Summary of submitted proposals and next steps for the RezNet

From the beginning of the year we have submitted three proposals for the Horizon2020 programme. The approach that was taken at the end of the last year was to map the potential calls and go from there. There are three ways of how we usually proceed:

  1. writing a concept note and building the consortium by reaching out to potential partners
  2. “recycling” and strenghtening some of the previous applications
  3. responding to requests for partners we receive (mostly from showing the interest for a particular call on the participants portal).

As the first part of the year was quite busy for @alberto, we didn’t have the capacity to start from writing many concept notes and finally we followed the process under points 2. and 3.

We’ve spent quite some time trying to recycle previously submitted EPICS application and adapt it to the Swafs 27-2020 call (Hands-on citizen science and frugal innovation). Finally, it turned out this call would require too much modifications of the previous idea as "the intended citizen science activities should result in novel means of social inclusion”. This was quite different and also due to the lack of capacity we didn’t go through with it.

This left me with the process under the point no.3. How this looks like is:

  • we receive the request to get in touch and a few words about the project idea.
  • if it sounds solid and interesting, we get back to this person requesting more information and a document outlining the concept.
  • from that point, together with Alberto we respond to the request by a short document describing how we see our role in the project and how we can contribute. We always try to stick as much as possible to the “standard” workpackage and simply adapt to the topic, which I find is a good approach since it doesn’t require much effort. The adaptability of our methodology is a strenght.
  • then starts the negotiation in which our input is incorporated in the proposal and we discuss the budget.

This seems to be the easiest way to get in the consortium. But, it also means we often have little control in the writing process. This can result with our tasks being written by some consultancy agency, and our efforts translated in the budget are underestimated - because we have never got the chance to fully explain the complexity of our approach. It looks “attractive” and it gets integrated in the proposal in an “artificial” way.

We participated in the following:

  • GOVERNANCE 21-2020 (Developing deliberative and participatory democracies
    through experimentation): “Making the Citizens Voice Heard” (VOICE) project. 13 partners in total, led by the Hellenic Mediterranean University (Greece). Our budget: 168,5k. Documents here.
  • CE-SC5-25-2020 (Understanding the transition to a circular economy and its
    implications on the environment, economy and society): “leading the TRansion of the European Automotive SUpply chain towards a circulaR futurE” (TREASURE) project. 12 partners in total, led by the Politecnico di Milano. Two-stage application (so no budget at this point). Documents here.
  • NMBP-38-2020 (Citizens and industrial technologies): Bringing together SOCiety and KETs (SOCKET) project. 8 partners in total, led by European Federation for Welding, Joining and Cutting, Belgium. Our budget: 251,3k. This was the application in which we were the most involved in writing and were able to communicate quite well with the coordinators.

All in all, it was a good experiment as it gives me a clearer idea on how to proceed in future.

A while ago, I suggested a dedicated website for the RezNet. The reason is: one of my tasks is to reach out to potential partners. I write an e-mail, explain our methodology, point to the ongoing projects, to the Zenodo article on SSNA, to the Graphryder…to the partners who never heard of us, this can be overwhelming. The percentage of those who actually dedicate their time to go through the article and try to handle the Graphryder is low. Also, people coming to the platform, they see a lot is going on, but what does it all mean? How can it work for their project?

A nice website could resolve this. Not a lot of text, more visuals and clear explanation of how everything works. This can be something we present to the outside world.

I think it has to be divided in two parts (meaning showcasing two workpackages):

  • our standard WP with launching an online conversation and using the SSNA. We demostrate this on one previous and two ongoing projects. Here the potential partners understand the meaning behind each task and can easily imagine this being replicated to suit their project. Somehow, we fix the “price” and agree that we do not accept projects in which we cannot have the solid budget we need.
  • the new WP - instead, we offer another option for a lower budget (again fixed internally so we make sure we can deliver). This is good if we are proceeding as described under the point 3 because usually there are a lot of partners and the budgets are not much negotiable. In terms of content, it is what @hugi suggested: the SSNA based tool to increase value added from events in terms of better documentation and better networking for participants. We visualize this, if possible showing some examples.

@owen what would be the procedure to build something like this?

What do others think? @nadia @johncoate @amelia @matthias @noemi

2 Likes

The process is that you reach out to me and we coordinate a bit with some of the other work going on (we have a new team member, Andreja, who also has a lot of experience with EU fundraising. @kajafarszky can you help set up a call with all three of us ideally in the next 3 days if possible?

1 Like

@AndrejaL :point_up_2: is relevant to our conversation next week

Main challenge would be coming up with a solid visual concept to explain this, if we want to avoid anything too wordy.

I’m more on the layout and development side, so a copywriter with a solid grasp on this would be a wise investment. The content is priority and will really inform the layout and design — for everything else, I’m happy to get it off the ground. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Yes, first we would need to agree on the content and the structure.

@matthias going back to this, would it be possible to use something like that for the website?

Sure, but we’d need first to finish the visualization. The results we have so far are not interesting enough for including into a website, but we figured out the path to get there …

Do we have a budget for this? We might want to ask @felix.wolfsteller for making us a script for this, as he was quite enthusiastic about the “Gource for Discourse” idea back then. Let’s call it Disgource :stuck_out_tongue:

On another note:

When budgeting, please remember that there should always be 5% for tech maintenance, and any new tech development would come on top of that. That’s something I raised with the others from the mgm board last year and we agreed on that. Not sure if anyone told you yet, though :slight_smile:

1 Like

@alberto do you think we could find some budget?

I need to better understand what it is you are thinking. A few questions

  1. If you look at this page, what do you see is missing or not clear: start.edgeryders.eu
  2. If you look at this description of what we offer, what do you feel is missing or not clear: https://edgeryders.eu/t/community-services-and-tools
  3. If you look at the boilerplate text of what we do, what do you feel is missing or unclear:
    Communication & Promotion Resources: Scifi Economics Lab

This is great for a general overview, I think that building on this rather than creating entirely new website for the RezNet could work too. But, for example I wouldn’t put the RezNet (nor the EarthOS, cc @andreja) under “projects”. Can we think of separate “tabs” for each Unit? The Culture Squad already has its funnel website and its “tab” could lead to this: https://culturesquad.org/ (currently not working for me though cc @noemi).

I was thinking of something similar for RezNet in which we explain what can we do for a potential partner and how it works on the examples of previous (OpenCare) and ongoing (Poprebel, NGI) projects. This is what interests the consortia - to answer their question: how can this work for my project idea? What are the results we can get? It can be done by showing graphryder and/or linking to the posts on the platform explaining results and processes. For example this.

We could definitely use these videos to understand the SSNA, ethnography and community management. In general it’s a great overview of what we offer, but how can this be translated into a workpackage for a Horizon2020 project? Again, examples.

For the boilerplate text: also very useful (one phrase is not finished - third point from the bottom). Would add somewhere the EU programs we have experience with (this is something potential partners are also looking for, explicitly naming Creative Europe, Horizon2020, Climate KIC etc. would be good).

In general (and don’t know if this fits in the outreach strategy) but couldn’t we include the links to these funnel websites (or at least to start.edgeryders.eu) also somewhere on the platform? This would be for those who end up on the platform via edgeryders.eu and are looking to get a better understanding of what we offer. Instead of them looking for the posts such as those you shared, we should facilitate the access to this information.

1 Like

ok have a look at this? https://sensestack.netlify.app/

Again, from here I would use the Graphryder video and Open ethnography video. Still missing good practice examples. Basically would love to have three things at one place:

  1. What we have (tools and people)
  2. What we do (projects to showcase the methodology)
  3. What can you use us for (a type, or types of WPs we offer)
1 Like

ok not hard. guve me an afternoon

1 Like

So something like this @marina?

A grassroots initiative boosted growth and innovation in an Italian city facing brain drain
You are the Mayor of Matera, a peripheral city in Italy. Brain drain. You need to attract creative and entrepreneurial people. No jobs, bad infrastructure. You have 80,0000K Euro. How would you do it? Use our methodology to engage a large number of individuals to become a dense network, throw in an open question for people to discus and use our technology to turn their conversations into collective intelligence about how to solve the problem. Answer: Need new infrastructure. Solution: unMonastery - Secular monastic order modelled on the Benedictines. Outcome: City wins title of European Capital of Culture, active civic innovation network put in place our work mentioned as contributor to this and to citys 7% economic growth. Bucharest and Galway also contracted us to deploy methodology and tech for their own bids to ECOC competition.

Yes, I think creating these kinds of “scenarios” having in mind different stakeholders we are targeting is a good way to go. For the RezNet, these would be universities or other larger organizations applying for Horizon calls (in different domains), or any other EC calls. Then, for the EarthOS we can think of regions for example…in the end, we have a more global overview, directing people to specific Edgeryders units.

I’m not sure… it would depend on what kind of money we would be talking about. @felix.wolfsteller, how much would you charge us for making this?

Also, the creator of Gource is in theory available for custom viz work:

If you use Gource at work and are interested in getting new features developed or maybe would like to discuss other bespoke visualization work please don’t hesitate to contact me. (source)

2 Likes

Tricky one. It is obvious that the task is potentially “open end” (the sky is the limit). With visualization there is always room to add another parameter or improve the visuals and at the same time there will always be tiny rough edges that are incredibly expensive to smoothen out.

That’d be awesome to team up with him.

But to be honest - I am not familiar enough with the structure and the goal of this endavour and I would also assume that if you want to tackle this issue, the customers/you would have quite some work in ping-pong-communication fashion to figure out what exactly is the most meaningful and viable result.

At the same time as long is it works its a fun task (until the rough edges show up). And this is a task where a non-remote setting might be preferrable, for quick sketching together, showing intermediate results in the breaks etc. I will not put an offer here. Maybe if you guys say “lets look how far we can bring it in X hours, we roughly aim at this result(s) Y” we can negotiate about an hour rate.

You have a point. No, this is not a good use of your time. When Matt brought it up, I think he was more thinking about coding, not visualizing: contributing a Discourse module. I need to experiment a bit more myself before I understand if this is a promising path or not.

Sure enough, if the budget fits and/or the goal is precisely clear I’d be happy to take over some coding - as said for the most part I believe this might be a rather satisfying and fun work to do (compared e.g. to re-implementing Excel-Spreadsheet bugs in another software system so that the results line up). Feel free to reach out.

I have made a bit of headway. But you and @matthias will probably not like it, because I decided to go with Python + API. I added a few functions to the small library we maintain. Result:

I have since made some tweaks to the visualization and saved two Gource configuration files for two different situations. Also, the output from Gource is higher resolution than what I saved on YouTube. But still, not sure how meaningful this is a data visualization :slight_smile:

1 Like