What to do when losing work during Covid19? Community calls each Tuesday noon

Hi Yassine, good to meet you, I see that you were involved in Hack4Environment with @zmorda and others. To me, the technical side of platforms and having skilled people to build and aggregate data is one thing. But the other one is the sharing, use of the platform - the facilitation is usually hard, it takes a lot of time. Do you find the same with the one you have created? How is it going?
Is there nothing similar in Tunisia that you can volunteer to help with, so that you are part of a team and have better results?
Hope to see you in what on the calls and talk more!

@alessandro_mambelli welcome back, I saw you registered for the call, how is it going for you?

See you tomorrow, and come with as much sharing as you can :slight_smile:

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Hello again @noemi and thanks! :slight_smile:

This is how it is going: my co-founder and I have been always working remotely, in fact we only met in the flesh a long time after we begun working together; so from that point of view our life didn’t change at all.

Our current problem is that we make hiking maps and guides, and that requires people wanting to travel and go hiking, which is (rightly so) not high on the list of many people in the middle of a pandemic. So for all intents and purposes we can consider this hiking season pretty much cancelled before it even started, which means not many sales this year, I’m afraid.

So it’s seems like it is time for re-invention, once again. But it is not so simple, because I am contemplating two somewhat conflicting thoughts:

  1. We want to keep alive what we have built so far, because we actually like doing it and it seems it was providing some value, but it won’t be easy in the current situation.
  2. I feel we could investigate this opportunity to look for something else we could also do. Should we? And not just to “diversify business”, I really just wish this won’t be yet another wasted global crisis. But where to start?

I am starting from this call with you, let’s see. Because I don’t know if this makes sense outside my own head, but at least I hope that talking about it out loud could help. Maybe I’m not alone in this…

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It makes a lot of sense. Entrepreneurship is never a dull business is it?

Myself, I am starting a new business and I realise that I’m lucky because I can use this downtime for a solid R&D phase building up on existing plans. But I am in the phase before going to market… So it allows for a lot of these lessons to be taken in.
More about diversifying the model tomorrow,

I would really hope @yannick can join and share his story from a different industry, but anyway you two would hit it off!

It isn’t dull, it’s challenging to keep it at the right level of fun/work as you go though.

“Solid R&D” and “plans” …I wish I were this organised :smiley: well done to you! And looking forward to hearing more about your idea.

re: diversify, you are the experts when it comes to reinventing work, studying alternative economic models… that’s why I am here (not only to talk would other products could we create, so to speak). I really am hopeful that a different way to conduct business could show itself in light of this pandemic. I’m hearing a lot about social enterprises (being very close to the Impact Hub network) and part of its community, but… is it becoming just a buzz word already?

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Hey @noemi yes i will be taking part in the discussion tomorrow :slight_smile:

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‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ - is what some are thinking. But yes, many of the crowds we’ve met over the years at Edgeryders did think together about alternative models, but they are always niche or tryouts (this Fairbnb in particular has been in beta test for years afaik), or banking on foresight. I feel what’s missing is the actionable opportunity for someone to actually make them legible and accessible by others.

Anyway, Yannick just wrote a call to action here, if you’re interested in reading before tomorrow:

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Hello all, thank you to the many who attended, it was really interesting.

I am collecting notes for weekly updates. But until then, the call remains for everyone who wants to participate in a shared effort and a real community response.

please take a little time to share how you personally are coping:

Pick one option :slight_smile:

  1. You pair up with another person to interview each other in another call, then edit the stories in your own computers and post them in the Campfire.
    (We have @oliiive and @MariaEuler who are ready to do this… anyone else just give a shout in a comment below)

  2. You write your story directly in the Campfire. How? Freestyle. If you need help, let us know below and I’ll set up some guiding questions for you.

  1. Fill out the online Questionnaire and a community manager takes care to post your story: https://ercommunity.typeform.com/to/XQD9qo

We know writing is not easy for everyone, but ideally it will come natural to you. Think of us as friends who will learn from you and might help.

See you and others next week! (same registration link, same time)

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Man, I feel you. I really do. It’s exactly the same thing here. I worry about being too entrenched, and holding on to an unviable business. But i also worry about being too volatile, without the staying power to stick around until the real impact comes in.

I am afraid we can never be sure we are doing the right thing. But we can support each other, and provide each other with much-needed external (but sympathetic) points of views. Hang in there!

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Could you pelase elaborate on this: what do you mean by “real impact comes in”?

And yes to sharing points of views, and all of that. That’s why I’m here really :blush:

Hi Noemi, good to meet you too, about tunisiavscorona project, I was the responsible of marketing and because of UI, people didn’t like it a lot and they didn’t understand the concept.

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Hello, I am Yassine Metoui member of the young science association of Tunisia in the IT sector. Because of the circumstances that our country is experiencing, the association young sciences is developing a website which brings together several volunteers on an international scale so that we can help people in their quarantine, help perhaps in the form of donations or simply to answer questions proposed by visitors to the site. In other way the visitors of the site are people who seek answers to their questions or who need logistical help, as being volunteers we can even give food for those who cannot afford to buy or who cannot transport themselves. For this we need several volunteers in all the countries, we have already contacted the Red Crescent and several Tunisian associations and clubs and several communities from Germany, France, Mexico ect … if you are interested in this project please contact me contact as soon as possible and thank you in advance.

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I mean this: if you are trying to build something not-so-intuitive, like Edgeryders, it might take a fairly a long time for enough people to “get it” so that you start seeing real results. During that initial time, nothing much is happening. It looks like you are failing. But are you really? Or are you slowly climbing the first part of an exponential curve?

There are two opposite risks, that of being too in love with a project that is unviable, and that of being too impatient with a project that is perfecly viable, it just needs a bit of time. :slight_smile:

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Hello
I want to ask for something.
How can i find many volunteers,associations and organizations in other countries because i am trying my best to find them and help them with my plateform.
I want to help all of them because they are suffering.

@OCILab for the next batch of pls!

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@yassine_el_metoui_84 you will find many members in Tunisia/ Mena if you introduce yourself in the Ocilab group and maybe @OCILab can help connect you to thers there? here is the link: https://edgeryders.eu/c/ocilab

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Thank U very much

Sorry to disturb, my project like a voluntary work for now maybe after the COVID , I have an idea how to switch from voluntary work to a company but i will did it after this difficult period.

@ Everyone: thanks again for joining and I will see you tomorrow, Tuesday 12:00 Brussels time, link in the post above!

Special thanks to our contributors who created 2 beautiful and inspiring stories from Yerevan and Novi Sad. The stories are now part of future efforts in edgeryders, and we will try to connect the authors with opportunities from around!

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Hi everyone,

A quick note to all of you who have been following these conversations:
After a few weeks of hosting our calls on Zoom, we are forced to drop this technology and look for safer alternatives and protocols for registration. Full announcement from yesterday here.

We are looking to set up new video chat channels and I will be back with an invitation as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, we continue our online discussions - here are some of the most interesting stories so far: what are your own learnings from this period?