Project: How to Marry the Needs and Offers
This is a continuation of conversation started in another thread but which deserves its own Project.
It seems to me that there are a lot of people out there who wonder what they can do. My interpretation is that this doesn't only mean to sort our the recycle-bins and have short rather than long shower and switch the light off when not in the room, but they also may mean: 'how can I help'?
At the same time there are many ideas for projects that are struggling to start - because they need help. Sometimes that is financial help, but many times they would benefit from a good brainstorming session, or from bouncing the ideas around with other people, or maybe they need an expert help for a few hours every month and maybe somebody could sponsor this expert to actually help them? There are so many possibilities...
But where can one state one's needs, what infrastructure exists, what could (easily) exist if it doesn't already etc...
One thing to try and understand is the Murmurations protocol (mentioned in the thread ...) https://murmurations.network/2022/07/05/what-can-you-build-on-the-murmurations-protocol/
some other links that could be useful
https://open.coop/2021/06/16/a-new-model-for-grant-funding-to-finance-the-collaborative-commons/
So... what does already exist and serve the purpose or marrying the needs and offers? What could easily exist and what is needed for it to come into being?
Then how to spread it, scale it, grow it so that we can say to everybody who wonders how they could help: ok, put your profile here, tell us what you can do/offer, and see who needs that in your locality or elsewhere? And equally, we can say to struggling projects: tell us what you need, put your profile here, and see who has what you need in your locality or elsewhere?
Then some kind of matching algoritm does its thing, et voila! we get the ball rolling a bit more...
Thoughts? Ideas? Reflections?
Thank you.
Simon Grant Wed 26 Oct 2022 5:48PM
I don't yet have any takers for a collective conversation around the nature of needs and offers, but would be happy to facilitate one if anyone else shows an interest. If there were an offers and needs market of interest to me, I would be happy to test it out and give constructive feedback...
Renata Ballesteros Wed 26 Oct 2022 3:39PM
Hello everyone, I have been following this conversation superficially, but have been too busy to get involved. However, I took the PGI's Offer's and Needs Market facilitator basic training this Spring and am gearing up to take the advanced one this Fall. As a requirement to enter this course, I have to host a market.
@Simon Grant, perhaps experiencing one of these along with the collective conversation you are hosting could help folks gain some clarity around the concepts?
Simon Grant Fri 21 Oct 2022 8:26PM
I'd like to offer to host a collective conversation around the question: what is needs and offers anyway? I'm not at all convinced that people have the same idea, and having compatible ideas about what it is is vital to any constructive dialogue.
In essence: let's try collaborative / participatory / collective ontology design around this, so that we can actually communicate meaningfully
Jennifer Damashek Tue 18 Oct 2022 7:18PM
Hi @Oli SB thanks for your feedback and for your questions!
“is this just a demo and you are thinking / hoping people will deploy local versions for their communities, is that right?”
Yes, the site I linked to is just a demonstration. The idea is that each community sets up their own version with a separate database.
“The 'distance' field didn't have any units... I presume this would be miles from the location posted?”
You can enter a number and the units of your choice. For example, if you are only offering the item to people who live within 1 mile of your address, that is what you would enter, 1 mile. The fields are optional, so they can also be left blank and details like that can be worked out between individuals.
“Is there an Admin interface for Managers, where you can configure things like the currency etc?”
Yes, there is an admin interface where currency and language can be configured. It’s in the github repository.
“Is there any matching and notification functionality built in? e.g. if someone posts a 'need' for window shutter would they see a match for my 'offer' and would I be notified?”
No, there is no matching or notification functionality right now. We are in the very beginning phase of using the app with small communities. It is meant to support personal meetings with as few as two people. In our small groups, we have regular meetings dedicated to sharing offers and needs. In my experience, this is where the magic happens. It truly is amazing how much each person has to offer and how many offers and needs can be matched within a very small group. There is so much abundance all around us, it’s simply invisible.
The app is designed to be a place to save offers and needs within a community that are shared during personal interactions. It may also happen that people simply enter offers and needs into the app without having the personal sharing, but my feeling is that this will be a secondary use.
In between the live meetings, people can use the app to find their own matches to offers or needs and save them for future reference.
This isn’t possible right now, but our plan includes enabling people to determine how broadly to share their offers and needs. They will be able to choose to keep them to one small community that they belong to, or have them posted in more than one community, or they will be able to post them publicly. When the app has that capability, we intend to offer a way to intelligently match offers and needs. That function won’t be part of the app but a separate service invoked from the app. We are working on that service for intelligent knowledge searching, organizing and sharing. This service will be used to enable matching of offers and needs when the amount of data becomes too large for individuals to do it themselves quickly and easily.
This app is just one part of a long-term community building project. We are in the very beginning stages, although my husband and I have been thinking about it for decades. We’re offering the app to anyone who might find it useful on its own. We would be thrilled if anyone wants to use it for other projects and/or help us improve it.
“If we could add functionality to post the Offers and Needs as .json files which are registered with the Murmurations Index this would provide the basis of a fully decentralised, federated Offers and Needs marketplace ;)”
That doesn’t sound difficult, and we would be interested in that experiment to see if people would actually use it. I suspect more would need to be put into the project than just adding that functionality for people to start visiting and using such a marketplace. But I’m really curious to see what would happen.
We will need a JSON generator to feed the searching service that we’re planning. So adding that capability will actually help us with our project. If you want to talk about it more, let me know.
Oli SB Tue 18 Oct 2022 1:22PM
Hi @Jennifer Damashek
Thanks for posting this - the app looks great! I just posted some window shutters as a test... I presume https://nbcoc.ca/ is just a demo and you are thinking / hoping people will deploy local versions for their communities, is that right?
It works brilliantly.
A few comments and questions:
The 'distance' field didn't have any units... I presume this would be miles from the location posted?
Is there any matching and notification functionality built in? e.g. if someone posts a 'need' for window shutter would they see a match for my 'offer' and would I be notified?
Is there an Admin interface for Managers, where you can configure things like the currency etc?
If we could add functionality to post the Offers and Needs as .json files which are registered with the Murmurations Index this would provide the basis of a fully decentralised, federated Offers and Needs marketplace ;)
Jennifer Damashek Tue 18 Oct 2022 10:58AM
Hi @Larry Reader we just now have made the repository for the offers and needs app public on github. So your question had perfect timing! Here is the demonstration app. https://nbcoc.ca/
Here is the repository on github. https://github.com/rdamashek/Community-Through-Caring
The app design is based on a prototype offers and needs app developed using Glide: https://oanm-prototype.glideapp.io/dl/6471c6. We didn’t want to use that app because it is based on google sheets.
We wanted an app that was very simple, open source, and designed for one purpose: to support ongoing exchanges of offers and needs in a small community where people know and trust each other. We couldn’t find anything like that, so we had it developed and offer it as open source so anyone can use it and improve it.
Let me know if you have any questions or feedback. You can post here or email me at [email protected].
Matthew Slater Tue 18 Oct 2022 5:20AM
Hi Larry there is a new an aggregator up at https://murmagg.communityforge.net but no items have been indexed yet, because I have other priorities, and no other platforms have implemented yet. I can give you pointers if you want to implement.
Larry Reader Tue 18 Oct 2022 2:31AM
Hello, Forgive me for jumping in from no where but here I am! Noticed @Jennifer Damashek post and am curious about the status of your "Offers and Needs" app. It does seem that offers and needs outside of a small local trusted group or tribe is not very successful as far as I see. You seem to be more focused on a local group or project which makes sense to me as I ponder leveraging existing software for Offers and Needs or resorting to rolling my own rudimentary implementation since I'm not finding a fit out there.
Jennifer Damashek Mon 5 Sep 2022 6:24PM
The sector I’m working on right now is my personal relationship to nature and especially the environment where I live. I’m studying permaculture through Earth Activist Training and plan to put into practice what I’m learning on the land where I live in Eastern Canada. I also am engaged in community building. We are starting with people we know and trust to build community, and we’re designing simple technological tools to be used in this context. One of them is an Offers and Needs app. I think as enough people engage in similar activities we will naturally begin to cooperate and eventually we will be amazed at what emerges. At least this is my hope.
Renata Ballesteros · Fri 28 Oct 2022 12:42AM
@Jennifer Damashek and @RobertD would you be interested in co-facilitating a market event?