Weekly call about Karrot development 2021

Date: 2021-02-01 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Bruno, Nick, Kristin, Dominic, Fabian, Vasileios

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • updates and questions from the “Freiburg group”
  • group creation improvements
    • ideas: Creating a new Group - HedgeDoc
    • some steps in this direction inside our prototyping: https://github.com/yunity/karrot-prototyping
    • stepper might not really be necessary now, just better presentation of forms
    • there’s a need for adding more text
    • another idea: show progress in filling out group information (for example what’s missing)
    • what information is necessary when creating a group?
    • question about inviting people to the group
      • is it really a problem to have an invitation feature?
      • connected to group creation but maybe out of the scope
    • what about description for members? How is it used?
      • Used but feels like a quite hidden valuable information. Make more visible?
      • Maybe not include in the group creation process. Should be edited later
    • Vasilis: hard to find how to create a group, but maybe that’s fine, you find it after finding the existing groups
      • when creating a group one should get a sense of what the values are. Where to put it, and so it’s not overwhelming?
    • Finish with confetti! :smiley:
    • Hard to find the button to create a group
    • Maybe more input on descriptions would be good
    • Idea: update all forms to something clearer
  • improvements to opening activity chat?
    • confusing when clicking anywhere on the activity box and opening the chat
    • something to be improved
    • idea: include the count of messages on the activity box
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • co-working
    • Tuesday morning (Nick present 9 am UK, Vasilis will join, maybe Katie as well, Bruno later)
    • Freiburg will have their own 9:30 local time
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-02-08 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Nick

Date: 2021-02-08 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Vasileios, Bruno

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • neccessity funding
    • email comms between Vasileios and them
      • currently not sure what their 3rd round is going to be (depends on 2nd round submissions, and how things evolve)
      • eligible for applying, but should be focused in the UK
    • the topics relating to karrot
      • food systems and strcutures
      • domestic resilience and creative communities
      • environmental and human rights
    • application
      • 1 pager, or 3-5 minute video
      • deadline 24th February
      • has a research focus
    • is it worth it for us?
      • problems? opening up new agendas for us, but not the best time?
    • is this a new direction for us, or continuing what we’re doing?
      • maybe could be both…
      • use money to get input from initiatives, then embed it into what we do
      • as we want to expand uses of karrot to wider projects, this could fit in nicely, finding out what is needed and how we can address it more
      • presenting the project to groups, and giving constant support to the groups, and getting feedback for development, working closely together with the communities (Bruno is having good experience in getting local freeshop using Karrot because of needs of co-ordination and sharing, run by old people so a good test of usability)
      • can maybe use money to support small grassroots groups too that don’t have access to resources easily
      • exchange between groups important
      • maybe we can organise a conference? online event? share learnings? producing material to share knowledge and experience
      • maybe create a mapping project to find groups, real life examples
      • finding ways to support these groups, with digital tool and knowledge, e.g. community organising, and post-growth methods of community organising, not engaging with normal non-profit/charity mentality, or business models - making use of existing resources in society/economy, creating more commons out of this…
      • intersection of digital support + the exchange of experience and networking
      • collaborative knowledge sharing of lived experiences rather than experts passing down knowledge
    • wondering how concrete we need to be right now?
      • do we need to list/reference specific local groups here? e.g. local sharing groups, community gardens, …?
      • do we need to make a specific budget?
        • we have long term perspective on funding
      • and how UK contexulized…
      • maybe we can propose to start mapping out initiatives
      • they have an to do a more collective project, maybe across all the projects
      • perhaps two parts to money:
        • external towards other people/projects, more in this research way
        • for people in the “karrot team” to be able to participate as they would like
      • maybe come up with stages of different amounts of money
        • outreach/networking/meetings - might work really well… or not so much, a lot of uncertainty
        • … if that worked, then more money would be nice
  • how to make sense of all these things we want to do? (kept from last week as we thought to do it this week!) (and kept again, although maybe I can remove it now)
    - visiting groups as one approach
    - bringing groups together for days for a gathering
    - in person seems nice, but covid-19 might not permit
    - maybe can build a plan in steps, from online to physical, as covid-19 opening permits
    - research could be getting info about tools, processes, info about groups
    - call for applications has a lot of creative focus, do we fit!
    - “freelance artists, creatives, writers, thinkers – people working individually or collectively”
    - we are thinkers and writers at least! so maybe an opportunity to go deeper into those aspects
    - maybe engaging with local people as well to produce art/images/video?
    - big focus of community organising with the commons
    - karrot is unusual for a software project as it’s not just a software project :slight_smile:
    - sensemaking approach - creating spaces, karrot is creating a space too, even if digital (in combination with physical spaces), that supports sensemaking. using the digital to change the world in some direction. don’t want to replace the physical. avoiding trap of digitalization of everything.
    - we want to learn from people to decide what to embed in the code, not just our agenda
  • updates about Freiburg group
  • Next release
    • should do it after #2303 is merged
    • nick should really check whether the offers are enabled for new groups!!!
    • includes activity type editing
    • landing page changes?
    • values discussim on
    • ?
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • co-working
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • Necessity funding:
  • landing page changes
    • co-working session, Wednesday morning… see how it goes [Bruno, Vasileios]

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-02-15 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Vasileios
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-03-01 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: ?
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Bruno

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • two great looking groups in vienna
    • Karrot RoBIN FooDS
    • Karrot Gärten für Alle!
    • Nick will contact his vienna people
  • brazilian education groups still signing up in confusion with Kahoot
  • karrot gathering in the summer? post lockdown…
    • in Sweden
    • Nick would intend to ride up on bike
  • more public info on group preview page
    • activity level: frequency of messages? activities? active people?
    • send a message without joining the group
    • … lots of discussion about public places, etc…
  • places for conversations
    • start with a small improvement for now (Bruno)
    • discussion on coming up with a whole new concept for communication in Karrot (get rid of the main wall, and have some kind of a feed). It will require some design process
  • production deployment?
  • Maybe organise a hackweekKarrot week for the next couple of months
    • as an opportunity to reach out to the community?
    • or just for the usual people working on Karrot
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • co-working
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • Nick: contact Vienna friends about the Vienna groups… out of interest
  • Nick: setup full page about page, make landing page have a url /welcome
  • Bruno: finish up landing page, think about screenshots
  • idea to switch the Thursday governance process calls into working sessions to get some progress!
  • Nick: checkin with Freiburg group to see where they are at

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-03-08 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-03-15 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Bruno, Dominic

  • Dominic will present something to us regarding the landing page
  • Bruno might do some small landing page text updates by then
  • Nick to create a proposal on the community forum to get democratic input
  • Nick interested to work on something for the roadmap proposal

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • landing page/about
    • https://rewrite-landing-page.dev.karrot.world/#/welcome
    • https://rewrite-landing-page.dev.karrot.world/#/about
    • content in carousel is usually ignored. There’s a lot of info now. Carousel is better for more detailed info on the sametopic
    • who’s it for?
      • people who want to create groups
    • what are the prominent features?
      • 2 or 3 main features. Bigger screenshots
      • let’s say values/principles instead. Features are part of it
        • independent groups: not part/dependent of a bigger thing
        • Activities/tasks
        • Democratic governance
      • maybe add more pages explaining specifically the features within each principle (read more…)
    • lightbox (dialog in Quasar) for other features
    • how to explain Karrot: in comparison to other known tools. Make it clear that Karrot can align with their values and start questioning the “neutrality” of existing tools like Facebook/Whatsapp
    • Dominic has time for co-working Wed Fri morning or evening any day
  • production deployment
    • first production deployment with the new built artifacts approach
    • Nick considering changing some aspects of the deployment
    • Nick asked Tilmann if he wants to be involved in discussions to rejig deployment process
    • aim for Friday deployment
  • group signnup page PR
  • remove invitations
  • place types
  • roadmap session
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • co-working Tue 12 UTC
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-03-22 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Nick
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-03-22 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Bruno, Fabian, Vasileios

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • Necessity funding deadline
    • no emails yet, fingers crossed!
  • landing page
    • small changes to deploy soon

      • https://landing-page-new-words.dev.karrot.world/
      • the main headline words are changed
      • got screenshot adapted/confirmed from Stockholm group, maybe one last double check?
      • could also consider linking to the “getting involved” forum post here somewhere?
        • in the about dialog? at the bottom of the menu?
    • bigger changes

      • https://rewrite-landing-page.dev.karrot.world/
      • input about using different than carousel
        • feedback that we had too much text on it, and people might not go through them
        • carousel better if multiple images on the same topic
      • idea to include top 3 “principles” of karrot, and more details feature pages later
      • new contributor information forum post
      • confirming? need a short paragraph describing the values of karrot, maybe before the main screenshot, and on the about page more elaboration of the values
        • no! throwing away the carousel for showing the features
        • the idea is to start with the smaller change, then develop further the bigger change
        • the “about page” has the forum/onboard post content, the about page needs further work, more details information, and resources, and a link to the forum page, not super clear yet…
        • should have another working session about it!
  • deployment
    • still pending, very soon, promise!
  • Fabian joined Efa :slight_smile:
    • good to talk to real life users
    • shared how useful the feedback feature is for them, getting statistics
    • more data available at https://grafana.karrot.world
  • group signnup page PR
  • remove invitations
    • https://github.com/yunity/karrot-frontend/issues/2080
    • current invitation button is on members page, and they get invited right into the group
    • idea here is to replace that with just a link (front end change only)
    • in the future could use the invite feature when creating a group (would be the only place to accept them automatically into the group)
    • and maybe later invitations by email would just send a link to the group
    • maybe could hook it into a small group vs big group thing
      • so whilst it’s a small group you can still invite people to automatically join
  • place types
  • roadmap session
    • … and special form! Contributor
    • team page? Foodsaving Worldwide | People
    • idea to prompt people every 3 months to fill in the form
      • move previous contributors into previous contributors
    • having the forum as the place to collect contributors as it’s more inclusive than GitHub
      • maybe goes in a direction to have a more formal structure of contributors and democratic participation in the karrot project itself
    • would be nice to open up to all karrot users, but we might not have the right structure for that yet, so would “advertise” it on chat and forum
  • pick facilitator for next week (roadmap!): Nick
  • co-working Tue 12:00 European Central Time
    • Vasileios would be interested to spy on a session via screensharing
    • can spy on the Freiburg mob programming sessions too (speaking in German though), ping Fabian or Dominic in rocket chat if you want to do so :slight_smile:
  • mention of https://karrot-prototyping.netlify.app/
    • getting close! (to be able to try it out)
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • add a button on the existing landing page in the “Democratic and participative development” section that opens the existing about dialog (Bruno)
  • schedule a landing page working session (Bruno/Vasileios)
  • deploy to production very soon (Nick)
  • advertise contributor form Contributor (Nick)

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-03-29 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Nick
Where: Jitsi Meet

1 Like

Date: 2021-03-29 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Rakel, Fabian, Layla, Vasileios, Katie, Bruno

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • decide on agenda for today
    • push roadmap to next week? or do it later?
  • Katies students usability testing
    • existing UX topics we’re aware of UX topics and issues - HedgeDoc
    • Rakel is studying interaction design and looking to do a usability study, in contact via Katie
    • Rakel’s study partner (Sabina) is studying computer science and system development
    • both very interested in usability and interaction design
    • trying to grow understanding of how karrot and food waste and the different projects intertwine
    • Katie had posted the idea originally to connect with bachelors students to work on usability topics
    • Katie can give more detailed introduction to karrot and everything tomorrow with Sabina too
    • Nick explains that we aren’t great always at doing UX work, keen to bringon more people
    • designing for community is a different type of thing than normal startup/software type of process
    • having it look more like real people and they can participate is important
    • timeline for thesis: 2 month project, finishing at the beginning of June (2 people full time)
  • ROADMAP SESSION! (maybe!)
  • moving everything to karrot.world domains
  • landing page ready to merge?
  • outreach work
    • how to reach out to groups that might be able to use karrot for community organising
    • some more networking
    • have some notes on which channels/people/organisations/media might be good directions
    • “hello we exist! LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!!!”
    • Katie, Bruno, and Vasileios (:)) interested to contribute
    • maybe a rocketchat chanel to discuss more, or a forum category/thread, starting with a list?
    • Copenhagen discussing to move from “volunteer local” to karrot
    • writing articles, emailing people, …
  • necessity fund
    • purpose of this was to reach out to different UK groups (as funding is UK-focused)
    • can still do this (we haven’t heard back from them, so seems less likely we get it)
    • https://necessity.info/
    • Vasilieos emailed them and apparantly they would put the projects online, but they replied they’re looking into the projects now, so still hope (or was it a polite British NO)…
    • they also have a 3rd round coming up so hope it not all lost
  • organisational structure of karrot
    • trying to get a more formal structure to how to interweave all the different people that relate and contribute to karrot
    • handing over “ownership” and “control” to a wider set of people
    • bringing in the groups that use it more officially into the structure
    • supporting people to feel welcomed and that they can contribute
    • legal aspect questions, co-op? non-profit? no rush?
    • legal entity is an interface to the outside world, seperate from the internal organisational structure
    • being up the right internal culture and procedures is more important for us right now probably
    • the legal entity is used when interacting with things like funding orgs
    • legal setup does have a relationship to internal org structure
    • an “association” is an option for a (legal?) model
    • we’re a very distributed organisation, so is there a good place for it to be based?
    • ties into much bigger discussions about more fluid/organic networks of people and organisations
    • at the core we’re a software project, but has a real connection with people organising, keeping in mind to be connected to the people using it and motivate/encourage them to participate
    • open source culture already embeds some concepts of contribution, transparency of code and issues
    • want to strengthen the non-coding participation
    • supporting people/groups to appropriate the tool for their own needs
    • maybe we can reflect on the structures that we have and what can be improved?
    • Foodsaving Worldwide | People is a place where we can include some people, can use it to recognise peoples contributions to the forum
  • Thursday meeting?
    • not sure how many people can join?
    • could move it to a Friday
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • announce roadmap session with nice description (Nick)
  • proceed with moving stuff to karrot.world (Nick)
  • finish up a few bits of the small PR for the landing page then merge (Bruno)
  • creating a rocket chat channel for outreach, then share list (Bruno?)
  • create a forum topic to explore organisational structure topics (Nick, Bruno takes a look)
  • maybe improve the Foodsaving Worldwide | People page (Nick)
  • Fabian to ping some other Freiburg people about some of the related topics (organisational and outreach)
  • schedule landing page meeting (Bruno, Vasileios)

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-04-05 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: ?
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-04-10 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Rakel, Sabina, Fabian, Nick, Bruno

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • quick review of organizing github issues and roadmap.md
  • possible donation to Karrot (^◡^ )
    • idea from Fabian: undecided whether it’s a good idea or not
    • From Rotary possibly. Idea: introduce Karrot to them and a presentation about food waste in general
    • Rotary mostly about charity. Mixed feelings about it
    • Some other positive outcome are expected, like them being inspired by fodsaving and starting it where they live
    • Fabian will sketch out some ideas and bring them back to the meeting
  • Sabina and Rakel user testing stuff
    • done a template to discuss the issues and problems they found
    • not clear on the landing page on how to become part of the Karrot team.
    • how to make sense of all the pages (karrot.world, community forum, chat) and maybe make them all go into one place
    • what are the usability studies that have been conducted? trying to figure out where they can start
    • where can users present and discuss their ideas? The question about user participation
    • observation that some groups that had karrot.world as their webpage, some not
    • how to move them from being consumers of a technology to being participants.
    • different levels of participation of users, from a quick feedback comment, to joining meetings a lot, and implementing features
    • how should our process for user participation work, our design process has been to try and bring people in
    • an idea to insert polls directly into karrot so people can participate in democratic part of karrot
    • the UX interview we’re currently working on is for prototype testing of our new goverance features
    • their ideas can be shared maybe on the forum or on a Rocket chat channel
    • the outcome expected is some design recommendations
    • using design science methodology Design science (methodology) - Wikipedia
    • one idea: do some survey with the demographics and check if they know how to participate
    • how to show more how people on Karrot are active
    • new rocket chat channel → Karrot Chat
  • Ops jobs for Fabian? :slight_smile: :smiley:
  • UX Interview tips from Kristin
    • for the prototype
    • she has time this week on Thursday (13:00 CEST), or Friday (10-11 CEST)
  • Landingpage Design ideas
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • look through the issues for any more roadmap organising (Nick)
  • write to translators at Transifex about new landing page (Bruno)

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-04-19 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Katie

Date: 2021-04-19 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Katie
Notary:
Participants: Katie, Nick, Bruno

1. Check in and Updates

2. Discussion points

  • Adding a round of updates to the begining of each meeting following the check-in if needed
    • Productivity support, without pressure!
    • Do we need to add it into the template?
    • Could be a helpfull reminder
  • ui testing / prototype update
    • Kristin suggested some more low-fidelity protoypes
    • Questioning some of the ideas and how it fits with the project
    • In this context the fidelity is prehaps not an issue since the prototype was pretty quick to make
    • No issue to make small changes but be carefull not to make big changes
    • The difference between viewing, editing, and commenting
    • Cut down the number of participants
    • Some technical difficulties with recording
    • Nice to have two people one moderator and one note taker
    • Lets try to get more test subjects possibility for the Thursday Meeting: Daniel from Luxumborg, and Olof from Stockholm, Karolina from Warsaw
  • roadmap update
  • restarting the money dot
    • stopped after Tilmann and Janina had a baby (aww booboo)
    • if it’s just one person now (Nick), doesn’t make much sense (not a circle!)
    • maybe don’t need another meeting, if there is not enough for a proper meeting, just accountability?

3. Actions/Outcomes

  • show Bruno how to run the generate roadmap update script (Nick, Bruno)
  • have another money karrot money call after next weekly meeting! (Nick)

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-04-26 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Nick
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-04-26 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Bruno, Nick, Rakel, Katie, Sabina

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration 1h for Nick/Bruno, others have to leave earlier
  • checkin
  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)
    • new contributor was helped!
    • Fabian got access to Jetbrains license
    • we did 2 user testing sessions now for the governance features!
    • Karolina agreed to join next Thursday for user testing session

2. Discussion points

  • Rakel/Sabina present progress
    • continued with study, focusing on getting the research question and background research
    • online collaborative platforms and foodsharing, “collaborative volunteer online platforms” focus, some gaps in understand how it works
    • question to research not specific to karrot, but about moving users from being consumers of technology to participants of technology
    • moving to interviewing users in sweden to find out barriers to participation, what might be motivating factors, and if they know they even can be
    • been in touch with 2 or 3 groups so far
    • has joined Solikylyliyli group, Bruno offers to make specific contact to someone in the group
    • interested to get a spread of people, more/less active people
    • invitation to share any books/information about collaborative volunteer platforms, especially participation
    • wondering where will be good to send out a survey soon, and would appreciate sharing wider than karrot
    • wondering about how much to keep it to foodsharing, or wider collaborative platforms, e.g. wikipedia
    • in context of karrot, two levels of participation, firstly their local group, secondly the online platform (online/offline)
    • concept of many different levels of participation (not all or nothing), and ranges of skillsets
    • has been easier to investigate online-based contributors compared to offline participation, perhaps can connect the two exploring peoples online with their offline participation, a lot of online participation within the project comes from people trying to solve their needs
    • limitations of not being able to observe offline activities
    • challenges of finding things of personal interest that also connect to academic literature
    • interest in online project participation to support offline topics/scenarios, interest in how they view karrot, e.g. how it would be different if it was a commercial platform
    • different levels of participation from people who were in groups, Bruno and Katie became part of team, others chat on forum, and then others stay out of all of that
    • tricky of communicating with inactive users, as of course they don’t reply :slight_smile:
    • hoping the survey can cover a broader scope and get wider set of users, including non-Swedish groups
    • advisor suggested to keep to Swedish groups for core of study to minimise cultural differences
    • how to connect values of FOSS and on-the-ground community organising?
  • another deployment? (nick)
  • how to progress with defining karrot values? and clearer structure? (nick)
    • want to start steps to make it feel less like “my” project (which it’s not…)
    • how to get it so more people feel like they “own” the platform
    • interesting to wonder how people already feel about the “ownership” of the platform
    • maybe the process of building a values/constitution document, that’s what brings people into a feeling of ownership
    • need to grow organically, introduce structures when they are needed, not sure what the ideal structure for us is, can be quite fuzzy
    • structure to encourage participation
    • could get started with values already, with an open meeting, and/or a forum poll (e.g. 50 values listed, pick 10)
    • advancing structure is either too early or too late
    • maybe next weekly meeting discuss values and whether to have a more focused session on this topic
    • how does process/structure embody the values (as well as communicating externally)
    • interesting interplay between conceptual and embodiment/material, need to work together, without both it fails
  • money calls? (nick)
    • 2/3 topics, how to structure it, money situation in general, funding in general
    • chatting about personal economic models, e.g. with therapy/coaching payments, solidarity models, “base prices” + adjustments
      • model: maximise how much “client” can pay, “provider” minimise costs, and do something interesting with the difference
      • using output/surplus from processes to output into the commons/community, multiplying effect to support people who are in key community positions to support them
    • 5,656.38 EUR is current balance
    • payments stopped for the last some months, continue them?
      • nicks personal circumstance made the topic a bit “academic”
      • thought to continue payments
      • who is invited? maybe not pressing to formalize right now, but maybe for the future if we make an economic model
      • maybe connect it to the roadmap, join that, and that is the entry point for joining the money circle? 3 months maybe seems right duration for commitment
    • keeping a 2-3 year duration of the payments, to avoid situation where project stops/changes when funding runs out, if fewer people, have scope to increase from previous 70EUR
    • personally, for nick, makes sense to resume 70EUR/month payments, but probably won’t have resolved personal economic model/needs until much later in the year/next year
      • back payments don’t seem important
    • funding in general?
      • no idea where we would start to look for it
      • what kind of funding would we look for?
      • nlnet → https://nlnet.nl/NLnet; Open call for funding
      • I guess we didn’t get https://necessity.info/ any feedback?
      • any food waste / sustainability / civil society related funds?
      • minimising burocracy :slight_smile:
      • local community funds? specific to local areas? connecting with groups on karrot to talk about their funding, and what our model is
      • fs luxembourgh with “European Solidarity Project” funding
      • maybe we can draw our financial model?
        • current reality
          • private donations
          • some funding money
            • one funding from Gothenburg for the Bike Kitchen project
        • what we want for the future
          • donations (from people individually, or from groups)
          • some funding money
            • directly to Karrot as a project (a technology supporting x)
            • through the groups using Karrot (a project that uses y)
        • high level income, outgoings, with some links to more details
    • measures/metrics of succcess?
      • 3 dimensions: horizontal (spreading idea/concept/project?), vertical (getting bigger), “depth” (going deep into the topics, deep social/economic change)
      • would be nice to grow some users, but not for the sake of it
        • more outreach!
      • could be nice to get clearer idea on some of the metrics
      • nice to grow in all dimensions, but maybe focusing on different dimensions at different times
      • horizontal through different instances hasn’t really happened yet, as not very practical for groups, but we have success through having independent groups
  • general user participation
    • maybe organise some sessions to specifically invite people for general chat/feedback to get better connected, e.g. Robin foods
    • how to actually contact people?
      • create a meta karrot group, people can use to talk about karrot
      • would be nice to dogfood karrot a bit more… defining/discussing our structures a bit more
      • we created a meta group to try it out! Karrot

3. Actions/Outcomes

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-05-03 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-05-03 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Katie, Vasilis, Bruno, Nick

1. Check in and Updates

2. Discussion points

3. Actions/Outcomes

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-05-10 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Vasilis
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-05-10 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Vasilis
Participants: Bruno, Nick, Sabina, Vasilis, Rakel

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration

  • checkin

  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)

      • from last call:
  • review Revoke Trust by pogopaule · Pull Request #2352 · yunity/karrot-frontend · GitHub (nick)
    notes: when trust is revoked does the person that lost trust get notified? Do other people know that sb lost a karrot? Apparently a person gets notified that lost karrots when loses the advantage of being an editor

  • message to the foodsharing festival people to propose karrot session (nick) → to do

  • get the epub book about anarchist cybernetics (vas) → Done
    Bristol University Press | Anarchist Cybernetics - Control and Communication in Radical Politics : By Thomas Swann

  • fixed pickup weight sum

  • “trial pickups” in progress

  • co-ordinating bigger events on Karrot

    • Tasks for Events - #2 by nicksellen
      notes: we discussed on how Karrot can be used to coordinate bigger events. For example events that might need the coordination of sub-groups which are responsible for different tasks/activities
      (e.g. Vienna groups is running such big events)
  • remove invitations

2. Discussion points

  • Updates on Rakel and Sabina’s bachelor thesis

Notes: the overall aim of their projects is through interviews to engage with users of Karrot groups (SE based) and explore how they can participate more in the development process of Karrot as a digital (socio-technical) infrastructure/tool
Rakel and Sabina had a meeting with Mohan & Katie (supervisors) and got feedback for their work so far
3 interviews so far so but they need to do more more
They will write an invitation to be shared in Solikyl group (swedish and english)
Interviews so far: interesting
Time and availability have been identified as crucial factors for the recruitment of interviewees
Comment: Rakel’s and Sabina’s project might serve as a testbed in the sense that as an open-process can be reused in the future to gather more data from Karrot members

  • More than human design (vasilis) → to be discussed in the next session most probably
  • Application to join playground by V.V (possibly Vasilis supervisor) → discussed

3. Actions/Outcomes

  • message to the foodsharing festival people to propose karrot session (nick)
  • schedule a session about places/activities on karrot and how this feature can be ‘improved’
  • More than human design (vasilis) → to be discussed in the next session most probably

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week: Nick
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-05-17 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Nick
Where: Jitsi Meet

1 Like

Date: 2021-05-24 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Rakel, Vasileios, Katie, Bruno

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration, 50m
  • checkin
  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)
    • Revoke Trust by pogopaule · Pull Request #2352 → Done!
    • Nick sent info to the foodsharing festival people for the karrot session
    • New Landing Page! by larzon83 - Ready for review!
    • Progress on prototypeing agreements feature. Small design changes and a couple more user testing
    • Improving statistics display by nick - More statistics display - #11 by nicksellen

2. Discussion points

  • updates from Rakel
    • moved onto analysing answers from 8 interviews
    • question now - where to post survey to get biggest spread (wider than swedish groups)
      • could we send e-mail to all users? Nothing set up yet, but it’s something to investigate, as long as there’s the possibility to opt out
      • I replied to the question over at Karrot Chat
      • … a more immediate idea which seems better now is to share some text + link in the playground group, various other groups, the forum, the rocket chat… etc. as that can be done right now.
    • people had very good things to say and seem interested to get more involved :slight_smile:
  • anarchist cybernetics call / book club…
    • need for some kind of structure
    • book club could be very nice - read a part, then call to discuss it
    • maybe can make collective notes?
    • could try and connect topics in the book to our experiences in groups and karrot and how it might be relevant
    • both relent within the groups and for the karrot project itself
    • trigger points/questions
      • something that you agreed with?
      • something that pissed you off?
      • something that made you think about x?
    • chapter by chapter (of 8)
      • 1 week to read first chapter
      • before or after our regular calls (depends how much there is to discuss)
      • maybe Thursday meetings can expand into broader design meetings, with theoretical discussion
      • could be heavy if we’re still doing the governance design stuff
      • could see how it goes for next week
      • first chapter is short and overview so possible for this coming thursday (2021-05-27) - “2011: The year nothing changed”
    • can also contact author at some point :slight_smile:
      • also after we have nice shiny landing page
  • Thursday meetings
    • we covered it somewhat in the previous topic
    • trying to find the direction for the future of what function the Thursday meetings perform
    • system 4 and 5 from VSM model :slight_smile: responding to changes in environment, and thinking to the future
    • also system 3 (co-ordination) which is more monday meeting
    • design philosophy behind karrot, both theoretical and practical
    • can also think of next big step for design, e.g. breaking the silo… beyond karrot groups
    • extracting design process from what we’ve done so far
    • wondering if we should move the day, but seems good!

3. Actions/Outcomes

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-06-03 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: ?
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-05-31 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Vasilis
Notary: Vasilis
Participants: Bruno and Nick

1. Check in and Updates

2. Discussion points

3. Actions/Outcomes

  • Bruno, Vas and Nick attend the foodsharing festival. Nick does the presentation.
  • From now on we 'll run the book club on Thursdays at 13.00 pm (UK time)
  • From now on we 'll run the governance design sessions at 13.30 pm (UK time), 14.30pm (Central Europe)

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-06-07 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno if they make it on time
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-06-07 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Katie, Bruno, Vasilis, Sabina, Rakel

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration : 1 h
  • checkin
  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)
    • some performance issues that got solved by Tilmann and Nick

2. Discussion points

  • Rakel and Sabinas updates on their thesis
    • Rakel contacted all the groups since they did not get a lot at the beginning
    • 33 answers on the survey, 8 interviews
    • Belgium seems very active: a third of the survey
    • Some preliminary results before the actual report
      • barriers in participating
        • do not know about the chat/forum
        • do not have the technical knowledge or too complicated (believe they have to be developers)
        • lack of time
        • generally not interested
      • there’s a will to participate, now that they know that they can contribute
        • it would be good to focus on making it easy that users giving feedback (overcome problems of lack of time and not knowing where to do it)
      • motivation to participate
        • seeing the result of their feedback
        • easy access to where to give the feedback (maybe links to chat or forum within the group)
    • Katie explains there was some confusion from the beginning when assigning a supervisor to them, since the main supervisor got a very different approach, like focusing on Swedish groups only
      • data collected is nonetheless useful to us
      • we can have access to interviews and survey results
      • besides information on barriers to participation, there’s interesting data on what people want, usability, their needs, etc.
  • Vasilis is working on his annual progress report for his thesis
    • wants to have a conversation to align his work with what we are doing
    • to be discussed on the next weekly meeting

3. Actions/Outcomes

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-06-14 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Vasilis

Date: 2021-06-14 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Metin, Katie, Vasileios, Bruno

1. Check in and Updates

2. Discussion points

3. Actions/Outcomes

  • create places in the Karrot Team & Feedback group for 3 topics:
    • book club
    • design process
    • outreach
  • session discussing trust mechanism on Karrot

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-06-21 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Vasilis
Where: Jitsi Meet

Date: 2021-06-21 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Vasilis
Notary:
Participants: Vasilis, Nick, Bruno, Metin

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration
  • checkin
  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)

2. Discussion points

  • Using Karrot for our team
    • Possibility to delete messages on Karrot
      • Vasilis experienced that need
      • Nick thinks having a time-frame for deletion would be a good idea
      • Time-frame for editing is 2 days
      • It’d show “This message has been deleted”
  • meta-description
  • Updates from Rakel and Sabina
    • didn’t join the call
  • How the presentation on Foodsharing festival go? ( I think we never talked on that)
    • postpone to when there are more people in the call
  • Trust mechanisms and research on that
    • Vasilis will check Sandro’s thesis out and maybe get in touch with him
    • word “trust” can awkward in some contexts, judgemental? approval? although some people can understand words in more specific contexts in software
    • “functional trust” → trust to do something specific
  • social.coop community cafe session
  • “UK community fund” funding
  • book meeting with Thomas Swann?
    • 29th or 2nd?
    • Vasilis will check a time, Bruno and Nick flexible

3. Actions/Outcomes

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-06-28 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator:
Where: Jitsi Meet

1 Like

Date: 2021-06-28 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Bruno, Vasileios

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration 1h
  • checkin
  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)

2. Discussion points

  • should we introduce deadlines for work in karrot?
    • seem to be effective in many projects at Getting Stuff Done
    • maybe a gentle social pressure can help it? win/lose carrots? get whiped?
  • social.coop community cafe session
    • proposed date 2021-07-06 at 18:00 CEST
    • “Hands on introductory session about Karrot”
    • need to then promote it on social.coop / fediverse
    • maybe less focus on history
    • focus more on social/political organising structure, digital tools, etc…
  • chat about some related projects
    • Gemeinsam kochen: issmit.app — Crowdfunding bei wemakeit
    • https://commoningsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Global-Commoning-System-Part-1.pdf
    • https://whatscookin.us/
    • https://mutualaid.world/
      • thinking of the role for the other end of the chain to participate within the software
      • we inherited foodsharing.de model, where stores don’t use the platform
      • … but maybe employees of stores are busy, so easier to just make agreement for regular pickups up front
      • but maybe depends on who is providing the surplus, supermarket chain maybe don’t need to use a tool, but a smaller provider might get some benefit
      • relating to queueing stuff that has to be done, maybe instead of central social events, could have more peer to peer organising of the resources
      • a lot of ideas and potential! expanding beyond the group boundary (“breaking the silo”), good idea to plan some structure/strategy for doing this, but what do we want to do before expanding that scope, another design process?
      • being realistic about capacity
      • maybe this is system 4 stuff in VSM, strategy relating to the wider community/society/environment
      • need to get more of an overview of our strategy/path/direction, visual especially, mind map
      • could do an excalidraw session
      • karrot as a legal entity? when would that make sense?
      • also how to deal with culture of money, and work
  • regular community calls
    • coming from ideas discussed in the foodsharing festival call
    • monthly call where anybody from the groups could drop in?
    • “feedback” sessions
    • start with a one off? and go from there?
    • could be challenging to manage the different perspectives, of groups vs core team?
      • who makes decisions? faciliates?
      • or more inter-group calls, started by people in groups
    • over time I (Nick) would like it to feel like the groups “own” karrot
    • people might just see the calls as “general feedback”, bugs, features…
    • can keep all these open questions in mind
    • first session like “let’s meet each other” kind of session
      • go through their group history
      • how they use karrot
      • what kind of values do they have
      • help us to understand who is using karrot
  • rename github org? MOVE TO NEXT WEEK
    • current: yunity · GitHub
    • also have empty: fsww · GitHub
    • rename, or new org?
    • name ideas:
      • (“karrot” is already taken)
      • karrotorg
      • wearekarrot
      • getkarrot
      • karrotproject
      • karrotdev
      • karrotworld

3. Actions/Outcomes

  • do mind maps/diagrams for Karrot’s development strategy to next Monday (Bruno, Nick, Vasilis)
  • plan the first community call, time poll on community forum (Vasilis to start writing a text, maybe somebody else to post it?)

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-07-05 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno
Where: Jitsi Meet

1 Like

Date: 2021-07-05 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Vasilis, Bruno

1. Check in and Updates

  • agree duration 1h
  • checkin
  • Add updates/celebrations here (if you have any)

2. Discussion points

  • some ramblings on the end of nicks check-in
    • relationship of tech-centric vs … non-tech-centric perspectives?
    • trying to align two groups to work together
    • tech in service of the bigger idea
    • two layers of economic-logic when working: regular money, beyond-money value (wellbeing? purpose? meaning?)
      • the relationship of those two layers differs from commercial projects to ones like karrot, but still both exist
  • discuss diagrams: Excalidraw | Hand-drawn look & feel • Collaborative • Secure
    • Brunos diagram, 4 parts
      • new features alreayd planned/understood
      • small bugs, usability improvements, maintaince
      • overall karrot aspects, interaction between groups, grand strategy, funding, outreach
      • specific spaces for co-ordination and decision making
    • Vasileios’s diagram, similar to Brunos :), 5 levels
      • daily management, sustaining
      • participation, forum, other places where people can gather, research, etc
      • funding, legal entity? needs of committed people? avoiding burnout, bigger plans with others
      • research/outreach/visibility, academic part (can connect to funding), outreach media content, blog, social media, etc.
      • grand vision, more participation, variety of initiatives, prefiguration, solidarity/economy project, processes/vocabularies
    • Nick shared thought about work streams (or working groups)
      • each might have 1 or more person of responsiblity, maybe a forum category, some template of it
      • we don’t have so many people right now, but perhaps it can be helpful for getting new/more people
      • emphasising non-developer contributions
      • things like our “breaking the silo” topic would make a good working group
      • some chat about getting more developers, and different motivations
      • possible source of developers → https://www.agileventures.org
    • question:
      • What could be the next step to evolve Karrot?
  • Dave: notifications about applications
    • default setting for application notifications?
      • currently on by default for people
      • maybe should be related to size
  • call with Thomas Swann later
    • prepare anything in advance, or jump in?
    • maybe open chat
    • why we are there → “we found some things that might be useful to inform the design of karrot”
    • if the fit between us is good, then one call is not enough to cover everything, so maybe as an introduction, then ongoing interaction

Bumped to next week :slight_smile:

  • social.coop Community Cafe session tomorrow
  • rename github org?
    • current: yunity · GitHub
    • also have empty: fsww · GitHub
    • rename, or new org?
    • name ideas:
      • (“karrot” is already taken)
      • karrotorg
      • wearekarrot
      • getkarrot
      • karrotproject
      • karrotdev
      • karrotworld

3. Actions/Outcomes

  • find some suggestions on the next steps to evolve Karrot as a community and organisation

4. Closing Ceremony

  • pick facilitator for next week
  • checkout

5. Next

Next meeting: 2021-07-12 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator:
Where: Jitsi Meet

Karrot groups online cafe!

Running a Karrot groups’ online cafe is an idea that has been discussed more than a few times during the Development call which takes place every Monday.

Let’s then give it a try and make it happen! Let’s share a coffee, a tea or a drink and meet each other, discuss about our groups, our activities, our needs and concerns, our future plans, our summer vacation and the ways we use and don’t use Karrot or other technologies to support our communities.

(And who knows? We might make it at some point to run a real and in-person Karrot festival.)

Small question, is it possible to have such calls after 17:00 UTC+1?

If it not work for you no worries, I’m BA not Developer so I will not have inside from technical point of view :slight_smile:

I think we’ll soon start some regular (maybe monthly?) community calls, and could consider the times for that (maybe should do a time poll here).

I would prefer to keep the weekly calls at the current time, as it takes quite a long time to settle into a rhythm with them after choosing a time (experienced that before!).

this is all from the consideration of my participation, but also one day I might like to go back to just talking about coding, so wouldn’t need to join all these other calls :wink:

we don’t usually talk a lot directly about “developer topics” on any of the calls actually (I would enjoy a bit more dev-talk :frowning: )

1 Like