Who you know and how you do: research funding and database building

Research Network Workspace
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With the growth of the research unit, we are now in hardcore intelligence gathering for funding opportunities and networks. With this also comes the necessity of a database that aligns with how Edgeryders works.

And so, we would love to hear from you on any ideas around:

FUNDING INITIATIVES AND PARTNERS that you find aligned with our shared projects and would value our unique way of working.

At the moment we’re particularly interested in funding that can support
a) the application of the graphryders tool - harnessing and analysing the collective intelligence generated on the platform - in diverse and broader contexts; as well as
b) umbrella projects that can bring together Edgeryders’ (net)work across onsite/ online/ meta-strategic contexts, such as in OpenVillage.
c) bi or multiregional initiatives that can support collaboration across Edgeryders vast network and your P2P projects.

Do you know anyone funding such things?

DATABASE TOOL

Edgeryders doesn’t organise how we work like most other organisations. We project manage openly on the platform and use open-source technologies. As we gather intelligence on relevant funding partners we need to collate this information somewhere we can reference it, update it and most importantly keep it accessible to the community.
Do you have any ideas around such a database manager?

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@matthias I’d love your thoughts on the database when you can mercii

@johncoate @cindys @chrisjcook @francesco_maria_zava @nabeel_p Would very much appreciate any thoughts you may have also :cherries:

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Not too easy to find this. There are many alternatives, but none that I know of is perfect. Some proposals, starting with the one I think is most adequate:

  1. Obvibase. In a project two years ago, this was the best solution I could find for quite similar requirements. Biggest advantage over Google Sheets is that you can comfortably search / filter and sort by column. See an example database (read-only, made by me).
      My teammates did not like it too much back then, though (misses some UX beauty …).
    Also, there is no data entry form. You could give everyone write access, but then there might be a troll who erases everything (means, then you need good and regular backups). So for public collaboration, I’d rather recommend to have a thread on Discourse where people can add entries in comments and / or request edit access on Obvibase.

  2. Google Sheets. Allows to have a data entry form, see for example this one made by @zmorda. But database records are not easy to work with in a spreadsheet (no comfortable sorting and filtering by column, esp. no filters on multiple colums at the same time etc.).

  3. Dynalist. You know that one :slight_smile: For “small, semi-structured databases” of, say, <200 records, I like to use list management software like Dynalist. You can use #tags to have (some) filtering. Again, there is no data entry form here, so contributors have to request edit access first or post their sporadic additions in Discourse comments. If you use this variant, create a new Dynalist document for this in the left-side “file pane” there. It is possible, with a bit of work on our side for development, to embed a read-only version of the Dynalist document inside a Discourse topic.

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@matthias and all, colleagues of mine are developing a service we are calling TrunkDB which may help. Would you like to evaluate it?

Thanks

Simon

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Hello to All

In the matter of the technical IT tools to be adopted, I believe it is appropriate to make some considerations that can help us to better understand the scope of our needs and the consequences of our choices.
I would therefore like to draw your attention to issues such as operational flexibility, support for industry standards aimed at data interoperability, the ability to integrate with other systems or platforms, the opportunity to scale the size of information processing and functions related to their sharing and, above all, the possibility of developing an organically functional infrastructure by the tools that we should adopt. With these particular attention from a purely technical point of view, it is necessary to evaluate the human resources (from the Community or not) and instrumental resources that Edgeryders actually has the possibility to put in place in order to allow the whole infrastructure to grow harmoniously and in compliance with its own aims.

As far as the choice of the database is concerned, rather than supporting the application of a specific product, it seems to me at the moment more interesting to reflect on the approach and the technological solutions that can better respond to both the Platform’s urgency and its medium-long development term (eg big data, data mining, machine learning, semantic data, tagging date, blob data, etc.).
In this regard, I would like to suggest reading the following resources, with particular care not to overlook the projects and / or the open source initiatives:

Regarding the choice of tools for management and cooperation within and outside the Platform, considering that the current solution implemented with Discourse can not respond to these next venture needs, I think it is appropriate to consider all those solutions technology thoughts and constructs around the paradigms of user interaction and cross-platform cooperation.
In this sense, I still want to point out some of the solutions that have attracted my attention in recent years, always with the utmost care not to overlook the projects and / or the open source initiatives, but referring to an interesting page (https: // en .wikipedia.org / wiki / List_of_collaborative_software):

Finally, it would be the question of the ict service infrastructure that, in PaaS or SaaS mode, should guarantee the overall operation of the Platform in the light of the choices made in the first two points.
The solutions are different, of course, and I think you deserve a different decision-making moment.

I close this my (long) intervention arguing how choosing a technical solution necessarily involves building an organizational system that plasms and affinates the built-up infrastructure in turn. In addition, as I write, I reflect on the opportunity to think at least of an external communication platform strategy that illustrates the ways in which it is to be adopted and the goals to be achieved both in the analytical field of data generated by ethnographic tools in the most exquisite management sector.
I guess a sort of campaign for resource and skills connectivity that is complementary to what can be organically found in Edgeryders. And I think this might be possible by proposing reciprocity between the Community and the solutions providers and service providers.

Thanks for the patient reading! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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@matthias @asimong @francesco_maria_zava My heartfelt thanks for your ideas and suggested applications here. I need to take some time to review them all and will share here thoughts in time (may take a moment as I’m about to travel for a couple of conferences, but yes soon!)

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Great, @anique.yael! I’d just like to add, in case it’s not been mentioned by myself or anyone before, that there is a very interesting research group called the P2P Lab, who work in collaboration with Michel Bauwens’s P2P Foundation, who I would have thought would be at least very interesting to coordinate with, if not actually to collaborate with. Happy to do (basic) introductions, or to participate in dialogue.

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Thanks @asimong, that’s a great idea. I actually just met with Michel last week and the P2P Research Clusters Facebook group which I recently joined is abundant!

A dialogue sounds interesting for sure. @alberto what do you think? Perhaps worth setting up a meeting with Michel, @asimong and a contact of Simon’s from the P2P Lab for early December when we’re both in town?

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Great - @anique.yael there is no need to involve me in the introduction then, as much better to go directly through Michel. You’re welcome to use any knowledge or experience I may have, of course.

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I’m going to collate here items for our database until we decide on which tool to use

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