Main Session: The Edge of Funding

[gehan]

THE EDGE OF FUNDING - Sustainability and Financial models

A panel session moderated by Eric Osiakwan

#OpenVillage, 19-21 October, Brussels

You want to sustain the good work you are doing. In a resource-strained world, you need to be smarter in how you search for and acquire resources. What models are most future proof? Funding is perhaps an obvious means but is getting harder to access and research funding often is focused on serving particular sets of interests.

This session will take a broader look at how to sustain our work in a rapidly changing context. Panel members will share their expertise, followed by Open Space to give participants an opportunity to explore particularly relevant ideas or models in more detail.

This session has been developed to span all the themes at Open Village, from open science to collective living and working, to culture and policy. What kind of sub topics do you want to see covered in this panel? We want your thoughts on this as well as the kind of panel members you’d love to hear from.

While we build the lineup, feel free to put yourself forward as an active contributor and get a ticket to #openvillage!

Learn more.

Paola Villarreal Paola will contribute her experience in doing programming for the greater good and the challenges of financing the work. Paola started applying for fellowships in 2014 (she was a Mozilla Open Web Fellow), and developed a personal strategy to get funding. Her experience has to do with training oneself to find out the funders' perspective and possible adjusting one's research to increase the odds to get a project supported. Some background reading: Meet Paola Villarreal

Chris Cook Chris has had an unconventional career path that takes in the UK Department of Trade and Industry; market regulation and development as a Director of the International Petroleum Exchange and then a Dot Com entrepreneur in the world of global markets. This path came to an abrupt end when he blew the whistle on oil market shenanigans and since then he has been researching more enlightened - peer-to-peer - approaches to the flawed system he had left. Some background reading: Meet the Market Developer: A Conversation with Chris Cook

Eric Osiakwan Entrepreneur and Investor with 15 years of ICT industry leadership across Africa and the world. Eric was part of the team that built the TEAMS submarine cable in East Africa - he has worked in 32 African countries setting up ISPs, ISPAs, IXPs and high-tech startups. He serves on the board of several organisations like Farmerline, Forhey and many more - some of which are his investments. Eric is a Poptech, TED, Stanford, MIT and Harvard fellow.

[winnieponcelet]

DIY Science Network participating

DIY Science Network want to participate in the panel to present the perspective of bottom-up research initiatives. They’re exploring both the short term (how to get funded now) and the long term (how to change funding policy culture). Ping @Lucy

[yannick]

Gamification at OpenFab

I’m working now on the development of gamification elements at OpenFab, a fablab in ixelles. Where we are looking at how we can create a system that mixes money and inside credits. Moneytarisation of each brought resource and every possible issue becomes a mission that can be beaten while receiving credits. These credits can then be use for other resources. The idea is to have it ready for september, and we are using github as the managing tool: https://github.com/openfab-lab/openfab

[noemi]

Cant tell how advanced the thinking is…

@Yannick could you see this contribution in a panel or simply to help us move forward with how we design it?

I remember Ouishare at some point had a system of internal credits, is this the logic? I couldnt find a writeup on your github rep unfortunately…

@breathinggames are thinking along similar terms, advocating for social mutual credit as a way to finance the work in open projects. Maybe Bernard can explain more.

[noemi]

Heads up: I spoke to Paola Villareal yesterday who agreed to be part of this panel! She is a programmer and data scientist advocating for social causes, and recently with Creative Commons as a Director of Product Engineering.

She will contribute from her journey of getting her work funded in a more or less sustainable way: through fellowships in different programs over the past years. @lucy and @damiano I think you will enjoy meeting her.

Looking forward to making this session official, getting there and thanks for the patience

[breathinggames]

Economics frame the way we interact socially. Today’s funding generally foster competition instead of collaboration. This creates high collective costs instead of mobilizing everyone’s efforts to meet collective challenges.

We propose a game that enables players to experiment different socio-economic dynamics.

We will bridge it with our work, introducing the value accounting system we use, and the cryptocurrencies system we have been developing.

[gehan]

Hey! I really like this. What I understand about the panel will be structured - I’m wondering if this would sit better somewhere in the 3 days where we can get good interaction from those who are interested? How long does a game take?

[noemi]

I agree with Gehan, the game can stand alone in the afternoon of that same panel. Back when we talked to Fabio and Bernard in the team the panel idea was early days and we thought the game can piggyback on it. From my notes, it seemed that the game aims to make us think about systems where everybody creates their own set of monetary units and the right to fund the projects they want. What it will reflect on is if and how “social credit would be the better way to finance open projects that we do.”

Also @breathinggames we need the name + duration + ideal name of participants and any other logistics required in order to include it in the program. Thanks!

[noemi]

Hey, I just saw this session tweeted. Wondering if we can update the page with the confirmed panelists and moderator? Thanks @winnieponcelet if you have the time. See @gehan’s update of the collaboration panel page.

The next step would be to promote sessions and encourage participants to drop in the questions from their own work.

[winnieponcelet]

Updated with what I had. Asked Chris for a hi-res picture.

Has anyone received a picture from Paola?

[noemi]

I’ll email her tomorrow and ask for it, sorry for the delay!

[winnieponcelet]

Thanks Do we have some info for a short bio, or can you ask that as well?

[breathinggames]

@gehan @noemi
Hi, we are open to organize the game when it fit best. We could take a name such as “Money and Social Innovation”. I think the usual time for the game is about two hours. I think it is better with a group bigger than six people up to all villagers. For logistics, a space where the participants can move easily, that is with no tables or chairs in the middle. Out of that, a whiteboard, a table, and possibly a beamer. Best,

[noemi]

Hey, have you seen the latest version of the program?
There afternoon sessions under the headers of Freestyle, where all the session ideas not officially in can be hosted - we’ll do a shoutout during the day so people can announce themselves, and allocate rooms on the spot. Works?

[breathinggames]

Hello @noemi . Ok, let’s do so.

[winnieponcelet]

@nadia we thought you’d be a good fit as a moderator from your experience with Open&Change and Edgeryders. I thought I had asked before, but couldn’t find the communication anywhere, so probably not.

Are you up for being moderator?

[noemi]

She’s in!! I asked yesterday too :))

[Eric]

Dear All,

I am looking forward to being a part of this conversation and getting to know the community. My contribution would be through an African lense since that is much of my experience.

Eric here