This might sound like software update language, so nudge if I'm crossing the line--

If the if there's no old directory or DB to stay in (i.e. we kill the current options), the situation changes to: update or decline to join, no?

This is definitely a step in the Solution direction.

I do really like the Sharetribe project too! It's really user friendly. Let's do it!

Thank you Juho :)

Thanks everyone for the input, I'm glad to hear so many of you like this approach!

@maud1 sounds very good, proposal created!

@jocelynibarra your help would be super valuable in defining the taxonomy part, I hope you participate in that! And also in helping to communicate the benefits to potential stakeholders (connectors, members, perhaps also people outside OuiShare?), it depends a bit on how we want to use this.

Grat job @juhomakkonen, thank you for the summary and the proposal :-) And thumbs up for the team who worked on it during the ummit ;-) I commented on the spreadsheet, but I think we need to add "domains of activity", to narrow down the expertise if we are more focused on certain dimensions. For example I know for myself I'm developing an expertise on collaborative food systems, it's a bit more specific than collaborative consumption. But it could be "mobility", "public policies", "urban development", etc. So we should add maybe a "domain of expertise" colum maybe for people who have some more specific zones of expertise... Or else we should allow people to add searchable tags to their areas of expertise to precise it. If someone looks for a specific talent, that will make his job easier I guess also.

hey everyone, I'm really sorry for joining the discussion so late since I have been offline, and am super happy to see this idea moving forward @juhomakkonen !

I do have a comment in regards to the choice of the tool for implementing this:

In the past two years, we've collectively decided on making a significant amount of website updates, though with slow progress, and therefore have invested a proportionally high amount of our funds in website development in comparison to some other areas. Until now, when I asked Connectors and talked to people more involved in the project like @auli and @jocelyn about which features we wanted to add to the website, there has been agreement that our aim was to create rich profiles for all our members that would enable people to connect more with each other and find other members based on organization, skills, interests etc.

This has been part of our "plan" since we started working on the project 2 years ago, which is why we decided in September 2014 to
1) add the database of all members to the website
2) Add search features and clickable tags, in which we just invested 2440 € via the participatory budget.

Users also can already be attributed to projects, events and communities they are part of.(>> See the full report on new website features)

Now I understand that Sharetribe would be a quick and easy solution to implement the OuiShare talents idea, however, please keep in mind: the reason we decided to invest in adding the database and further profile improvements to our website was because we had the aim to add more features to them in the future (just like this idea). So unless we plan to add more features on the website itself, I do not see why it makes any sense to have (+ 3 000 )member profiles on it, because people cannot actually do anything with them.

In conclusion, before we make a final decision on going for the Sharetribe option, I think it is important we reflect on past decisions we've made and answer the following questions:

• How do we expect people to use the OuiShare website? Is it our aim to direct all our traffic to one website that aggregates everything, or are we ok with having separate platforms for different functions?
• What should we do with the current member database? If we don't want to invest in adding further features, should we get rid of it?
• Do we generally want to develop the website further and invest more time and money in it?

These questions have been open for a while and I admit it has been quite challenging for me and Auli to bring them to the attention of everyone and understand the wishes and needs of the community in this respect. So hopefully this is a concrete case that will enable us to advance on discussing these questions together!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hi @francesca ,

Thanks so much for adding your valuable input! It was indeed the right call to block this decision before those topics have been discussed through.

The work @auli and others have done with the website is simply amazing! Building a huge project like this with such a small budget is a super impressive endeavor. I think that in the ideal world this is by far the best possible destination for this talent mapping initiative. When you build things from scratch, you get them to work exactly the way you want, and no off-the-shelf tool can offer that.

My only concern is whether the plan for the website is simply too ambitious. OuiShare doesn't have a big global budget, and building a website that maps everything, from events to communities to projects to members, together in a dynamic way, so all the members can sign up and edit this information - that's really really difficult to do well, even with a large budget. Many traditional corporations spend millions on their intra- & extranet projects with similar ambitions, and still it's quite common that those sites become deserts only used by a fraction of the employees. I think the reason for that is really often that one website simply tries to do too much, and serve too many different audiences. This is of course perfectly understandable - it's tempting to think that "it would make so much sense if you could do everything through the same platform!" However, my personal belief is that this trend is on its way out, and instead we're moving more towards "distributed intranets" - basically collections of tools that each do one specific thing really well. That explains the recent tremendous rise of enterprise SaaS tools.

I'll take another example from OuiShare context. We've been discussing the OuiShare Academy project with @elenadenaro @berniejmitchell @davidwe Chris and some others and concluded that there are actually three separate things under the umbrella of the Academy. One of them is the Talent project - which clearly is something lots of different people around OuiShare have been thinking about and working on at different times - the other is a project for sharing files (to replace the current Google Drive approach) and the third is an online education program similar to the mooc built by the Spanish team. Initially the idea was to build a platform that would have all these under the same roof, but after some discussions we concluded they should actually be treated as three separate entities. And those entities are all quite big already - the Spanish mooc tech platform alone cost €8k and the team felt they were not completely happy about it.

The challenge with any website is communicating the value proposition. If I visit a website and it's not clear to me from the beginning what the value is that I'm getting from that website, it's unlikely I will use it. The challenge with websites that do multiple things and serve multiple audiences is that there's no single value proposition, but many - and it becomes impossible to communicate those effectively.

In OuiShare's specific situation, there are lots of different potential user audiences, and the budget is limited. In that scenario in particular, I'd probably opt for choosing the "network of separate tools" instead of "one tool that does it all". It does have its downsides too - at the Summit many people also expressed their frustrations towards having all the different communication tools like Loomio, Slack, Google Drive, Facebook groups, main website, and so on. It does require coordination effort. However, I still believe that effort takes less work than the effort of trying to solve the issues by building a custom tool to solve all these challenges.

The role of the OuiShare website could perhaps be to be the one source that connects all the other tools in the network. For this purpose, it doesn't need to be super dynamic or have lots of fancy stuff - a bunch of more static pages, updated via a simple CMS, could be enough.

So, my take on the three questions you posed:
- The role of the website could be to link all the different OuiShare initiatives and tools together by the simplest of tools available in the web - hyperlinks. It could be the first source where to send someone new to OuiShare. It would be as low tech as possible, due to budget constraints.
- The reality is that it does seem to me that the current member db and the Sharetribe site easily become duplicates. I'd say we should make a decision: either keep the current member db and invest into it (and get rid of the Sharetribe site) or use the Sharetribe site and downplay the current member db. I'm fine with both options. This can be tested in a lean way though: we could keep the member db in website but use Sharetribe for a few months, and then see if the Sharetribe road is the way to go, or whether we should get back to the original member db plan after all.
- I think it still makes sense to invest money in the website, even if member db wouldn't be part of it in the future. Instead of adding features, I'd invest in working on the communication part - clarifying the role of the website, its value proposition and the way things are presented, and also communicating its role to the community. This can be a lot of work and that work should not be underestimated.

Now, I know it's easy for me to say something like this, as I haven't been involved with the current website so far, so I'm not at all emotionally attached to it. For those people who are, I know that this strategy could feel like all the work spent building it would be wasted. I don't see it that way. It's been an important learning experience, and has helped us understand where we want to go. It's natural evolution: you build something, it serves a purpose, and then you improve based on what you learned. I also think that the money and time spent so far should be treated as "sunk costs" - spending money or time on something shouldn't justify continuing to do that.

However, I'm also fine with moving forward with the current member database. After all, that approach definitely has many pros also, like was mentioned in the original starting post of the thread - it allows more flexibility in terms of custom development, the data is already there, it has some features Sharetribe doesn't, etc. And starting from scratch now with Sharetribe could reveal some hidden issues in the future that we just can't yet think of, since this is such a new idea.

Perhaps this proposal should be reformatted, since it really might be about deciding whether to focus on developing the current member db or use Sharetribe for storing that data instead, at least in the short term (say, next 6 months). Presented that way, the outcome of the vote might be way different than what it initially was. I also recognize that while I try to be as objective as I can, it might be difficult to me to write this proposal in a credible, objective way, without showing any bias towards Sharetribe. I can do it still, but it might be better if someone else did.

I agree @juhomakkonen proposal regarding leaving the role of the website for what is OS + links to different tools for different actions taking into account that every visitor have different needs:
- Being updated about our topics: link to Magazine´s
- Learning about our project: link to every project website
- Learning about our events going on: link to local OS fan pages from we create local events that then are post on the local groups
- Becoming a member: link to sharetribe

And also, I agree that we should invest a bit in communication as what we are is not clear enough in our current website, based on the thousand of inputs from newcomers.

Hi everyone,

sorry that I post here only now - but as said in the HO with @berniejmitchell, @juhomakkonen & @elenadenaro I really appreciate all the work that has been done during the summit and now of course also after - as e.g. the wonderful prototype which
makes it quite comprehensible how this will look like. I think this is also what it makes it really appealing to me - this is something we
could start right away. Taking into account @francesca ´s comments I am not sure whether it has to be an "either / or" solution - while of course I am tech-wise
in this case far away from knowledgeable I am wondering whether it wouldnt be possible to somehow aggregate data from various sources and display it the way needed?!

What I am definitely convinced is, that using something like the MVP built on Sharetribe will definitely help to get insights on what works, what doesnt and what is needed by the community. So what about limiting the users in the coming months e.g. to connectors only (similar to the "lean approach" that Juho suggests)? Playing around with a DB of 3k members is not a good idea at this stage IMHO. Also when framing it around where to store data, it could get political as well (storing under umbrella of commercial entity or the non-profit?).

Hard for me to write a sound proposal currently - maybe an idea comes up the following hours. I am happy though that this proposal revealed some issues that need a solution :)

NUMBER ONE - websites and platforms are a BEAST of a project so we should not underestimate what it takes to build and maintain one, especially one like OuiShare.

My 10 cents...
I am live on the web and I LOVE OuiShare - BUT - I only use ouishare.net site to send people to the magazine and events, even then I will often send them the event URL rather than the OuiShare one or a blog.

I am sorry - but the OuiShare profile part of the website does not work for me, adding details or searching it is painful and I think this job is better done on Sharetribe - we could add a link for our OuiShare profiles?

• If budget was not a question - making a killer member database on the ouishare.net would be great.

• I set up my Profile in 6 mins https://ouishare-talent.sharetribe.com/en/listings/213023-bernie-j-mitchell on the Sharetribe and connected with other people fast.

• RE: numbers - Always Always Always - 3000k people does not mean "we have' that many. I would guess 100 people MAX is invested in OuiShare (notice I said 'guess')

• Using the Sharetribe platform as an experiment until the next summit would be my suggestion - then we have ONLY wasted six months not time, budget and everything else. The web team can focus on something else on ouishare.net

Warning: This next bit might annoy you.... (and I was not at the summit)
Working on the Sharetribe talent thing could be something to REALLY get the connectors community connected - I can't help thinking if we focused on each other for a bit and connected our work and projects the whole OuiShare "thing" would benefit in the long run.

Communication, flow of information and engagement is an issue in OuiShare and I think this would help us understand that problem better.

What do you think?

cc @juhomakkonen @francesca @elenadenaro @elenadenaro @davidwe @thomasdonnebrink @francescocarollo

Thank you @francesca for this update.
All the work done on the website is just impressive. But as @anamanli and @juhomakkonen pointed it out, it's a huge project to create a dynamic website for all our needs. Maybe as other mentioned as well, ouishare.net should stay a corporate website.
It's not an easy decision to give up or "put on stand-by" something in which we already invested a lot, but it shouldn't prevent us from taking that hard decision anyway.

So far, I realize that I don't really use the member part of the website. When I click on the member page, it's not motivating to see all these empty member profiles, some of them don't even have a picture.

On the other side, the member profiles allow to link to projects and events on the website. And this is something "precious". And if we move completely to sharetribe, we will lose that visibility. Unless we can "integrate" that information from sharetribe. Is something like this possible @juhomakkonen?

If not, I wouldn't say "let's give up for ever" the idea of having a dynamic use of the profiles on ouishare.net. But as @davidwe said, we can take the sharetribe opportunity to give try in a lean way to test what are the needs and uses of a database?

I agree with @juhomakkonen @esratat and @anamanli what would be nice to do is planning a proper Communication/marketing strategy and trying to understand where we want to go with all the tools we have: do we also want them integrated in the Website? personally, and I know that the Website is a Huge project and people working on it are spending lots of time and efforts in making it work, but i think as a first window for Ouishare, it can be improved especially on the Members and Communities profiles.
I agree on the proposal of trying to merge Sharetribe within Ouishare but before doing that, we could try to discuss on a 'where to go strategy with the whole Website' not just the Academy. So wider approach and focus on 2/3 priorities to be implemented and observed until the next summit. I didn't want to put 'abstain' because i'm happy to help you with this part if you want, but i also agree with @francesca in having a double thought toward a proper solution:)

Hey all,
@juhomakkonen thanks for keeping up. @francesca , thanks for helping us see beyond the decision of today.

Here's the question that hasn't come up as such today, but which as usual, impacts our decisions: "What does OuiShare do?"

We like to think that the OS narrative evolves by the projects we create or the activities we engage in, but that question is so fundamental that it requires its own space, and sometimes we forget.
Maybe it doesn't have a concrete answer because we're a network and we're supposed to change, maybe we don't care about defining ourselves, but the question certainly requires to be considered when proposing decisions.
The proof is that we see roadblocks in Identity recurringly (normal).

Important:
I am not attempting to go back to "What are we?"; I am pointing out that perhaps by acknowledging that this is where we are, we could be able to answer How & Where to proceed with this Proposal of a Solution to something we all consider a Need.

• If, in 2016, OuiShare is a giant connector, the website is an informer, and should be editable to inform.
• If OuiShare is a giant connector, who, in 2016 wants to facilitate the interaction between externals, members, and main actors (Connectors), the website is a platform that supports interactions, or the website is connected to a software platform which allows interactions.

Now my opinions:
1. OS website as an information hub: it hosts a directory of people (but it's a link to a platform, thus the curent directory disappears– now or later); it is a list, or map, of events, of communities, of whatever we become/grow into.

The site doesn't /do/ anything besides 1) informing, and 2) allowing to be edited in order to inform.

1. I would like to be part of developing a //space of people// that allows two actions: 1) find others, 2) engage with others. The two are necessary.

This map/directory/DB/platform/whatever /does/ something: it allows for connections between people who are inside or outside OS.

1. @juhomakkonen of course I can be part of taxonomy; it's excellent enjoyment :P

Thanks, everyone!

@juhomakkonen just to make sure: we're not keeping three directories live, correct?
I'm referring to: http://ouishare.net/en/about/members, http://ouishare.net/en/about/team, and the new Sharetribe.

Also, a note for communications: the members newsletter should probably have a note about this?

thanks so much for all your comments and reactions guys, you can't believe how happy I am for your participation in this discussion, which I feel I have been having with mostly myself and one or two other people in the last years (which is very boring and does not get you to far ;)).

Just to clarify, I am 100 % open to any of the options, because what is most important is that we throughly think about the questions at hand.

Joss summarized the two basic directions for the website very well. To state very simply:

1) OuiShare.net as an information hub
2) OuiShare.net as an interaction / connection hub

Till now, the interaction part has been happening a lot in our FB groups, which has been slowly dying though and was also part of the reason why our long term aim was always to move the community interactions increasingly to OuiShare.net. However, after being part of this website project since the beginning and taking into account the complexity of what we would like to do and the resources we have to do it, I agree and am in favor of a strategy change to focus on OuiShare.net as an (regularly updated) information platform, that directs to places where the interaction takes place.

Based on the amount of effort it would take to get people to really interact through our platform with each other, I think it's unrealistic to focus on this. At least we can say we tried.

In moving forward, another point that was mentioned that I am happy came up is the question of the general positioning of OuiShare, the answer to the question "what are we" and how we communicate this externally. This is acutally something that I am personally quite interested in working on, which is why I was planning on raising a bucket in from the OuiShare Global budget to work on exactly this:

• working on the repositioning of OuiShare in terms of communications
• implementing the new communication on the website
• restructuring the website sections in accordance with this communication strategy (adding / deleting things)--> I already have a pretty clear idea of what this could look like, which I can share soon, and I don't think this should require much or barely any new web developement or design, because it's mainly about content restructuring.

I don't have a detailed proposal on this yet, but was going to get to this asap, now that we have decided on using cobudget cc @maud1. Part of my idea was to do a small phase of talking to Connectors to decide what we really need the website to do, so we make the right decision :).

It's important to clarify that I am not talking about making a strategy for OuiShare (because we know that is not really possible ;)), but find a new way of talking to others about who we are and what we do.

Next steps

Who's in for a call next week to discuss this project so we can refine a little more what we think is needed and plan concrete steps? I am happy is others would like me to join in raising the bucket to do this work.

@juhomakkonen @elenagiroli @berniejmitchell @esratat @albertcanigueral

I'm in!!! @Fran I'd love to work on this in more detail with you and a gang. It took me a while to figure out but this area is what really gets me going. Also my head is in a much better place this year ;-)

@francesca happy to help..I'm leaving this weekend. we can have a chat tomorrow maybe? and when i'm back i'll jump on board:):)

;-)

Great guys! I think it would be good to do a call where at least @juhomakkonen and others that might want to join can be there, so since Elena is leaving for a while on Friday, I'll just catch up with her shortly tomorrow and we can plan a call the rest of us the week afterwards?

Hello!
@francesca you <3, thank you.

Regarding: "Based on the amount of effort it would take to get people to really interact through our platform with each other, I think it’s unrealistic to focus on this. At least we can say we tried." << This is another fun part of decentralizing: we step to another side of the hypercube and let our members interact as they wish. We have (or are about to) build the paths for them to connect; we do not need to intervene beyond that, but we can listen and support (if that's what's desired, of course) :)

I'm always interested in redefining narrative; keep sketching!
Artifact was born by allowing a phase of conceptualization around narrative, and it went fantastiskt.
I'm also in for a call next week, I hope you don't mind that I'll be in CST still (Mexico City).

Hello there! I don't know why I didn't receive any loomio updates so just miss the whole conversation :-( I went through it quickly (nice to see so many reactions!) and will be happy to join a call. I'm wondering, should we create a specific channel on slack to keep talking about it or does this question takes place in an already existing one? cc @francesca @juhomakkonen @jocelynibarra ?

A Loomio Slack Channel is a GREAT idea!

Hey everyone,

Amazing discussion here! Sorry about being so late to reply, I've been swamped with work.

@esratat it's possible to pull stuff out from a Sharetribe site through RSS feed - that could be used to display the list of member profiles also at the OuiShare main website (it requires a bit of development work but not that much) if that's useful.

@jocelynibarra about three directories: I'd say it at least doesn't make sense to actively advertise all of them, and it might make sense to hide the OuiShare website ones quickly while testing the Sharetribe solution, if we decide to do that, to avoid confusion. However, perhaps in a few months we realize the Sharetribe option is too limited, and want to go back to the website strategy. At that point we can open those areas again. So the code that was built to create them definitely should not be removed.

@francesca I'm definitely in for the call! Can you set up a doodle? I will be offline for the weekend, back on Monday.

@maud1 a great point about the channel, we could touch that point quickly in the call too.

Hugs,
Juho

here's a doodle! http://doodle.com/poll/t7tyncag77pz37eu @juhomakkonen @maud1 @berniejmitchell @esratat

The doodle has spoken and the hangout will take place next Monday, March 21st at 11 AM Paris time. You can see it in the ouishare hangouts google calender, where you have the direct hangout link.

@francesca pseudo related to this debate. Recently I got requests from "soon to be connectors" (they are in the process) from Lima and Santiago de Chile for using ouishare.cl / ouisharechile.cl and ouishare.pe and create local websites. As part of this vision of the web this might be relevant too.

I told them to wait as we are having this discussion.
In certain countries you need strong local presence (and @ouishare.net e-mail) not to be seen as a an EU or USA alien organitzation

@francesca I'm trying to join the video call but it keeps saying it cannot be joined because of an error. What should I do?

Any updates on that? Sorry.. Starting catching up with all the things pending;)

@francesca what will happen next on this? Also, did we choose to abandon the Sharetribe site? I'm not sure if we decided anything on it.

Sorry for the silence! I've revamped our tech & web trello board to manage this project from, see here: https://trello.com/b/HBITAaOb/tech-tools @elenagiroli

This is where I'll be tracking the different steps, and I'd be glad to schedule a next hangout in 2 weeks, realistically, to follow up.

Plan for now:
- continue the "research phase" till end of May to get input on what we should change from community members and people that are external
- start implementing small changes of things we know need to get done or updated
- continue to faciliate the discussions on the more "hot topics", that we don't all seem to agree on, i.e. this one on knowledge groups

@juhomakkonen the decision from our hangout was definitely to keep OuiShare Talents going and find a visible way to integrate it into the website, and stop trying to develop such things ourselves. Do you have any concrete ideas on who we could do this in a smart way?

Hey @francesca @elenagiroli @juhomakkonen what is the state of this topic right now? Did it happen the HO already? I would like to catch up on this. Thanks!!

@anamanli we discussed this a bit with @francesca and Marguerite at the Fest. The plan is to move forward with this by finishing the taxonomy. I'm going to send you an email on this as soon as I find time - I'm super busy next week but after that should be easier.

Hi all,

This thread is HUGE! Don`t have time to read it all. I hope that someone is curating all the ideas and insures continuity to this initiative.

I am very, very happy to see this, because this goes in the direction of the model that we have worked on with SENSORICA, the Open Value Network. A lot of resources flow through networks, some are tangible and some are intangible. The tangible ones can be more easily identified, measured and mapped.

The aggregate of human skills is a huge asset. Once we can surface that, we need processes in place, aided by infrastructure, methodologies, and governance to put it to good use, to form groups to execute tasks, to carry on projects. That is the essence of the OVN model.

It is proposed at the top of this thread to build user profiles with lists of skills. The problem I have with that, which is what LinkedIn has done, is to have static, self-reported skills associated with an individual. LinkedIn went a step further, allowing your friends on LinkedIn to propose and rate skills for you. SENSORICA, with its OVNi (IT infrastructure for open value networks, the NRP-VAS) goes a step further. Our profiles are dynamic, they are built based on real activity that network affiliates perform. See for example my own profile on SENSORICA.

http://www.sensorica.co/home/about-us/tiberius-brastaviceanu

You can also see my data on the NRP, here.

http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/agent/6/

I draw your attention on the ''Cumulative Contributions'' section.

I admit, the UI is not slick... but the data is all there.

In essence, every project is managed inside the NRP. We do project planning, coordination, and we log our contributions in time, $, and materials. Here`s an example of a project page.

http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/agent/352/

What can you do with that data?

For one thing, you can do what you want here, you can build network affiliate profiles with real data, filtered by tasks, by time, etc.

But you can also solve the next problem that is waiting for you around the corner. Once you are able to surface skills, I suppose that you want to use them. You want people to be able to form groups to work on something. If you do that, how are you going to manage the process, how are you going to redistribute the revenues, how are you going to govern the project? The contribution data can be used in what we call Access to Benefit equations/algorithms

http://valuenetwork.referata.com/wiki/Access_to_benefits_equation

Benefits can be: access to governance, access to revenue, equity, recognition (access to the spotlight in events, presentations, etc.).

The NRP-VAS that we have created lives on Github.

https://github.com/valnet/valuenetwork

It has been forked by Freedom Coop

https://github.com/FreedomCoop/valuenetwork

and Gopacifia

https://github.com/gopacifia/DEEP

We are submitting for funding for physical and IT infrastructure development for SENSORICA, and we put in over $700K for NRP-VAS improvements, including some blockchain modules.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qXD1E1vC4lfB8LNAacsQIp8xpXFQSNiCR48zjIH0u5A/edit#slide=id.g138e648123_0_749

The probability to get this funding is pretty high... If we get it, we will work with other communities around the world to deliver the infrastructure project. Everything is released open source. But anyone interested can jump in and help, and share the budget.

So, as you are thinking about new tools, I want everyone here to consider the NRP, designed for networks.

As a conclusion, here`s my presentation at OuiShare Paris in 2014 that explains the NRP-VAS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKrScVH0NlY&t=911s