Temperature Check: how should we meet in 2021?

EarthOS Worldbuilding Academy
#1

Hello everyone :slight_smile: I’m Joriam, you probably saw me on that intro video! How are you folks doing?

I’m here not to talk about SciFi (just this one time heheheh), but to talk about community building. We have a couple of ideas on how to get the ball rolling in 2021, the main ones being:

  • Direct invitations to fill one or another part of our future wiki
  • Short story competitions with prompts
  • Forming intentional crews, with particular skillsets, to figure out specific aspects of our Worldbuilding
  • A rhythm of community calls

Among other ideas.

But as our capacity is limited, we need to use our time as strategically as we can. I’m here to ask you three things:

  • Do you have any other community ideas apart from the ones above?
  • Is there anybody with volunteering energy to help us heat this community? (and if so, in what way would you like to contribute?)
  • Is there any idea that is the low hanging fruit? Something that a lot of people are excited about?

Please let me know so we can push our community energy to one direction or another next year :smiley:

Good to see yall here!

—
Oh and PS. we’re stewarding this community, but we’re not owning every bit of it. If you’d like to propose something yourself — a prompt, a call, a question etc — please do so! Capacity allowing, we’re gonna do our best to help you thrive

7 Likes
#2

Hey everyone! Hugi here, part of the worldbuilding crew. I wanted to chime in and say - feel free to ask me about what this “Edgeryders” thing is that the Worldbuilding project is embedded into. If you are curious about it in general, I can give you some pointers.

We will also be having a few IRL (and hybrid online/offline) worldbuilding sessions at Blivande, as soon as we can meet safely again. Blivande is a partner of the worldbuilding project and the home of Edgeryders in Stockholm.

2 Likes
#3

I think all these ideas are great for community building. In personal experience, I have enjoyed group-write up / curation instances, i.e. completing certain threads of the plan synchronously during an online meet-up. In developers world, this would be called a hackathon. If topics are identified well before the actual meet-up instance, it turns out to be fantastic outcome and also keeps up community exchange and spirit. This might also coincide with your competition category.

4 Likes
#4

All these sound great, though I have some thoughts specific to a few points:

  • Yes please to a regular rhythm of community calls. This is crucial, because right now, for those of us who joined a few days ago, we barely know each other. It’s not clear to me what my purpose can be because I don’t feel as if I have a solid grasp of the greater goal. Also, personally, I find this platform difficult to get my head around, it doesn’t allow for much spontaneity. A chat-based platform such as Slack or Discord + a place to summarise ideas can lend some dynamism. I’m on several such servers that span timezones all around the world, so long as the pace of conversation is moderate it can work very well.

  • Also, yes please to organising intentional crews to work on specific aspects of the Worldbuilding.

  • Wikis are hard work — I’m sure you’re already aware, so there needs to be a few “stewards” or “gardeners” to keep things tidy if there are going to be multiple contributors on topics.

Instead of a short story competition — I think there ought to be an anthology with a fixed number of submissions, so that we foster collaboration more than compete. This way we could riff off each others’ ideas as we go forward in a friendly, creative environment. We would also hopefully end up with a collection of stories that would allow the greater public to engage with the world we’re building. We can do something different here: it’d be interesting to pair a subject matter expert with a writer so that they can examine one particular aspect of the world through a story. I’d be happy to take part in an editorial capacity for an anthology.

Stories are going to be important to help us refine this world. While the worldbuilding aspect is exciting, it’s through putting ourselves in characters’ shoes that we can live the thought experiment and bring concepts to life.

4 Likes
#5

And have fun and connection while doing it :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#6

The anthology idea is great @steph! I imagine it to be hypertextual with capabilities for ever-growing with contributions from diverse authors. Only if it as an interactive edition, it will be durable and have a public voice with great potential. I can support further for the medium/format/display/circulation areas. Such a format would also ease the hardships of maintaining a wiki and create a public connection right from the start.

2 Likes
#7

Thanks for the ideas and support, folks!

I’m reading every word here — and mostly trying to schedule my next year to fit some of those commitments :slight_smile: As I mentioned, there’s limited capacity, but enough interest to get the ball rolling.

Btw, if anybody feels particularly keen in one proposition or another and would like to lead that energy, please lemme know! We could use some leadership :wink:

2 Likes
#8

Thanks Joriam and happy New year to all.

From my part, I’ve got lots of interest and energy but I’m struggling to work out how to engage. I suspect others will be in the same position.

Personally I think it would be good to get the wiki up and public as soon as possible to provide a kernel for activity. It sounds like the core team have had a lot of great discussions, that I for one would be keen to explore further. I always find it easier to get into substance rather than debate the abstract for too long.

I’m also keen for more conversations - but only if they help take us forward, so I think your ‘intentional crews’ would be a great way to help heat things. E.g. from my side, as a policy analyst I’m into the political economy and economics side of things and can bring grounding questions (hopefully without stifling creativity!). I guess I can also come at this with the mindset of one of our potential target audiences (i.e. policy makers). Also would appreciate call from a “getting to know you” perspective. I’m totally new to Edgeryders (although have lurked for a while) and don’t know anyone or the culture yet :).

Secondly, whilst I totally dig the self organisation, it would be good to set some clear ground rules of the world. E.g. as briefly touched on in the call, how grounded in reality is this? Should be looking to extend from where we are with plausible pathways? Or is that too bound? Should we instead be building from what we know/understand of culture/drivers/human behaviours?

Finally, I’ve got some time and willingness to volunteer - perhaps in the “intentional crew” space. I’m just a little unclear what the specifics of that might look like!

Dan