We are already a few weeks into the scoping process related to the Contracting task, and this is my first post, in the capacity of coordinator. Please stay tuned for more!
If you are interested in this topic, why not jumping straight into it, learn and/or help. We are doing everything we can to make the work highly transparent (unlimited access to information) and open (accessible to contribute).
WORK ENVIRONMENT This thread (and perhaps others in this category) will serve for broadcasting important milestones. We can also use it to engage in discussions, but I strongly suggest you to do that right where the work is done. The Google Doc is the place where the work is done collaboratively. Anyone can comment, edit access is immediately granted on demand to al participants in this Forum.
CONTRIBUTORS
Anyone can contribute, just ask permission to edit the Google Doc. Currently this work is heavily socialized within the Sensorica network and most participants come from there and from satellite organizations. You can even record your contributions to be recognized later as an author of reports, gain responsibility during the process or even for a small financial compensation Ping me for that… we use Sensorica’s NRP-CAS for that, to provide an opportunity for this community to experience the OVN model and tools -cross pollination.
@MDEE is heavily involved, hi can also answer your questions @max_w is regularly updated @schutton knows everything @BarbaraSchack can solve all your problems
Hello Tibi - thanks for sharing this. I also saw that you tagged me in some comments in the Google doc - apologies for not having responded sooner on that, I’m very busy at the moment and haven’t had the headspace to engage with the document and make sense of it. If it would be helpful I’d be very happy to arrange a call so we can talk through it and I can give my input?
First exploratory interview was conducted, see notes here. Link to video recording will come.
Note that there are two types of interviews, exploratory and indepth.
The indepth interviews will be conducted during the second phase of this assignment, with groups of representatives of organizations that share a common model for establishing dependable distributed manufacturing processes. There will be at least 6 such groups.
The exploratory interviews are designed to build understanding, to map.
I am translating 60 traditional business model patterns into commons-based peer production jargon.
In another column I will further contextualize these patterns to material distributed production.
I will also provide concrete examples of organizations that enact these patterns, that we identified during our mapping exercise.
My goal is to understand how mechanisms for making distributed production more dependable are related to business models patterns.
You can use this pattern language in your own work.
If you have identified other patterns, please ad them to this spreadsheet.
I processed our discussion into this doc to provide visibility into our exchange. Please feel free to improve. We can continue to coordinate/collaborate in this doc, using comments.
I am coming back to provide some updates on this assignment.
We already have 2 candidates for a first workshop on technologies (smart contract, digital identity, onchain reputation and onchain governance for example). We are adding more leads every day.
More thought has been don on the format of these workshops. Here’s the gist of it
This is a AI-assisted collective intelligence-driven inquiry. Each workshop will be composed by a diverse group / different types of stakeholders in peer production, that belong to one of the 6 identified categories. For example, we’ll have a representative of a doers organization, one of an infrastructure development organization, etc. If divergent views are possible, we invite representatives of organizations that have opposite views to balance the interaction. The facilitation process is designed to help collective intelligence emerge and express itself. The focus is put on complementarities, synergies and opposing views. A problem-solution pattern is also framed, as the representatives of the doers organization will present their reality and real issues that they are facing and the solution providers will present what is possible. The workshop will be recorded using Firefly (AI agent). The AI agent will be prompted to extract points of convergence and divergence, synergies, proposed solutions with respect to the problems expressed. Every workshop will start with a short presentation of the initiative and set the stage for interaction. Some time for free interventions is allowed. A round of questions and answers will follow. The last part of the workshop will be geared towards proposing solutions to problems, or at least provide leads. In conclusion, the facilitator will entice participants to become contributors to this IoPA initiative.
For every workshop, the video recording will be cleaned and published. A report for the AI-assisted analysis and synthesis will be published along with the video recording as well.
At the end of this assignment we will produce a report of AI-assisted analysis and synthesis of all workshops to capture information that cuts across all 6 categories identified (perhaps these categories will be modified in the process). The end goal is to provide guidance for the development of a toolbox that actors in peer production can use to increase dependability on their networks.
This is an interesting concept, and I think the discussion has potential to be fruitful. I have a couple thoughts prior to recommendation of people who may be interested in joining:
What is the response to inquiries from potential participants regarding the use of AI in this workshop? I ask since I use fireflies.ai myself and have fielded multiple inquiries from program and meeting participants, some of which resulted in booting the AI from the meeting, which did not have significant impact on the content of the program. However (which leads to my next point),
How do you intend to navigate issues with those who are already familiar with the EULA and still have concerns? If they are not satisfied with what is provided by the meeting assistant’s data security and storage policies? Is the plan to not include them in the work? What is the alternative pathway?
This may seem like splitting hairs, but as recently as within the last 2 weeks, I’ve had a facilitator from another organization (GOSH) state plainly that they wouldn’t use the product, not because they didn’t agree with it philosophically (quite the opposite!) but that navigating the EULA and responding to questions from participants was too much overhead.
I have frequent conversations on the overarching philosophical concerns regarding AI and the two main issues of control and values systems, but this is far more targeted - and, if you already have things in mind/links to supporting POVs that have been useful in easing people’s concerns, I welcome any/all. This was the first to spring to mind, since this workshop is specifically built around the necessity of including AI, and I agree - it is an incredibly powerful tool to use for data analysis; I just shared this piece on deep generative models for materials discovery in a meeting earlier today. It is a frustrating reality to consider how we should prepare a response to the AI concerns inquiry, but one that cannot be ignored, as it could potentially impact the diversity of voices in the workshop you are intending to facilitate and subsequently analyze.
I have other more logistics-related questions regarding when/where, but those are details that are far easier to sort.
Hello Everyone, Martin Oloo, who is the lead for Fablab Winam (https://fablabwinam.org/) in Kenya has agreed and is delighted to be a part of this workshop and discussion.
Martin’s institution has extensive experience with hardware production in Africa and has also worked with communities and schools in Kenya.
List of organizations that have agreed in principle to participate in the first gathering, in the tech category (identity, reputation, smart contracts and transactions, AI)
The idea is to have dowers represented (AfricaOSH) and infrastructure / tools developers with different perspectives. We understood that Commons stack represents the web3-commons vision, Neighbouthoods represents a more inclusive commons vision, AID represents the institutional perspective. The Active Inference Institute will represent the broader AI view.
We will send them a Framadate to fix the date of this first gathering.
Sorry for my absence, I am under water at the lab delivering a few open source devices for a hospital, for a study. A very interesting case of material peer production in a field that is very sensitive to quality of execution. See more on Breathing Games.
I thank @MDEE and Vinicious for carrying this forward.
Hi @TiberiusB , @Jbutler-helpful has also expressed interest in participating. When a date is settled with the shortlist, where will it be announced, here? That way we can point people there if others are interested.
Hi @TiberiusB , just wanted to add here something shared by one of our mAkE Project partners, that seems worth exploring:
gaia-x is a large European initiative for a data exchange ecosystem: https://gaia-x.eu/
It looks like this could be interesting as an infrastructure to use for handling the contracting system. Maybe you want to check it: https://www.gxfs.eu/
It is all open source and available in github.
Ping me for that… we use Sensorica’s NRP-CAS for that, to provide an opportunity for this community to experience the OVN model and tools -cross pollination.
welcome and lovely to make your acquaintance! I am on Discord as well 