[Feel free to add to this wiki, as I missed some note-taking during the convo.]
Grew up in Germany. Convergent with many concepts on Edgeryders. Technical background, material science. He’s interested in how complex networks can be described, specific properties of the network, especially the vocabulary necessary to communicate about this. His experience was that the higher and more well-known the institution he worked at, the stupider the project. Now interested in EdgeRyders because there’s a different kind of concentration of resources, and has the potential to achieve the same results as a more mainstream organisation.
Oana @OM:
Involved in 13 different projects in Romania, all within civil society, where she’s been working forever. Currently most involved in WWF, Alburnus Maior (involved in the Rosia montana gold rich region where the protests against mining through cyanide took place), platforma De-clic.ro.
She’s in the ideation stages with Troc.ong. The goal is to establish a platform which operates both online and offline which facilitates resource sharing between NGOs (unused resources, both physical and human).
End goal: free up resources + support small initiatives/groups. Create a common pot to be accessed by several projects. Split project management tasks to lower the costs of funding.
Next up: troubleshoot a dynamic for the platform to see what resources are available (with a wide variety of NGOs). Propose a dynamic coming from everyone. It’s an ideation workshop for validating the vision which will take place at FanFest at Rosia Montana this August.
Petre @jediknight
Co-founded an NGO in 2013 in Bucharest to connect the disconnected, eg share idle resources with other groups. Didn’t manage to carry out projects and became dormant. Interested and knowledgeable about Dragon Dreaming, a method he considers useful for an emergent community such as the one coming together around Futurespotters in Bucharest.1. Create something that answers a lot of needs - based on accurate perspectives of multi- no of players (document the vision together in a conference). 2. Governance model:who /how makes decisions as to what to implement?
This conversation was sparked by the question what follows after Futurespotters Bucharest, which people are now asking. Not many people realise that they can use the community and make out of Futurespotters what they need it to be. Provide the opportunities to work together they, themselves. There’s an expectation from EdgeRyders to provide a path, next steps, new project to organise everybody.
Inge told us how the Futurespotters community in Tbilisi stayed in touch over this past year, way after the 3 months project to bring them together ended - they had regular meetups with no pressure and the simple fact of catching up and having a one hour of good conversation mattered. Som in Tbilisi were already working together in difft projects, and at one point the idea of building a social innovation hub in one of the underused public libraries came up; now in process of finding another space because that option fell through for reasons outside their reach. Khatuna as a connector to UNDP has facilitated workshops and is instrumental to the group. Pointers for post-Futurespotters Bucharest: information circulation is important! Having a local connector/community builder that sees the bigger picture and relevance of Futurespotters, beyond the funding period, is essential. Someone who has both the time and right mindset.
Ideas emerging from conversation focused on how being a community means you should be able to have an easy way in and pointers to how you can and should contribute:
trythis:
- documentation is very important, allows people from different corners to stay connected and know what’s going on.
- what are the 5 things to push someone's project / get yours pushed? update the Get Involved page
- Invite people to do community calls
- perhaps make a call on making effective community/project drive calls
- point out that written docu ON ER is important!
- perhaps work out a few pointers for "learning to navigate ER".
- I think piggybacking with old-timers is a good idea and have them help you put up a post. How would you find the right person to help him/her derive some use for them as well...
- you have to have this low level communication going on while you get to bigger ideas of what a community can do together; meet regularly even though not everyone is interested in talking, some people just want to get to work or have enough work already to allow time for exploration.
Futurespotters Bucharest crowd is planning a meeting in September to touch base, reconvene and see where we’re headed.
