Notes on community engagement and a new call for problems?

Workspaces OpenCare
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Hello, so moving from the interesting thread here around the modes of interaction and community engagement. I would like to share these notes outlining a few thoughts, comments, and questions:

 

Taking a closer look at what we have achieved so far, in terms of Opencare stories, I quickly mapped nearly 80% of the stories here and it looks like, most cultivated content, is about sharing a story that has already happened, or sharing a reference to something similar.  The least content type we have are problems (which could also be identified as ideas) .  While nothing is wrong with that,  just taking a look at OpenIDEO’s hybrid insights here, we find that one key finding for them, is that people were engaged to the platform because they found new ideas.

 

Given that we already are half way through the project duration, would it make sense to think of adjusting our community call??   We framed a general problem as care, and asked for input in terms of stories, and we are sometimes stuck with having the conversation running on the same story.  Care is very broad. Is not a straightforward concept that others can grasp holistically and directly (like clean energy resources, for example).  

Would it help to break down the concept, while making a call to share problems/issues that communities need solutions for?

We can carry on a new call on a new platform, but given time efficiency, I don’t see much value in re-inventing the wheel on other platforms, while trying to maintain prequisits of data and privacy.

Online vs offline community activity

 

On another note, at  a very early stage of the project, @Nadia organized Hacking Utopia.   We need to take a closer look at how projects were framed in early beginning, and the process and timeline that lead to the final results.  Despite the relatively long time fame that the course had, how far effective was the process of integrating an online element in an offline activity?

I am really appreciating our efforts here, retrospection is key in progression and defining value to to other who want to replicate similar processes in the future.

All the best,

M

 
 
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Asked for access to your spreadsheet

@Moushira, I would definitely not say no to new call for contributions in addition to those already framed on general experiences of care, mental health, migrant care, DIY solutions. Remember we had the conversation before where we said anyone in the consortium can put together a call based on new framings. so sure, I’d say we don’t need to deliberate too much, just go ahead, start, and if one of us can help will gladly do so. In Italian it would be also great… now with the meetings in Milano even more suited (as a follow up?).

I don’t know what to say about the distinction between problems/ ideas/ stories… The latter is inclusive of the former and find it hard to draw a line.

Same with new ideas versus learning, inspiration, support or all the things people report to find on edgeryders - if you look at the comments to the stories the first by someone is usually a reaction in the commenter’s own words (example: " The Open Insulin project inspired my friends and me a lot, which ultimately led to starting ReaGent").

Heads up: it might be useful to change settings to the HackingUtopia list of students and stories - the spreadsheet contains their personal info. Ping @Susa.

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call for ideas?

Hey @Noemi,  the sheet is now made public. In my mind, I have an idea:

  • Start a campaign, while aligning our outreach channels, and friends with big followers, to help us spread the word.
  • Start a new call for challenges, that is as straight forward as:   
    • Share your story that compeletes one of the following scentences:
      • "In a world of commercialized health care, the one service that I wish to provide to my family is.."
      • "Probably I am in good hands in terms of physical and emotional care, but the one problem I wish to solve for someone I care about it...."
      • "In my recent travels, I came across communities with different lives and different set of problems, the one problem that I wish could be solved for them, is.."
      • "My life is cool, but the one problem that ca help me enhance the quality of taking care of my kids, is..."
    • I avoided anything that mentions, "I am a refugee, and the one thing that will change my life is..", because this has a potential of severly undermining the crisis of millions living on the verge.  Unless done with care and context, it is borderline inhumane to talk about it, imo :)
  • In general, the complete-the-scentence approach is one possibility that we can build on, the good thing about it is that it opens doors to make everyone a brief storyteller (which is eventurally true!),  while we help/inspire with adding a story heading.

This is one approach, happy to discuss fruther ideas, remotly ;).   Cheers, M

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Asset mapping vs. need mapping

The “beginning of the sentence” format is a clever one, @Moushira . You can certainly do this. I would suggest asking some questions about capacity: “The care problem towards which I want to contribute myself is…”; “I am working on…”; “Here’s what I’m trying to build: …”

This is called asset mapping. The idea is that people solve their own problems (most likely at the community level, less so at the individual level), so that there is no duality betwen people with problems and people with solutions, because they are the same people. This is also consistent with opencare and its proposal. By implications, it does not matter so much what are the problems, but what solutions are already (tentatively) being deployed. Once in the open, solutions will learn from each other and imitate tricks from each other and eventually you will have… better solutions. Hopefully.

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Cool!  Assuming the same group is probelm and solution providers, this is something that has some potential,  but the other value is harvesting a content of clearly defined problems, or issues that could be grouped together.  This helps with targeting potential problem solvers/hackers to join the conversation.  The latter group isn’t necessairly always interested in reading elaborate material, and need a clear issue to “fix”.

When you say I can certainly do this, you mean that I can adjust the challenges page to make it easier for new content providers to fill in this type new stories?  Thanks @Alberto.

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Yes

We developed the challenge content type exactly so that partners couls use ER to ask their own questions and encourage their communities to answer them. Challenge responses (post-type content items) link to challenges and are served to OpenEthnographer and to the graph dashboard via APIs.

If you want to do this (for example with the “complete this sentence” format), welcome. We will upload your challenge so that it gets to the challenges page, and it will have its own URL etc.

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Please respect our students privacy.

Completely unacceptable using personal data not explicitly approved for use by each and every individual, ie if it’s not on this platform it’s off limits.

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welcome back

I was gonna miss you

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Stand down

@Costantino : Nadia is making a perfectly fair point. Sharing private email addresses violates the TOS. You have no business being sarcastic. An apology would have been a much more appropriate response.

There seems to be a lesson here: commodifying people as “research material” and community building do not go hand in hand.

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This is very nicely put together: commodifying people as “research material” and community building do not go hand in hand.  Just a reminder that this material was posted earlier,  by the project that @Nadia was part of.  Glitches happen, and I am not pointing fingers. Again, when I found the doc on ER, I assumed everyone is OK with it, especially after 8 months (because, we respect and take privacy seriously as we see).

This is part of project classification: I was, and still am, trying to put together the picture of how the process of the workshop went.  My main point was to idenify how the ideas that the student chose to work on, don’t fall under probelms that require a solution/product, (like how Domus workshop went) but more of a broad, controversial topics, and I couldn’t find this outline elsewhere to refer to, and Nadia doens’t disagree that this kind of documentation is missing.

That topic aside, it would be nice to engage in replies around my questions in the topic, and new call for ideas proposals.  Thanks @Alberto.

M

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I can’t agree more @Nadia, but I found this sheet already in one of the older posts on ER.  If you have another similar sheet identifying early project ideas, without breaching privacy, please share it, and I will replace the link.   When privacy concerns are resolved, it will be nice to start commenting on the core question.   All the best :).

Update: I see that doc permission has now changed, I would like at least to have the main questions that were identified in the doc, briefed elsewhere, in public, in order to help analyze and make sense of my question. As I said,  I found the doc on the platform here, so I naturally assumed both author and students are OK with it.

M

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Got url?

If it is accurate that link has been published somewhere else on the platform then we need to remove it. Thanks.

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As mentioned in the update above, it is here.  If you can help share the main topics that were identified by the groups, and help us realize how the process of sharing on edgeryders was integrated in the process, and reflected on the results, that will be great. Thanks.

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Thanks, has been removed

It should never have been published there.

Re other questions: Not realistic at the moment. Will have to wait till schedule frees up as requires me to go through older material. Noemi will inform if/when happens.

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process and lessons learned documentation

Cool, will be looking forward.  Based on some comments on an earlier post from DA workshop, here, I assumed that we have a documentation of process and lessons learned but I missed it somewhere. But probaby this is scenario of online/offline engament is something that opencare needs to take notes and develop lessons learned from, so far.   Thanks!

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Privacy - confidentiality - openness

@Nadia and @Moushira, these are interresting topics. As we start growing a community for WeHandU where we need to be in touch and try to match people with different skills it appears to be non-trivial problem to solve. I would be interrested to hear if the OpenCare/Edgeryders community has some solutions to propose for how to make a discussion forum where people can share and suggest while protecting these issues.

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Organise community call for this discussion?

Rune, as mentioned above am stretched too thin for write-up. But if you organise an online hangout about privacy  topic think it will be relevant to  others who can make it.  Would try to make it myself, but @Matthias is also knowledgeable about this. add new event and url  for call- we send out on countonme email.

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Great move

Hi @Moushira, this compilation is so great. I am unsure how it can be used to inform data analysis but my instinct tells me the classification you came up with has value.

I hope to find some time beteen now and tomorrow or the day after to trigger something based on your work.

See you soon in Milano

Guy

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Digging deeper for CE scenarios!

It can be used to understand how community engagement scenarios develops, how to learn lessons, harness effects and/or make changes to adjust effects accordingly.  IMO, ER analysis of the experience won’t be complete without sample user interviews investigating the “why” and “how” of what brought them here :).  As for this initial classification, we can dig deeper to find more patterns within replies of each category, if we want to. That could be something to analyse.

…and I am afraid I won’t be in Milan personally. Long live the remoties :). Cheers!