The Edgeryders Research Network: where we are and how we are scaling

[anique.yael]

A fine summary @alberto, and no doubt a proud moment for those Edgeryders that have been a part of this mycelium’s magic.

@alberto

We had connected this massive, hackerish, anarchic, radical, “distributed think tank” with established institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, and UNESCO.

Indeed this bottom line is what seems to be opening fresh collaboration spaces across system change more and more. It continues to amaze me how much we are already in the midst of profound structural change. What I’m learning is how important interfaces are between established institutions and autonomous reproduction. This is an edge our movement operates on. This is the strategy behind the Edgeryders Research Network and that of our allies. This is the martial art I commit to.

@alberto

Both projects will start in January 2019 and run to the end of 2021. They will leave Edgeryders profoundly changed – much better equipped to harness collective intelligence in the service of our community, our clients, and humanity at large. Not bad for our first year.

For those of you interested in thinking through how we operationalise this scaling, please let us know and follow in particular the Horizon2020 threads as right now we are working between
a) how to prepare for processes and teams involved in Horizon2020 projects twice the size than any Edgeryders’ predecessor
b) while safeguarding Edgeryders’ DNA - such as project autonomy
c) and continuing to establish the Research Network as a key player in EU research and innovation projects through new proposals for 2019.

Another focus perhaps of interest is how the Research Network can collaborate with other Edgeryders’ initiatives, such as the Culture Squad, Particip.io and Open Village. Interweaving Edgeryders’ network flows is one of the most generative mechanisms I’ve seen out there for individual and collective fulfilment.

@alberto

Collective intelligence is not just something we use to do research “out there”: it’s how we operate at home. Openness and treating the Research Network’s assets as public goods available to everyone are our chosen path to scaling.

YES. Flashback to some earlier conversations on strategic mapping and the philosophies of scaling [quote=“anique.yael, post:19, topic:7958”]
Some members, are interested in how we co-create a healthy and open research community beyond silos of specific projects. My own research for example, explores processes and practices in collective thinking-making-living for resilient and autonomous livelihoods. Earlier in the year, @asimong and I had a conversation to begin exploring how the Edgeryders research network might scale - the conversation suspended itself in the wave of H2020 proposals and I’d like to open it up again here and now. It’s crux is how we conduct research as a commons. This compliments existing Edgeryders approaches around open knowledge and data, and of course mobilising across our collective intelligence through knowledge sharing and ethnography.
[/quote]

At the Edgeryders’ team retreat in May, the phrase an autonomous alternative to institutional research came up in one of our workshopping sessions and it happened to stick with many of us. Indeed this is one of the shining lights of why I think what we, our partners and our allies are doing is significant. Knowledge has become so commodified that we are called to reimagine what it even is, and what it can do.

So here is to our collective intelligence.