Join the Backfeed Program Experiment Nr. 1

As announced last week, after our workshop with Backfeed we started thinking about how we could decentralize a small piece of the Fest program with the Backfeed protocol. Now Diana and I would like to propose a first experiment we just developed, which is limited to 3 days next week, to enable us to focus our energy and give you all a taste of what it looks like to use a tool for decentralized coordination.

We’re very curious about whether it will work and depend on you to make it happen, so we hope many of you are open to it :).

Aim

The aim of this first three day experiment with the Slack Backfeed app is to use it to find and select:

• the key questions that the Connectors community thinks should be addressed in the Fest program
• the people that will be part of the content curation team (aka CCT) (see my previous post about this on Loomio)

Please keep in mind that this is an experiment: we want to test the contributive governance being built by Backfeed, to be able to apply it successfully throughout the program creation in the coming months. But since this tool is very new, with many things in need of development and we are basically the guinea pigs, the Fest program team reserves the right to make decisions on topics and team members after the end of the experiment, should it not provide a satisfying outcome. We simply don’t know if it will work, so we’re just trying :)

Let’s do this! How does it work?

The experiment will take place on a new Slack channel we’ve created called fest-program-curation. If you would like to join the experiment, simply join the slack channel.

When setup backfeed on this channel, we will need to distribute “reputation” among members to be able to start submitting contributions. We’ve decided that we will equally distribute the reputation among all members of the channel for the beginning, so if you would like to have reputation at the beginning, you need to join the channel by Monday 9.11 in the morning.

You can also join later on without problem, you simply won’t have any reputation to start with.

NOTE: the reputation people have at the beginning is not so important. Over time, based on people’s contributions and evaluations, reputation will shift automatically to better reflect reality.

Get the Backfeed Plugin for Chrome (sorry it is only available on this browser!)

• >> Install the plugin here. Now you should see the plugin icon in the top righthand corner of your browser.
• Reload your slack application in your chrome browser (you cannot be using the desktop version).
• Click on the chrome backfeed extension and follow the instructions in the window (get a token.
• Now your extension should be ready to go! You can check if it did by clicking on the + button in slack on the left hand side of your text window, because a new option will appear: “Submit a Contribution”(before you only have upload a file, create a post and create a snippet).
• This is the option you will need to use to submit contributions via backfeed, that can then be evaluated by other team members once submitted.

Here’s what will happen starting next Monday, after you’ve installed the plugin: for a time period of 3 days, we invite you to join us on the program curation slack channel to discuss what you think are the key topics and questions that we should cover in the Fest program. This discussion can happen freely and in the same way it always has on slack, however, the idea is that once you have an idea for a concrete formulation of a question that could structure the program content, you “submit it as a contribution”. That way, others can evaluate it with a simple click by giving tokens for the contribution. Once you have evaluated, you will be able to see the overall evaluation of the contribution, which will, in the end give us an overview of which topics have the most resonnace within our group, as well as who has contributed the most and should become part of the program curation team.

So to summarize, we’re hosting a discussion about topics for the Fest next week, during which we would like you to submit contributions which others can then evaluate.

→ Contribution = Question that we could use to structure the program

Tutorial & Help

IMPORTANT: Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything for now, becaues it’s hard to visualize before you’ve seen the tool and started using it.

If you would like more in-depth instructions on how to install and/ or use the plugin and make contributions, we’re offering two things:

1. A tutorial hangout, Monday 9.11., 17 h. We will record the hangout so you can watch it later if needed hangout link here
2. a slack channel called backfeed help where you can post your questions so everyone can see them.

Also, since the tool still has many bugs, please log your bugs in this slack channel with #bug or #feature for new ideas.

Timeline

• Monday, 9.11.: tell us by the morning whether you want to join the experiment to get reputation + short tutorial hangout at 17.00h (see OS hangouts calendar)
• Tuesday 10.11. - Friday, 13.11. noon: period during which you can discuss and make contributions
• Monday, 16.11.: recap on results and decision on next steps (by Fest Program team)

Thank you for being open to this experiment! Looking forward to seeing what happens :)

P.S. This is a public loomio post. If you know any members that would like to contribute, feel free to share this link with them.