Yesterday evening, Daniel, Dorotea and I had one of those calls. You know where you give yourself time to reflect on what it is you and others really enjoy and want to do, and go on to identify how you can go about doing it together. Including how you could work out the practical bits like making the work economically self-sustaining so everyone is paid and no one is burning out.
We brushed on several different topics starting with how we each prefer to work, what we like and what we want to do differently now that everyone has has time to get a feel for how things happen in Edgeryders. This post presents them one by one and ends with a list of what we have agreed to do, where and how.
Storytelling for valuable participation
One of the priorities of the Agency is to develop the storytelling around Edgeryders company, and the topics of interest in the community to an external audience for whom a lot of the things we discuss are new. Some of this is done in a centralised way e.g preparing a standard presentation that anyone can use in pitching their ideas to others whom they want to engage in an initiative in or through Edgeryders. Most of it is decentralised: helping Edgeryders community members get better at communicating the themes or issues they care about in a way that makes them accessible and engaging for the world at large. This is done by preparing a guide for storytelling as well as processes for members to help one another develop posts, articles, project presentations and calls for participation.
Developing Living on the Edge events into sustainable conversations
We want to develop the LOTE format so that it is even better, engages more people and carries itself money-wise. We are not interested in dog and pony show formats with one person talking, but events as shared learning journeys where you come together and figure things out with peers from different walks of life. The way we see them unfolding are as longer conversations around topics that matter betwen people who are
- Interested in the field
- Interested in developing their own ideas
Edgeryders role in this is to make the conversations technically possible, building and maintaining diverse communities around the topics as well as driving collaborative prototyping of the ideas that come out of the conversations. A solid model is one which allows conversations to be hosted by individuals who are very knowledgeable about the area, but does not play into the digital sharecropping prevalent online e,g, Huffpo.
Managing information load and time/energy costs of coordinating a distributed team
When discussions get going on Edgeryders, they REALLY get going. This means lots of notifications in your inbox which can be overwhelming if you haven’t adjusted the notification settings in your profile. The other issue we discussed was how to allocate the 2000USD available for the Agency. The agreement was to put it aside to pay for the Agency to meet or for other expenses if needed. Basically we just earmark it for later.
Daniel:
- is up for tasks that are focused and require 4 hour bursts every now and then- not the day to day management of Edgeryders social media presence, or interaction in the platform.
- is taking charge of producing a presentation of the Edgeryders company that tells the story of what it offers prospective clients in a convincing way that positions it well.
- Possibly connecting it to relevant/right prospective partners/clients.
- he would like to develop the lote event format into something sharp that will also be economically viable together with Dorotea
Dorotea:
- Is up for more regular basis work with the aim of helping Edgeryders get better at storytelling to an external audience around topics that are of interest/ within areas of specialisation of community members.
- feels Edgeryders are predominantly good at discussing with each other: Some work needs to be done to help community members develop their stories for people who do not understand the topics so well.
- would like to try things like produce a guide for storybuilding, or one on one story development help.
- would like to drive the work of Making Lote4 happen.
Said:
- Is implementing the social media plan he proposed and will have little time for anything else over the next three months
Nadia:
- Is doing the coordination, ensuring everyone is participating in ways that work for them and supporting everyone however she can in her capacity as CEO of Edgeryders LBG.
- Prefers communication in writing on the Edgeryders platform or email.
What we are doing ahead of the next hangout
- Set up permanent skype chat channel for the Agency group, for more fluid and restricted communication off platform
- Build presentation of Edgeryders company
- Prepare list of links to possible topics to explore further for \#lote4