Exploring together opportunities for income generation like NOW
I start this thread as a container of the conversations related to the material conditions of the existence of our crew. When I say "container" I mean that its purpose is to "contain" the discussion of the particulars of the (financial) needs of the members of the crew so they do not "spread" over other conversations related to the needs of sustainability of the digital space. In the future the creation of the generative space could address the needs of income of the members of the crew, but we are not there yet. In other words, the design of the generative process and the digital space should be informed but not subordinated to the current needs of the crew. We are back somehow to the distinction of two different generative processes, the one we are experiencing as a crew and the one of the digital space.
Until now, we have been lucky to self-sustain/fund our participation here with incomes out of this crew. It is true that I (and probably the rest of us) have been modulating our participation in accordance with the pressures of the work that generate incomes. However, we cannot take for granted that the need for an income will not jeopardize our participation in the crew.
Of course, an option can be to just be absent until we can self-fund again our staying here. But another more interesting option is to make solidarity happen in our micro-dimension and explore together ways of getting the income needed for making everyones' participation possible.
I have been re-posting job offers at Discord that could be interesting to members of the crew and that is OK. This thread is for bringing this spirit further and exploring together if by sharing and combining knowledge, skills, contacts, and the ripened fruits of our work here we can address the changing needs of the personal incomes that make possible our participation in the crew. This kind of support is critical to our crew because sharing/mutualizing things that affect the material conditions are barely possible because of the remote element of the equation.
The same situation we are in will likely be similar to crews forming in the digital space so all learnings in this aspect could/should be translated into design features of the digital space.
Josh Fairhead
Tue 2 Nov 2021 7:13PM
So expanding on why jobs; to hold space for 'asset based development'. Bringing in a deficit based approach out of need would be a bad way of doing things.
Jennifer Damashek Wed 17 Nov 2021 8:51PM
Yesterday I had a conversation with a fellow volunteer at The Post Growth Institute. I asked to speak with Naryan because he knows how to conduct network mapping. I participated in a workshop that he offered on the subject a few weeks ago. I wanted guidance on network mapping for our crew.
It came a delightful surprise to learn that Naryan actually is working with a crew. It seems his crew is already doing what our crew hopes to do. They have formed a coherent working group of five people, within a larger cohort of 50 people. The metaphor Naryan used was a slime mold. Apparently slime molds exist as independent cells when food is abundant, but when food is more scarce the free cells come together and function as units to find food and help deliver it to each other. In the past few weeks, Naryan's crew has formed and begun working as an intelligent organism. He shared with me that after this short period of time, his crew has successfully identified so many ways to bring opportunities for work for each other that they couldn't possibly take advantage of them all. I found the conversation encouraging.
I recorded the last 30 minutes or so of our conversation. I missed the first 45 minutes because I didn't think to record it. Here are some notes on what he shared about being a crew, at least the kind of crew he is in.
The most important skills for his crew are social skills: how to develop a truly collaborative culture. This is hard work. He referred to adult development and authentic relating. These skills are needed in order for a collective consciousness to emerge. Trust between members is required.
Also important is systems thinking, and being able to identify which level of thinking and relating is active in the moment, otherwise people talk past one another.
Record relevant conversations so other members of the crew can learn from them.
If there are side conversations between crew members, report back to the crew anything that is important for other members to know.
The last 30 minutes of the conversation was about network mapping. He shared with me how network mapping is useful to a crew and what tool he uses to do it.
Robert and I made a first pass at creating a network map, which also can contain experiences, passions, knowledge areas, and skills, using the tool Naryan told me about: kumu.io. Robert will share about the map in a post after this one.
Here is the recording of the last part of my conversation with Naryan.
Ronen Hirsch Thu 18 Nov 2021 11:01AM
On Slime Mold :)
Ronen Hirsch Thu 18 Nov 2021 11:40AM
Thank you @Jennifer Damashek for taking the time to explore this with Naryan and for sharing the notes and the recording.
Some initial thoughts:
As with "offers and needs" I believe that this needs to be a (continuous) process and not a (one-off) project ... for numerous reasons.
I am superficially familiar with kumu.io (played with a couple of times). It feels like a good tool, but I got the impression that it may have performance issues when scaling. I believe that Obsidian has similar (at least basic) capabilities that can be explored if we wish to continue to work within our newly established environment.
I believe that "not placing yourself" on the map is a (critical?) error as it allows for a gods-eye-view which is, in my opinion, risky (if not delusional).
I have a feeling that there is an information-architecture challenge here that could radically increase the leverage of such intuitive efforts.
I get the impression that mapping is somewhat of a fashion but I have not yet encountered (personally, directly) an effective application of this kind of mapping.
The relational network mapping does not seem to systemically address offers/needs which makes me feel that the mapping is incomplete.
IF (and that is a big if in my mind) this kind of work can be effective then I feel that individuals or crews creating separate maps is wasteful since the more enmeshed the network becomes (which is what seems to be happening) the more people will be working on separate maps which are the same map. This feels like it should be a collaborative effort on a larger scale.
I believe that such "living maps" can be an emergent outcome in the Digital Space. There, instead of mapping being a retro-active documentation effort it can be a dynamic (living, responsive, ever-changing) outcome that comes from relationships forming (without any additional explicit work).
Poll Created Wed 17 Nov 2021 10:02PM
Proposal to use kumu as a mapping tool Closed Sat 27 Nov 2021 9:03PM
Kumu appears to be a possible tool for our crew to understand ourselves better, by mapping out our relationships, skills, knowledge and experiences. Today we began creating an initial sample of what the crew’s network map might look like in Kumu here. I was able to take data from a projects table I had built for my consulting resume and reformat it easily into an Excel spreadsheet structured for import into the tool (it can take CSV as well). Jennifer created a fresh spreadsheet and imported it into the same map. The tool is all data-driven and the map is built automatically from the data.
I propose that we each build out the data for our network, and use the tool to fuse and visualize that network. We will share the spreadsheets we used and the crew can decide what types of data they want to gather, share and integrate.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 50.0% | 3 |
|
| Abstain | 33.3% | 2 |
|
|
| Disagree | 16.7% | 1 |
|
|
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 0 |
6 of 6 people have participated (100%)
Ronen Hirsch
Wed 17 Nov 2021 10:03PM
I don't mind (in sacrificial spirit) experimenting with kumu.io
I'd like to hear from @Josh Fairhead about the possibility of using Obsidian and the graph view to work within our (newfly found) natural habitat.
As I replied to Jennifer, I believe that for this to be effective, this needs to be a process and not a one-off effort. I believe that in Obsidian (given that we are already shifting towards inhabiting it) a good process/protocol is more likely to manifest and flow well (which is why I want to hear from Josh).
It is not clear to me if the free version of Kumu.io allows for team collaboration or only isolated users.
As an extension, it is unclear to me if your invitation to is collaborate on Kumu.io or to each submit spreadsheets to your or Jennifer in order to integrate in Kumu.
I believe that mapping a personal network (and seeing it is part of an interconnected network) is not a one-off thing, that it is a continuous process of reflection, review and discovery. Therefore if it is NOT a collaborative (generative) process I believe it will stutter and stagnate.
I am abstaining because I want to both offer my thoughts and inputs AND to signal that I am willing to play along with your invitation as it stands.
Josh Fairhead
Wed 17 Nov 2021 10:03PM
I've previously tried keeping data on entities in the external world but this tends to decay. The cost of articulation has generally outweighed the benefits of this practice for me so I'm hesitant; I have a variety of spreadsheets trying to do this; people, orgs, networks ect. which I've tried to reformat, store and organise in Obsidian. Honestly though said conversion is a mess; as I don't find the data valuable I'm reluctant to spend time ordering it...
Alex Rodriguez
Wed 17 Nov 2021 10:03PM
First of all, I'm not quite sure that mapping is a great use of our collective energy right now. I feel like there are some needed steps to take around how we agree to invest our shared energy/effort into something as a crew. I think before we do this it would be better to decide on a workflow for maintaining a map, and also a shared sense of what the map would be a map of for it to be valuable to all of us. Second of all, I'm not a huge fan of kumu.io as it does get glitchy and also I think something like Maptio would be a better fit for the sort of thing we're trying to make happen with the digital space. In other words, if we're starting to build a map, I'd want it to be something we're learning how to do in service of the digital space we're starting to imagine into being with the GP. I'm also feeling like I have enough "tool skilling up" work in front of me with the Obsidian/Git transition.
Also, I totally don't mind anyone playing around with this tool in a sacrificial spirit!
Toni Blanco
Wed 17 Nov 2021 10:03PM
I will try to find the time to do this and see what comes out.
Alex Rodriguez · Tue 2 Nov 2021 7:25PM
Here is the thread where we talked about Value Network Analysis: https://www.loomio.org/d/XgZktJyH/gathering-12-june-10-2021-collaborating-on-a-generative-process