Summary of the first Horizon 2020 Hangout. Please answer the questions

Research Network Horizon
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[@arthurd ], @Caroline , [@bcpx], [@Thanasis] and I were there. We did short introductions, discussed the different calls we are preliminarily intererested in, went through our various experiences in dealing with EU funding projects and came to an agreement about how to move forward together. I’ll start with what steps we agreed to take, and then fill in the rest below as I find more time. Maybe the others can help me fill it in later.

We agreed the way to go about doing this is:

  • Agree on a bigger purpose and shared vision of things we are excited about achieve together and with others and how we could contribute towards making them happen. The community says
  • Formulate a number of things we need to figure out to be able to do so as questions we need to answer: we develop these into hypothesis that we want to prove or disprove through research projects. And write 1 page concept descriptions per hypoithesis.
  • Find research instituions that want to pursue them with us and together build research projects that we submit to different Horizon 2020 calls.

By Friday this week please answer the following questions in a comment below!

  1. Some ambitious objectives or aims that I want to see realised are....
  2. Somethings that could contribute towards them happening are....
  3. I would know we had succeeded through....
  4. Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is....
  5. What would you need to figure out to be able to do so? what questions need to be answered? (that could need research attention directed to)?
  6. What hypothesis do we have that we would like to test with others?
  7. What would be required for me to the people we want to engage to be able to get involved? To want to contribute on volunteer basis?

Some inspiration from the community: http://popplet.com/app/#/1530679. For more in depth descriptions: Sharing visions of Edgeryders: the first community survey responses - Community - Edgeryders

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tech supporting social innovation towards digital green&fair

1.    Some ambitious objectives or aims that I want to see realised are

•technology supporting social innovation towards •digital green, •digital fair

2.    Somethings that could contribute towards them happening are

•project development e.g. one into the direction mentioned above and one in collaboration with public sector, acknowledging and supporting them as important driver of public/open innovation towards sustainable development

3.    I would know we had succeeded through

•a pilot project that builds a precedence case for multiplication by attraction

4.    Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is

•do it: develop project, find partners, write application

5 a.    What would you need to figure out to be able to do so?

•have to go through Horizion Material, will try to find out about framework (min. organizations needed, min. amount of funding etc., contact person …)

5 b.What questions need to be answered (that could need research attention directed to)? Who is making final decisions, how and when would the money be distributed, when would the project start, how long wold it take, who are the coordinators in each organization, who is responsible for what.

6.    What hypothesis do we have that we would like to test with others?

•technology can support a societal transformation towards sustainable development, but only we actually (want to) do it.

7.    What would be required for me to the people we want to engage to be able to get involved? To want to contribute on volunteer basis?

•We have to share a common vision. It has to be true collaboration, otherwise two or three years become a very long time… (Best would be no volunteer work but something that can be done with concentration for certain intervals of time - supported by the right amount of funding.)

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community building and deployment of ICT for local socinn

  1. Some ambitious objectives or aims that I want to see realised are....

    -local online community building & deployment of ICT and collaboration tools to support social/ civic innovation projects

  2. Somethings that could contribute towards them happening are....

    -partnership building between Edgeryders and local organisations with hands on experience and or extensive social capital. I don’t think research institutions would do in this case, Edgeryders can take up that component. We need an active local ngo which has a good knowledge of local challenges and could do field work.

  3. I would know we had succeeded through....

    -building such a partnership with Matera2019, even though the local impact has not been assessed yet

  4. Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is....

    -identify core group of Edgeryders willing to do outreach and partnership building in a specific corner of Europe, and in a limited timeframe.

  5. What would you need to figure out to be able to do so? what questions need to be answered? (that could need research attention directed to)?

    -get a clear overview of Horizon2020 (I browsed the page and various calls seem to be missing the overall picture). which Horizon2020 calls are suited for this? is research what the EU funds rather than impact in these calls? 

  6. What hypothesis do we have that we would like to test with others?

    -exposing local challenges to high quality, collective, online, global expertise accelerates local social innovation

  7. What would be required for me to the people we want to engage to be able to get involved? To want to contribute on volunteer basis? 

    -be able to explain where the benefits for those working on proposals are. and make it clear what is the difference between short term benefits and long term benefits - the latter justyfing the volunteer work put in the development of proposals.

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identify core group of Edgeryders willing to do outreach and partnership

building in a specific corner of Europe, and in a limited timeframe

I am up for this, Noemi, can’t we just create a brief and invite individuals to form a fluid outreach team in a ‘corner of Europe’ depending upon their geographical convenience for a fixed term? Not all of them have to be there all of the time but it is good if an experienced ‘partner-builder’ is there at the beginning to share tips and experience. Accommodation is a challenge but where there’s a will, there’s a way. Some members then aquire enough expertise to be the ‘citizen-expert’ for future outreach teams, etc… The varoius gains include finding potential partners for ER and volunteers collaborating around a good cause - Edgy-Outreach - while discovering a fascinating corner of Europe!

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Yes! Kind of a mobile team?

So glad you are up for really doing this. We need more Davids to begin with :) If it’s a location based team you don’t need to do much traveling, you can do online meetups to coordinate and have someone more experienced lend you some tips, no?

This may not be the space to talk about this? I think that Horizon 2020 calls could give us a specific pretext to grow ER locally and do capacity building, within a scheme - a goal, a project, a timeline, a budget etc, that’s why I posted it here.

For another way of approaching this, like the one you mention which I understand is not specific to a funding application, I think we need a context, it’s the only way a call for participation/brief would work. 

For example: my goal of setting up local coordination come from my very brief experience with partnership building, in the case of Edgeryders with trying to replicate Edgeryders- Matera2019 collaboration model with a similar organisation in my town.  But there were key considerations which favoured me taking up a more active role to build this, even though I have zero experience in that, and it’s moving slow. I think outlining these contexts and motivations people like you or me have is something we need to do before actually putting together a brief. 

Example2: Making Lote4 is another specific context to start with local partnership building.

I’d be up for doing a hangout with you and whoever else is interested to see what would the brief you mention contain, and write it together? Maybe we can outline assumptions we are working with? Why would people be up for doing outreach and under what circumstances? And then you could also tell me what exactly you need help with to represent Edgeryders. 

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Very good idea

I like this way of thinking. Forward in all directions (my favorite 3Mustaphas3 quote – youngsters won’t recognize this).

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On Saturday, but still my 2 cents :slight_smile:

  1. Some ambitious objectives or aims that I want to see realised are…

I totally agree with Noemi: “local (online) community building & deployment of ICT and collaboration tools to support social / civic innovation projects”

The target would be either policy makers (regional governments or local governments) either local communities through NGOs.

  1. Somethings that could contribute towards them happening are…
  • Research phase: mapping similar global communities based in Europe (but not only) which are developing online collaboration tools so we don't replicate but build upon and create bridges + mapping local organizations like Noemi said, which are willing to partner with us and do the field work 
  • Deployment phase: I would mix 2 approaches in community building, both online and offline. There is this tension which I experienced with Matera which is that there is this global pool of knowledge which is generated online, but it seems as if locally - although there may be people that feed and nourish that pool of knowledge - if one activates online collaboration, it does replicate bad habits of social relations. How can we link the short relationships and knowledge built locally to this global online community without falling into the "international cooperation dilemma" where people from abroad come and help out the locals through ngo intermediaries? 
  • Profiling the target: I would position ourselves as an open consultancy to regional and local governments in order to get to local communities and merge knowledge with them. Instead of the old method where you would get over-paid consultants to write reports and do researches that would mostly stay in the governmen'ts drawers, we would secure a protocol method which actually deploys Edgeryders on the ground and tackles certains policy issues (kids drop out, waste management, ecc) through creative methods, using both digital tools and community management methodologies (for example, I was looking into a project proposal for H2020 on gamification and waste management). 
  1. I would know we had succeeded through…
  • Designing ICT collaborative tools for local problems with the locals, maybe even with the kids (I'm writing as I think) which wold then themselces manage these tools and use them. 
  • Modelizing a partnership agreement with local government which can be replicated and used by other cities
  1. Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is…
  1. What would you need to figure out to be able to do so? what questions need to be answered? (that could need research attention directed to)?

Map H2020 funding opportunities (like this?), make a calendar of the calls, see partner search.

  1. What hypothesis do we have that we would like to test with others?

  2. What would be required for me to the people we want to engage to be able to get involved? To want to contribute on volunteer basis?

Recognition of the work. Thing is recognition means many different things: visibility for some, efficacity for others, professionality for the most, ecc. As long as we learn and we grow in a harmonious context it’s okay: if it becomes stressful, generates anxiety and becomes rough, I wouldn’t go for it. If I get it right, we are speaking of volunteering for the writing of the calls, because if we get the funding, it’s 100% costs covered plus (some calls) 25% more of overheads.

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Better late than ever :stuck_out_tongue:

Some ambitious objectives or aims that I want to see realised is a collection of labour experiences. An open platform where people would describe, maybe redefine, the way and the conditions that they understand their “work”: precarious or permanent, employed or unemployed, business or voluntary…

Somethings that could contribute towards them happening are the diversity of participation of informal networked groups, like the edgeryders. Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is to define a set of working conditions both for online and offline environments. An initial conceptual approach to find “partners” on this one

What would you need to figure out to be able to do so? what questions need to be answered? (that could need research attention directed to)? An interesting research approach is already here (http://digitallabor.org/) , the Internet as playground and factory.

No particular clue for the rest, Nadia said that we should start from what we would “really” like to see happening :-). In any case this is of evident “government” + “public services value” Thanasis

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I’m even later to this!

Just to follow on from Ilaria’s suggestions, perhaps mapping groups who are developing online collaboration tools and methodologies in ways which are resilient. What I mean by that is where tools which don’t require superfast broadband or high tech devices and so can be used in those communities which don’t have superfast broadband or can’t afford high tech devices (@commonfutrs @leashless).

And learning from methodologies which, like Ilaria said mix community building online and offline. Social Innovation Camp & CDI Europe are examples of these, which mix radical community development and agile / hacking philosophies, but there are many others, where there is a continuous feedback loop between building community capacity and digital assets. Perhaps a way to avoid failing into the “international cooperation dilemma” is to facilitate project twinning, where communities developing online collaboration tools and those developing more offline forms of collaboration learn from each other, helping them showcase their methods to exchange with other communities?

In respect to Thanasis, maybe this may be too specific to a Horizon 2020 call, but how do we move away from a system where technology providers are exploiting people through the disguise of funky and creative tools – from Facebook using your data as an asset for marketing, to companies crowdsourcing ideas to monetise to Mechanical Turk type-systems, which are rendering particularly jobs and skills meaningless. How can we co-opt these techniques (or map alternative ones like the @economyapp) that can help people make a living online?

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too late? Hope not! : )

  1. Building an alternative, inclusive “social security system”, that defies state and traditional labour market mechanisms, thus ending the dichotomy “Employed/unEmployed” in the long term. Resist commodification.

  2. Identifying or building alternative currencies (based on real value, or, to use an older term, “use” value, whilst not excluding the traditional currency (Euro, Dollar, whatever) from the outset. I’m not thinking of returning to"local" currencies but of creating purpose-bound, but nonetheless transnational “currencies”, building massive resistance to the ongoing trend of commodification of everything you can think of.

A currency that doesn’t get in the way, or blocks potentials, like money so often does, but rather clears the way, unLocking potentials.

  1. When someone officially unEmployed or struggling to find a job doesn’t feel unEmployed, having a purpose and his needs met, working, being sustained by his work and the help of others and by his “new” mindset.

  2. Building the alternative currencies (there should be plenty, not just one) and the security system, starting small, scaling up when possible.

  3. Identify groups  (communities) that have already made efforts (voluntarily or forced into) to build alternative safety nets (in the old days, those were unions, today there are unEmployed and homeless associations, precarious workers, the victims of wage slavery put in place by outsourcing and temporary work agencies, etc.), talk to them, build on experiences that they have made, what does work, what doesn’t.

  4. If re-framing the Tantalus -like dilemma “forever in your face, forever out of reach” is possible, changing some variables (not all at once, but slowly, one first, then another) and see if , by doing so, we get closer to that new frame/ mindset

  5. It would be required to begin with a changed mindset: Everything we do is voluntary, but the gain is immense (e.g. “trust”, as opposed to “credit”). It just has to be measured in non-financial ways. If it pays you the rent, all the better, of course.

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Community cooperative enterprise

  • Community cooperative networks evolving as per OS rhizomatic model
  • Continue prototyping a model and make this r&d available here
  • I would know we had succeeded through....successful adaptation
  • Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is.... OS alternatives to proprietary software we currently employ. Potentially partner Foundations (to 'ours') in participant countries.
  • What would you need to figure out to be able to do so? what questions need to be answered? Research into building multistakeholder cooperatives.
  • What hypothesis do we have that we would like to test with others?

    We have a model, ready for roll out and rolling out in Ireland. We believe this cuold interface very well with potential coming from the living lab direction (unMon) and from potential social cooperative development of key models such as CSA and cooperative property guardian co-ops.

  • What would be required for me to the people we want to engage to be able to get involved? To want to contribute on volunteer basis? 

    Not sure I get this Q. So far we are working on the model with thorough insight into the context. We would need others to be willing to build rhizomes of the model based on our preparation, and to be willing to develop a transnational multistakeholder cooperative in such a way as maintains autonomy and interreliance simultaneously.

    Involved in our model is a simple version of community exchange based on sale and supply of the local food system. This creates community specific alternative exchange while revenues annually generate community cooperative enterprise models that act as nested service commons for the communities of their use.  

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some late answers

  • Some ambitious objectives or aims that I want to see realised are....

Take up of ethic, social and environmental responsibility in ICT business. Handling societal issues as opportunities not as threat to ICT business.

  • Somethings that could contribute towards them happening are....

labeling mechanisms to identify responsible ICT businesses

  • I would know we had succeeded through....

both adoption of the label by SMEs and recognition by a broad community ranging from academics and customers associations to individual citizens

  • Something we would need to build/ make happen in order to get closer to the goal is....

A focused consortium bringing together researchers from both ethics & ICT field, SMEs that want to differentiate by a n ethic positioning, consumer associations and citizen communities.

  • What would you need to figure out to be able to do so? what questions need to be answered? (that could need research attention directed to)? What hypothesis do we have that we would like to test with others?

Questions to be addressed:

  1. How to build a label, what to cover, what does the label validates? 
  2. How to validate the label with various stakeholders
  3. Label governance
  4. Enforcing the label, how to verify compliance
  5. Promoting the label: how to reach large audience
  6. Sustainability / business model of the label itself
  • What would be required for me to the people we want to engage to be able to get involved? To want to contribute on volunteer basis? 

overall professionalism and strong reactivity as we get in the proposal writing phase and toward the deadline.

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Engaging research institutions

One of the pre-conditions for any Horizon 2020 call is to get research institutions on board. In theory, Edgeryders constitute a radically new form of research institution, but in practice, we will need a university / research institute to be part of the mix. I’ve got some good contacts with universities with a project I was involved in, that are in the civic innovation space. So I was thinking, if I brokered a date / time for Edgeryders to present an initial proposal that would get them exicted and trustful that we were a serious partner, what would we need.

Starter for 10 would be:

  • Map out research institutions that amongst us, we have a good relationship with…and who understand and want to engage with open horizontal networks as potential partners.

  • Identify key messages about why and how Edgeryders would be the best partner to work with on the call we wanted to apply to (check: this has mostly been covered above)

  • Put together a pitch to the research instution/s, as even if we have good contacts with some of these, they would still need to convince their research & enterprise departments and get sign off.

Perhaps a way to focus what we want to pitch for, is to have a formstorm on mapping out research institutions that meet the above criteria and writing a pitch to a research institution?

P.S. Eimhin, am up for exploring how we build transnational cooperatives

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Next steps, building strong partnerships and proposals

Ok guys so Noemi has syntesised the comments above into 5 different aims. Now we need to do three things in order to move forward.

  1. Breaking the aims into concrete activities with realistic budgets. Writing 1 page concept description for each.  
  2. Identifying relevant Horison 2020 calls and sending concept descriptions to prospective partners.
  3. building project proposals based on requirements of the call and the activities in the concept descriptions

Deadline for #1 is february 20, Check out the summary here: /t/horizon-2020-collaborator/347/from-dreaming-up-projects-to-collaboration