we’ll make individual summary posts and share documentation.
elf will also be working over the next few months to figure out how to use the Trello API to plug into EdgeRyders and our website.
We have been tested:
- Heating
When we first moved into the building the heating worked in only one room. It has since spread and after 3 days of consistent heating 75% of the top floor is sufficiently warm enough to work and sleep in. Unfortunately the entire downstairs area still suffers from a lack of heating and is essentially unusable. Hot water works in all bathrooms upstairs and made an appearance in the kitchen for a day and then disappeared again.
It turns out that the underfloor heating present in the building, is the first of its kind in the area - so comprehensive documentation and knowledge on how to resolve all issues is lacking.
- Internet
We have for the moment a generally unreliable internet connection, shared with Matera2019, which has been down now for 72 hours. When it does work we suffer from a number of ports being blocked. [Marc] has made significant progress in setting up a VPN so that we can tunnel to the appropriate services.
In order to resolve this crucial loss of resource, we’ve looked into several alternatives and in the coming week intend to establish 3 alternative sources of connectivity, so that we have multiple falls backs and only need fear the internet apocalypse or [Bembo Davies]’s vow of low-connectivity.
- Funds
Are still not available to us (8 February). We acquire pretty much all the food using personal funds of individual unMonasterians. The first couple of days we were dining at 2 restaurants using food vouchers provided by MT2019. We stopped using them as soon as we got a basic kitchen setup up going. Funds were transferred on Friday, so we can expect to receive them early this coming week.
- Kitchen
We’ve found ourselves with a bachelor’s sized apartment kitchen, with similarly sized pots and pans. Don’t ask Bembo about it. We have been working with Antonio and Dora from MIMERS, to resolve and expand on the current situation.
unMiracles:
- Food
Despite our kitchen troubles we have achieved some tremendous meals.
Documentation and Evaluation:
- Networks Map
During Gaia’s time in Matera, we begun to establish a series of network surveys using ONAsurveys, as well as an initial evaluation framework for the project. We intend to embed at the core of the project a consistent mapping of our offline encounters, so that over time we can assess the unMonastery’s relationship to the people of Matera.
- unMonastery Analytics
elf each day takes photos of utility meters (gas, electricity, water) soon we intend to automate as much of this as possible, so that everyone can see charts of our daily consumption directly on our website [add photos]. Marc and Ben have also been evaluating the Open Energy Monitor which we could used to harvest all kind of relevant data.
- Radical Transparency
One of our main objectives is to establish unMonastery as an example of radical transparency, aiming to make it participatory by lowering the barriers to entry and ensure it is easy to replicate. By prototyping the tools and hardware necessary to do this, we hope to set an example of a community service supported by a community.
There is an active initiative already present within Matera as part of Open Data day to make all publicly funded organisation’s archives public, which makes for a good fit with unMon (internet contingent) radical transparency initiative.
- The Budget and Our Expenses
We continue to document the budgetary expenses of the project publically and will soon have this available in real time.
- Per-diems
Even though everyone (except elf Pavlik) accepted their per-diem, during a conversation yesterday we clarified between ourselves that for the most part our funds will enter the common pot used and be used to fund a collective effort.
After covering additional travel costs pretty much everyone hopes to break even at 0 and will not need to cover any costs from personal funds. It seems like no one expected to take home any of the funds and feels fine with this situation. We may write at some point a dedicated post examining this aspect of the unMonastery Matera experience and what is like to live at subsistence level of income.
As we are attempting to track as much information as we can, all of our common expenses from per-diems will be included in our budgetary reporting, as well as real-time updates once we bootstrap proper automation.
What we need:
- Research
Since we’re on the ground and trying to be as proactive as possible in our activities here, the less time spent researching online the more we can actively do. If you’ve got the time, assisting in research on the following areas would be of great help to our current work:
-
- Open Energy Monitoring (Establishing the build cost based on Italian suppliers)
- Local Knowledge of Matera and Organisations we should get in touch with, particularly projects that match with ours (@ilariadauria you once shared a list of groups, could you reshare this?)
- Using image recognition technologies to map offline noticeboards, using webcams and QR codes.
- Dehumidifiers - the building (and the Sassi more generally) suffers from a high level of humidity, we would warmly appreciate any advice on cost effective dehumidifiers or recommendations for alternatives to electricals.
- Supporting posts and social media
In addition to research, it would be particularly useful if other EdgeRyders were able to make online connections to our endeavours, whether in be in the local region or to experts in fields we’re currently working on, such as the energy monitoring and Marc’s solar project etc.
- Wish List and sponsorship
One thing we’re finding is that we don’t exactly have everything we need and we certainly don’t have the budget to procure it, so we’re going to post an initial Wish List soon - if anyone is able to provide these things it would be greatly appreciated.
On this same note, we realised that we’ve missed a bit of trick when it comes to sponsorship. Ben is currently structuring an initial plan for approaching different groups / organisations / companies for support in kind. With particular focus on individual projects. If anyone has experience in this area or would like to assist, get in touch with ben@unmonastery.eu.
- Sustainability Plan
We’re doing our best to keep track all flows of real world assets as we consume and produce (material goods and services). At the same time monitoring which of them we access using finances and investigating new alternative means by which to secure them. Either way at least, we should stay aware of what it really takes to run such projects now and in the future.
Once we’re properly back online we’ll begin to sync this with [Alberto]’s work on the Sustainability Plan.
Our Priorities:
- New Website
Very high on our list of priorities is to establish a new website that better supports the development of individual projects and shares the story of unMonastery more concisely to the outside world - when the internet is re-connected we should make significant headway.
- Resolving all the issues
Our current strategy is to try and shift responsibility for as many aspects relating to the use of the building away from outside stakeholders, so that we can be responsible for the issues and take an autonomous approach to solving them. But this is easier said than done.
- Community Integration - Our backend and frontend
Culture clash. we’re highly cognizant of the fact that the typical way in which we organise and work doesn’t gel well with standard approach to work in Matera, we we’ve resolved to keep only our backend digital and move to an offline approach as the frontend of the project.
- The Opening
We discussed moving The Opening back to the end of February - for three core reasons:
-
By then, the projects will be in a more comprehensible in shape and we will have established stronger connections.
-
Our living circumstances will not obscure the real goals and achievements of unMonastery - and perhaps fundamentally we need the bottom floor of the building in order to invite people in.
3) It will give us the appropriate amount of time to plan and create a special event.
Prior to this however, we do intend to go ahead with the press conference next Friday/Saturday and have plans for unMonasteries participation in the Open Data day on the 22nd.
- Understanding our relationships and the expectations placed upon us
Come in and play! (we’re getting ready to receive other unMonasterians)
ping [Alberto] & [Matthias]