Refreshing Our Communication Strategy

[elf_pavlik]

Public Reviews?

In next weeks I plan to focus on bringing more attention to the work we do with unMonastery framework and prototype of Matera node.

1. Next Saturday - SenseCamp in Berlin  if someone doesn’t know MakeSense network please check out my post on ER platform

2. May 5-7th OuiShare Fest in Paris - we became finalists of OuiShare Awards 2014 BTW we need 1 min MAX video for that!!!

3. Elevate Awards 2014 call for nominees till June 21st

4. Emerging Leader Labs - just replied to my tweet and I look forward to connect more with them. On note of unMonastery pre-history, during our discussion in Strasbourg I channeled big inspiration from post announcing launch of ELL in many ways i see their brave experiment making our brave experiment possible!

For establishing all those relationships I see need for clear interface. One of my motivations for starting Public Reviews relates directly to that. Those who look for ways to work with us or start unMonastery node(s) in another location, usually people busy with doing a lot of work just as we do, could in just 1h get overview of happenings in the whole week.

I find Matera very cool place and I look forward to go there again in June, still I see no reason that we all limit our focus to just this one funky town, especially with all that mess with MT2019, controversies around it with us bit stuck in the middle of that all + personally i find this whole European Capital of Culture competition rather SILLY!

I would like to discuss it further during next Community Call… wait did we also dropped that interface

I’ll try to do some work on documenting all those various interfaces, optimized for various audiences so that we can try to create new interface before dropping the old one, or at least we make clear decision that we lower priority on interacting with certain audience…

[alberto]

Right about community calls

@elf Pavlik, community calls fell through the crack as people who set them up and ran them (mostly @Noemi) got saddled with other priorities, and who does the work calls the shots. We have it on our calendar to rediscuss it with her next week as she returns from this long trip from the Caucasus region.

[alberto]

Documentation, on the other hand

Documentation is a great way to do communication. It means that people who want to communicate with you can do so, right at the moment in which they are ready to do it. Unfortunately this seems not to be the unMonastery strongest asset at this point, with exceptions (@Marc, mostly; Elf and Cristiano have great documentation for everyday life with the open data stuff, but the projects themselves – mesh network and interface – are not broadly documented that I can see).

I took some time to go over the projects section of the matera.unmonastery.org website. We had a big discussion on why you guys needed your own separate home on the web to keep track of the different projects in a more compact way, and now it’s there, but the documentation is not really happening. Most projects are documented by a couple of paragraphs of project descriptions, but nothing else (exception: @katalin). For example, The Book of Errors has an explanation of what the project means to do, but then there is no actual Book of Errors, or link to some wiki where the errors are being entered and interpreted.

There are also projects that go completely missing. One is the Festival of Growing, and we know why, with the mini-flame war of the past weeks. The other is food distribution unchained, and we do not know why. The project has made it to the finals of the European Social Innovation Competition, and it would be nice to flaunt it a bit. @Lois is completely under the radar: I already asked her to post what she is doing, but so far nothing is happening.

Lack of documentation is not ok, and it creates me an embarassing situation with MT2019. It’s great that you guys are transparent about buying local food, but the city is investing for you to do the projects, and that is where accountability needs to be focused. @La_Gaia, this needs to be the main focus of the evaluation, IMHO.

[la_gaia]

Accountability= evaluation?

Hey @Alberto,

totally agree that transparency on what has been done and accountability to the people of Matera. @Ben is working on a very thorough report for Matera2019 on everything that has been done so far, and this will be useful for whoever ends up doing the eval. I would suggest that we (@la_gaia @ben and others) collaborate to translate that information into bitesized accessible pieces.

I hope to work with @K on the networks side of the evaluation, and we’ll be reporting back once we have a plan in place. In the meantime if @David Bovill can update the report text and @Lois can do her networks answers we’ll have a pretty comprehensive set of mid-project dataz.

Thanks @Kei @mariabyck @Marc @elf Pavlik @Ben @Bembo Davies @David Bovill @Lucia @Rita for your network dataz so far, I know it was LONG to do.

[la_gaia]

flame war?

Also, @Alberto, as an aside.

My observation from a partial view on the ground would be that the ‘flamewar’ started partially because of lack of action on the Festival of growing side, and not viceversa.

[nadia]

Instructable for documentation on Edgeryders

1. Create a group for your project here on the Edgeryders platform.
2. Post a description of your project and make sure you upload an image/logo for it.
3. Write status updates in the forms of posts in the group on a regular basis. If you are photo or video documenting as Maria is, embed one video in each post with information about it.

Why a group?

We cannot deal with a zillion different channels, so we need everything in ONE place in order to fullfill reporting obligations as well as to keep the rest of the community up to date with developments within the different unMonastery projects.

Groups are collaboration spaces where people can get in touch, post their own material or ideas, upload wikis, documents etc that are then in one place for others to look up later.

Also, we receive notifications from the groups which makes it easier to spread the word about individual projects using the Edgeryders online presence. Also, we are adding the posts people put a little effort into onto the Agency group where they are going to be refined into great posts to be pushed out in concerted efforts soon.

[la_gaia]

Evaluation Group?

Hey @Nadia!

Would you say that the evaluation should be a group as well?

[cc/ @K ]

[elf_pavlik]

ONE place? sure - The World Wide Web!

We cannot deal with a zillion different channels, so we need everything in ONE place in order to fullfill reporting obligations as well as to keep the rest of the community up to date with developments within the different unMonastery projects.

I understand that from your very likely Edgeryders-centric perspective keeping everything on edgeryders.eu may seem like a good approach. From my perspective, where I focus on open cooperation among people participating in all kind of different networks, it doesn’t appear so peachy

Different conversations fit better different channels. I also don’t see everything as bla, bla, bla chats and some collaborations can benefit from more structure, provided by tools like Loomio, Trello, GDrive, Etherpad etc. (proprietary ones preferably replaced by open source alternative with comparable usability).

Another example - Open Tech School - also runs community forum and I really don’t wont us to get in this unfortunate trap of online (Web2.0) silos! And we will face same challenge over and over when working on intersection of multiple networks, especially when staying on level of 5 years old (~= ancient) web technologies!

I don’t say that all the technological solution exist there all ready just to press the button and enjoy new capacities. Many pieces already exist, other pieces various people around the world keep working on, other pieces we may need to step up in developing and contribute them to this big puzzle. Even if many of us don’t see ourselves in a position to offer such contribution, let’s at least stay clear that with current technological limitations we simply won’t find easy solution that makes everyone happy. Which means we all need to take various compromises and make sure that we recognize needs of everyone involved in all the various collaborations…

At the same time I wouldn’t like that we use limitations of currently mainstream ‘web’ technologies as an excuse. We can improve a lot in our communication and documentation practices. Still I would like that we keep those limitations in mind and look at / contribute to next generation technologies which can help us overcome them!

I didn’t find time to continue development of software currently running unmonastery.org it implements set of modern technologies, including basic Decoupling Content Management and plans for adopting PESOS promoted by #IndieWeb community (bit to early for IMO preferable POSSE approach!). I want to try roll in such developments as part of Code for All network, where I hope Matera could possibly host 2-3 people brigade, as I try to explain here

[kei]

A connecting group?

@Nadia and I spoke of making 3 groups for Mapping the Commons, Sustainability Plan and OTS, as well as one overarching group to connect them - perhaps the evaluation could serve this function?

Though certainly not opposed to it standing on its own

[nadia]

Evaluation group being the overarching connecting group, right?

Evaluation is also where one sees where there are unnecessary duplications of effort, challenges in the different projects and what can be done to work around them etc. So it can be helpful to the different projects moving forward. So yes, I think it makes sense. Also with groups you can set up forms/surveys, wikis, events etc.

[alberto]

A group is a group is a group

On Edgeryders, we make groups (which we call projects to emphasize orientation to action) when some people need a little space where to interact with each other, put their thoughts, working documents, links etc. An evaluation project only makes sense if @La_Gaia is eliciting input from others, and such input is not a one-off. If she only needs to tell people “hey, go see my draft evaluation report” once, it might make more sense to have a simple post or wiki in the unMonastery group, and people can comment. Everyone who is subscribed to that project gets an email notification when the post is created.

If, on the other hand, interaction over the evaluation is recurring, then it might make sense to spin it off into its own project. This is also because projects are normally easier to find than posts within projects. 

[la_gaia]

Hey!

So at the moment I see myself as evaluation champion, not evaluator. As things stand, there will be no evaluation report, only data that someone can use for an eventual evaluation.

I think it makes sense for the evaluation to be a group= we cannot measure, modify and make better if evaluation is what happens at the end. @Kei is interested in how to measure the networks side better, @k is looking into being networks, evaluation and monitoring ninja, a lot of @Lucia's work and @mariabyck's videos will be supremely useful for any evaluation and monitoring. @Bembo Davies book of errors is evaluation by another, literary, name. @Rita O's diary idea also.

Are you all (@Kei @K @Lucia @mariabyck @Bembo Davies @Ben @Rita O) happy to have an overarching ‘measuring’ group that we all add to?

Gaia

[ritao]

daily diary

@Ben my idea is quite easy. I’d like that, daily, we write quick notes on what we’ve done and people we’ve met (also info about what they do). Sometimes it happens that I meet people that had already met other unmonasterians but none else knows so I think that informations don’t circulate between us in the proper way. In addition, maybe this might be helpful for a weekly summary and for @La_Gaia evaluation on networks. On my side, this could help me to understand which kind of Materani are involved and if I can facilitate some hidden interactions

[la_gaia]

Useful for networks!

Hey @Rita O, see above.

Very useful for me

[noemi]

Re-instated community calls

Hi guys,

I’ve been reading this from afar, and first I want to say that community calls are back. But the reasons they have worked before Lote3 and less at the beginning of this year is not just because, like @Alberto said above, they need someone to take charge and organise them. Also because they need content: someone to set the agenda and let the others know where help is needed, concretely. And then of course, do writeups and keep an overview of who’s doing what from one week to another.

Giving that we’ll be starting to prepare our Spot the Future June event and tentatively events at unMonastery in the fall, it makes sense to put time into weekly coordination. And now that you need a tight overview on unMon communications, even more…

So my question to you is: would you be up for having a couple of unMonasterians in the weekly calls? Can you keep Dorotea or myself updated with short agendas and get involved in preparing the calls? I no longer think one of us can keep track of everything, at the pace at which things on Edgeryders evolve. The next one is this Thursday, but since it’s a holiday and long weekend some of us are away, myself included. Check the call you can attend and let us know in a comment?

[ben]

Tomorrow’s Call

Hey @Noemi

I could potentially join Thursday’s call, however is it set to go ahead, has it been circulated? Above and beyond this I’d be happy to lend a hand going forward, let me know where you’re collating agenda’s in advance and how things are being promoted and I’ll contribute what I can. I’ve also prompted other unMonasterians to join so hopefully we’ll start building good connections in the next few weeks Ping @Bembo Davies @Kei @mariabyck @RitaO

[dorotea]

yes please

yes please keep us updated if you can join the community calls,

the next one is 1st of May, but it’s a holiday, some people might be away, and some of us will be at the OuiShare Labs Camp, so it’s possible that we might be busy at the time of the call, but in general please join any call you can attend

[ritao]

I’m in

ty @Ben, I want to join! not possible this thursday but hopefully next ones

[dorotea]

great

see you in the calls !

[mariabyck]

I would like to be in on these calls.

just signed up for tomorrow