A big part of the reason the Edgeryders community manages to get such ambitious initiatives off the ground with few resources is because we collaborate well online through the platform. This works because it enables people who want to get involved, but cannot take on big responsibilities or have only very little time to contribute, to be involved alongside others who put in much more time and effort. Every little drop of love is never wasted! Also by working out a loud, keeping the entire process open and documented this way, everyone learns how these initiaitves are built and more people feel confident to act on realising more projects.
This week our priority is to prepare the Spot the Future material and website ahead of the big launch on March 28!
First we prepare the mission briefs for all of the theme areas.
Deadline for first batch is March 26 (enough for us to roll out first call for participation).You’ll find general instructions and specific themes for Armenia, Egypt and Georgia: https://edgeryders.eu/spot-the-future/creating-mission-briefs-explanation-and-template-for. You don’t need to take the conclusions at face value, where you see something doesn’t really resonate with your experience or is counterproductive to what we want to achieve, just go ahead and poke holes in it.
NB: You may find it useful to have a look at how we are building the project as a whole, and how we are setting up the tour and the last week’s Working Out Loud post as background reading.
- I've started working on two mission briefs here and here. You don't need to start from scratch: There are 7 Campaign and Mission briefs you can re-purpose and modify already on the platform, and a LOT of content posted by community members in reponse. If you get started, in parallel I'll compile I list of useful materials today.
- For visuals: Check Edgeryders Github Image repository or others ( please ensure you only use creative commons licensed images and attibute them as required by the source. Also, please no embedding). Other alternative worth checking out is the Nounproject for visually consistent icons.
And in parallel we set up a minisite Spot The Future.
Deadline: March 28 (so we can get the online participation going with enough lead time before the Tour kicks off)Reasoning: The Edgeryders.eu backend is designed for emergence and constanly evolving as community members adopt it to their needs. Most people find their way to the right places in through links via social media. So when we do outreach campaigns we build minisites to aggregate links to where the relevant discussions, collaborations and events are happening. There are three options for getting this done. In all three cases I suggest having a look at how we are building the project as a whole, and how we are setting up the tour and the last week’s Working Out Loud post.
- Option \#1: In the past we built minisites within the site like for LOTE3. As you see the output is more functional than glossy.
- Advantage: you learn to shape your working environment and take control over the tools we use by building your own home.
- Disadvantage: you operate within the constraints of drupal and have to take responsibility for ensuring it all comes together. Also [Matthias], Edgeryders Tech lead doesn't like this option. I would not go for this option to be honest.
- Option \#2: I've tested squarespace to produce the Edgeryders Company site and the experience was very smooth. I would go for this version and Matthias has already set it up so we are ready to just enter content.
- Advantage: very quick and nice finish.
- Disadvantage: it's a commercial service but since we are running on a tight deadline for the delivery I think this is less of a concern. Also, you can export all the contents into a wordpress site so we needen't be dependent on them for long.
- A third option which is halfway between but which I like the best is unMonastery.net that [Ben] and [elf Pavlik] have set up. The main issue is that it is not fully integrated with the Edgeryders.eu backend which leads to fragmentation of the community and conversations and makes it hardfer for us to build more community-powered initiatives like the unMonastery. It's fully decentralised and people have to learn the markup language to be able to edit its contents. Also Elf put in a nice little feature he can tell you about in person :)
- Advantage: if we put a little extra effort into building the bridning, we have closer to an out of the box option for community members who need website for their projects - but want their website to talk to the rest of the community and other community members project websites.
- Disadvantage: A LOT more work this week :)
As usual in Edgeryders, those who do the work call the shots.
So pick whatever you want to work on, assign it to yourself as a task in the Spot the Future group (there is a “tasks” button just below the group summary) so others know what is being taken care of, and run with it. The expectation is that the people who have paid roles in the project do the heavy lifting, and community members who want to contribute do so on a voluntary basis if and when they can.
Leave a comment below if you have any questions!
