Breaking the Silo - 1. Defining the Challenge

Date: 2022-04-13 20:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Participants: John, Vasilis, Nick, Natahalie, Dave, Bruno

1. Check in

  • agree duration 1,5h
  • checkin

2. Defining the Challenge

  • what does breaking the silo mean?
    • community organizing exists in an ecosystem, part of a wider network
    • modes of interaction with ppl outside the group:
      • other Karrot groups
      • general public
      • people who somehow interact with the group but are not actually part of it
    • groups usually use other tools for these interactions (telegram, facebook, etc)
    • don’t feel so enthusiaastic about breaking the silo because there’s so much to do within the group
    • question: does breaking the silo mean “to make volunteering easier”, in terms of governance and organizing
      • get more people to take more responsibilities other than just doing pick-ups (beyond the pickup machine)
    • is it about between groups on Karrot or other people doing foodsharing?
    • unsure about the idea of making it easier for people to participate without joining the group
    • people are overwhelmed by the tools or chatting apps, but engaged in many different groups for positive social change
      • make it easier to share/participate activities, with low barrier: no registration
    • started thinking with some use cases
      • was seeing interactions on facebook, more consumer-like way of interacting, from the culture on facebook/society
      • would be nicer to be able to interact with these people in another space, beyond just free food
      • aim to establish better and less ephermeral relationships with people
    • public space for a group, how people use facebook now, as many groups don’t have resources to set up own website
      • a way to present information to public
      • portal for contacting group from the outside, as currently need to sign up and apply
      • also for groups contacting other groups, applying to group seems to much just for having a chat between groups
    • misdirected messages can actually lead to inter-group connections
      • how to lower the barrier for these interactions to happen
    • considered creating a “sweden” group on sweden for that
    • anonymous signup (without account)
      • allowing for more integration of communications
      • useful for food not bombs
      • use email address, check don’t fill up all slots
    • be able to take a link to a post in karrot to share that
      • maybe configure per-place whether it’s public or not
      • public places would have sharable URLs to share outside of karrot (without being signed up)
      • then login to reply
    • have a place that can allow anonymous posting
      • other places can remain more curated
      • allow allows (potentially risky) anon feedback within group
    • allow for sharing things more widely than in group
    • in food not bombs
      • would have places for different things, cooking, food collecting
      • … and then anonymous feedback would be useful, for people that wouldn’t want to become members of karrot
      • benefit is to be able to keep it in one place
    • different facets
      • intergroup interaction, permeable boundaries
      • people in periphery of group, maybe short-term volunteers, still want to join, but avoiding burden
        • has risk of people interating in consumption mode
        • … but maybe helps people on the pathway to join
      • different groups on karrot communicating with karrot team
    • in many groups people receiving food aren’t participating in group
      • would be nice to break down distinction between those who receive and those who give
      • more of a mutual aid model
    • reality is people use a lot of tools
      • should we encourage a model where everyone is on karrot?
    • different groups have different models
      • some consume all the food themselves
      • others consume none, and share it
      • and some in the middle
  • long-term goals and questions

thoughts for “long term goal” and tricky questions

nick

long term goals:

  • allow groups to not have to use facebook
  • support networks effects between groups and reduce questions coming to karrot team that we can’t really help with
  • have effective ways to support “landing pages” for groups, and ecosystems of them…
  • allow more effect “broadcast”/mass communication to wider networks of people

tricky questions:

  • how to avoid being yet another fucking platform
  • there is no universal messaging place to connect with, so how to work with “too many messangers” problem?
  • how to include wider network in governance topics? … or rather, slowly bringing them in
  • how to avoid “consumer-mode” interactions with these wider networks? (dissolve giver/receiver dynamic, support mutual-aid model)

bruno

long-term goal:

  • enable groups to reach out to other people and create/strenghen relations with them
  • facilitate organizing with people who are not directly part of the group

tricky questions:

  • how to avoid the consumer model of volunteering

vasilis

long term goals:

  • intergroup connections
  • ‘outsiders’ motivated ppl that want to create foosharing initiatives
  • groups and ‘karrot team’
  • ‘volunteers’ from the periphery that simply want to test how it is to be in a group and how you avoid volunteers becoming pickup machines…
  • ppl ‘receiving’ what has been saved
  • academics, students that want to contribute/learn of the project
  • karrot as a tool that can reach more ppl that have groups using other tools so far (outreach)

nathalie

  • create communication channels/ ways to give feedback to groups for people outside a group
  • make it easier to interact with a group
  • have a space for a group to introduce itself better (like a group landing page)
  • how to keep the self-organized spirit alive? how to introduce people to self-organization?
  • what role plays the existing forum?

robin/dave

  • make it easy for people to participate in positive change (Activites) without the feeling of being overwhelmed (tools, apps, chatgroups)
  • make positive social and ecological impact through mikro-tasking (little tasks/activities where people can participate)

Actions/Outcomes

  • write down a summary/shared long-term goals for the next meeting
  • maybe a map too
  • try to book a co-working

Closing

  • Next meeting: 19th April 20:00 CEST
  • checkout
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Me and @Vasilis_Ntouros had a co-working session today to organise the notes from the call, we created this map using excalidraw :slight_smile:

… and the same one with out voting dots, on which areas are interesting to each of us present

… and then we also shared some ideas how things could work in the future, where the groups karrot page is more of a hub of the different types of things people might want to do…

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Braking the Silo - 2. Sketch