Anique Yael Vered is Edgeryders’s new research coordinator. Photo credit: @unknown_author
One thing we do at Edgeryders is research. We have to: we are trying to live by a book that no one has written, so we have to come up with it ourselves. People in the community are doing biohacking, autonomous health care, network bartering, co-living, open source disaster response, permaculture, participatory and citizen science, civic hacking with open data, digital ethnography, my own obsession network science, and much more. We do so often adopting wildly interdisciplinary stances – difficult, but potentially rewarding. Our dedication to documentation of everything we do and commitment to openness and sharing knowledge makes it quite natural for us to be part of research efforts. We are just now concluding a large EU-funded research project, which was a very positive experience for all of us. It is clear that this community has incredible potential for research. At the same time, our efforts are often disorganised, disconnected, and they operate at too small a scale. Some of the potential gets lost.
So, here’s the deal. We are setting up a business unit to develop research activities based on the community’s skills and projects. Our vision is to connect the Edgeryders community’s skills, activities and projects with the research community; to design together ambitious, high-impact research projects, fundraise around them, and execute them with the highest ethical standards.
As everything in Edgeryders, this “business unit” will actually be a network, and it will be led from the margins, not from the center. We invite those of you that feel close to the world of research to be nodes of that network. You may have projects, ideas, opportunities; we can bring to the table the Edgeryders corporate infrastructure and track record, and some proposal writing- and project management muscle. We also have ongoing deep collaboration with some of the best universities in the world.
As a first investment in the Edgeryders Research Network, we have hired someone. She will take the lead in mapping the community’s strengths and interests to funding opportunities, and driving forward our effort to become a bottom-up research powerhouse. I am honoured to introduce you to Anique Yael Vered, Edgeryders research coordinator.
Anique’s background is diverse, like that of so many of us. But, in essence, she is a strategist. We believe she can lend coherence, vision and intelligence to our work, and are looking forward to working with her. Also, she has taken to Edgeryders with great enthusiasm: those of you that were at the Open Village Festival have already appreciated her team spirit and generosity. The rest of you will no doubt have plenty of opportunities to get to know her.
So: if you have great ideas for research, you now have a natural ally in Anique. You can contact her through the Edgeryders platform or by writing to anique [dot] yael [at] edgeryders [dot] eu. We set up a workspace for the Edgeryders Research Network on this platform, that you should also join if you want to be involved. That is where you are welcome to upload links, proposal, start discussions or whatever. It may look messy initially, but trust us – decentralised groups work, and we have many years of experience in building them and participating in them. Ad maiora!