go to OuiShare Fest 2016

[chadwhitacre]

May 18-20, 2016

Schedule

• Thursday, 15h15 - 16h00, Measuring and Distributing Value panel
• Friday, 15h00 - 15h45, meet with Part-up (go to OuiShare Fest 2016 #314 (comment))

Jump to the end for a writeup and pictures/video ...

[chadwhitacre]

2015: #114

[chadwhitacre]

Registration is open: http://2016.ouisharefest.com/join#_tickets.

The second piece of good news is that we just opened our Call for Contributions and invite you to submit your proposals for the Fest program untill 31 December! We look forward to your applications.

http://magazine.ouishare.net/2015/11/call-for-contributions-now-open-submit-your-idea-for-ouishare-fest-2016/

[chadwhitacre]

https://ouisharefest.typeform.com/to/TTSxdV

All accepted contributors receive free admission per proposal to all 3 days of OuiShare Fest, startup pitches excluded.

[chadwhitacre]

All people who submitted a complete proposal to this form are guaranteed an early bird ticket.

[chadwhitacre]

I want to talk about take-what-you-want salaries. I think that's the most interesting thing we've done so far.

[chadwhitacre]

Looks like as long as we submit a proposal before December 31, we are guaranteed the early-bird pricing. Let's sit on this for a bit. I think that Platform Cooperativism (#384) in a couple weeks this weekend(!) will give us a better sense of how Gratipay would do at OuiShare, so let's get through that before taking further action here. Sound right?

[chadwhitacre]

@JessWhit Wanna go to Paris with me in May? :)

[techtonik]

I want to talk about take-what-you-want salaries. I think that's the most interesting thing we've done so far.

I think that most people are also forced to use take-what-you-need, and for that, to estimate the needed capacity of the team I also find a @rummik dashboard pretty exciting - https://pub.rummik.com/expenses/

We should add this to /~user/expenses

[chadwhitacre]

@techtonik Yeah, there were a couple folks doing that. I think @patcon had an implementation as well, iirc.

[chadwhitacre]

Based on my experience at Platform Coops, I think a talk/conversation about FOSS governance models and the collaborative economy could be interesting. Something like, "Does benevolent dictatorship have a role in the collaborative economy?" could be provocative and lead to fruitful conversation.

[chadwhitacre]

To: partners@ouisharefest.com
Subject: partnership opportunities?

Greetings!

I represent a startup called Gratipay, which offers "payments and payroll for open work." Our roots are in the open source community, and we've identified the collaborative economy community as another in which we would like to participate, which we started doing in earnest at the recent Platform Cooperativism conference.

I'm writing to ask, what partnership opportunities are available for OuiShareFest 2016? :-)

Thanks!

P.S. Please note that, because Gratipay is an open company, I'll need to at least summarize our email conversation publicly for the Gratipay community. That'll happen on this GitHub thread.

[chadwhitacre]

Something like, "Does benevolent dictatorship have a role in the collaborative economy?" could be provocative and lead to fruitful conversation.

This could fit with the "After the Gold Rush" theme, depending on how they're interpreting that.

[chadwhitacre]

Or here's one that's right under our nose: "Openness and Consent".

[chadwhitacre]

5 years on and the enchantment with the “Sharing Economy” is over. Many who set out on the initial journey did not make it, and for now, only very few found gold.

http://magazine.ouishare.net/2015/12/after-the-gold-rush

[chadwhitacre]

Heard back from OuiShare folks. We're scheduling a call for some time in January.

[techtonik]

Awesome theme. The most useful thing that I found useful from startup movements are post-mortems. Definitely need to get there this year. I'd like to talk about psychology, about demands and limitations of us as a humans.

[chadwhitacre]

Call re: partnership is January 12 at 3pm UTC. Still determining venue ...

@techtonik Well, we've got plenty of post-mortem analysis to offer. :) Do you think we should offer a session? How should we focus it? Should we focus on a specific theme (legal, openness vs. safety), or make it more general?

[chadwhitacre]

Maybe a "Failing Up" session? "Bring a story of failure to share with the rest of us. We'll have a conversation about the failures we've experienced in our collaborative economy projects and hopefully we can learn from each other's mistakes." Seems like the workshop format would make sense?

[chadwhitacre]

(Though I suppose we may as well pitch Gratipay in a separate proposal.)

[chadwhitacre]

(Though I suppose we may as well pitch Gratipay in a separate proposal.)

Or not. I hate pitches.

[chadwhitacre]

I just bought two tickets(!).

[chadwhitacre]

Alright, can we get a proposal in?

[chadwhitacre]

Okay! Form submitted. Key points:

Tell us about yourself in a few words!

I'm a social entrepreneur with roots in the Python open-source community. I'm best known for founding Gratipay, a crowdfunding and payroll service for commons-related projects.

---

What is one main question you are seeking to address with your proposal?
Be original and specific! Questions such as "how the collaborative economy helps address social issues" might be too vague, while "Is Uber part of the collaborative economy" has already been extensively discussed. A good question has a specific angle and combines at least two themes (work and tech for example, or politics and environment).

What unexamined assumptions hinder the growth of the collaborative economy?

---

Describe your expertise on the subject you want to address with your contribution!
If you have published papers, given talks, presentations or are leading a project in this area, this is the right time to tell us and share related links!

I've been working on Gratipay for almost four years, during which time we've processed over US$1M. We've gone through several major crises as a company, so I've learned a lot of things the hard way about pursuing a collaborative economy project.

Here's a couple short (~5m) videos showing my general presentation style:
https://vimeo.com/59291936
https://vimeo.com/72813386#t=45m37s

Here's a longer video of me in a workshop setting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqSczmUp35w

---

Workshop abstract
Please describe the workshop in less than 1200 characters

When might centralization be the right choice for a collaborative economy project? Hierarchy? Dictatorship? Secrecy? Coercion? Let's spend some time surfacing and examining our assumptions and taboos together, in order to contribute to a more nuanced self-understanding for the collaborative economy movement.

Workshop methodology
Please describe how you would proceed to organise the workshop, as well as the tools you will use.

In this facilitated group conversation, we will spend one-quarter of our time introducing ourselves and sharing experiences related to the topic, one-half in exploration of the themes that emerge, and the final quarter in synthesis and convergence.

What will be the workshop's deliverables?
An object, a prototype, a report, a summary, recommendations, etc.

The group will be invited to collaborate online following the session (perhaps following the conference) on a document summarizing our conversation and offering recommendations to the wider collaborative economy community.

[chadwhitacre]

Thank you for your application Chad Whitacre!

Now sit back and wait while we review your proposal!

Your proposal may be immediately chosen by our group of experts or the community will decide. You will receive a reply by January 15th latest.

And remember: by having submitted this form, you are guaranteed an early bird ticket.

[chadwhitacre]

Their email and this say January 25th, not 15th.

[chadwhitacre]

Booked plane tickets last night!

[chadwhitacre]

I hope everything's going well on the other side of the ocean!
I put you in touch with [], from our team, who's in charge of the 3-day accelerator for responsible and open source startups that will take place during the Fest. It's a really cool project! She wanted to ask you if you would accept to mentor some of the project holders. She will tell you more about it.

---

Thanks for thinking of me, []! Great to meet you, []. :-)

I would like to help as a mentor, my only concern is missing out on the rest of the Fest! What does the commitment look like?

[chadwhitacre]

Commitment is a 30-minute conversation with one of the participants. I've asked for a 45-minute conversation. :-)

The idea is just to have a 30min talk with Ralph and the rest of the Part-Up team about value distribution on their platform. Part-Up is a platform for matching temporary teams to work together on projects. They are structured as a cooperative and they want to talk about governance, value distribution and blockchain during their acceleration. You can see more on this video (2min) they made for the Fest.

[chadwhitacre]

Okay, we're on for 15h00 to 15h45 on Friday.

[chadwhitacre]

Panel video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgynSbU0uOY

https://twitter.com/whit537/status/738110497590018048

[chadwhitacre]

I'm drafting a report at https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/P8dZpTYnC1. I plan to post a version here once it's settled. I'd like to get a blog post out as well but I'm not sure when that'll happen.

[chadwhitacre]

I decided the night before OuiShare Fest that my main goal for the conference was to make friends. Friendship is an end in itself, a good for its own sake. I want to spend my life working together on awesome stuff with lots of friends. That's bigger than Gratipay. I came away from the Fest with many new and strengthened relationships:

• I got to meet the OuiShare organizers in person that I had been coordinating with: Francesca, Taoufik, Marguerite, Bianca, and Manuella.
• Francesca led Mourad, Derek, Claudia, and me in a panel discussion on Thursday.
• As a Fest Forward mentor, I learned about Part-up from founders Ralph and Erik, and shared some of Gratipay's experience with them.
• Xavier Damman from Open Collective (track Open Collective #458) and I found ourselves caught in a trust-building exercise together(!). This led to some good conversation, which continued in Lille (Changaco and whit537 finally meet? #464).
• I participated in a workshop co-led by Tom from Shareable (cf. introduce Gratipay to Neal Gorenflo #403).
• There I met Cynthia from Open Food Network Norway, with whom @JessWhit and I reconnected at the Friday night party along with the ShareTribe founders, Antti and Juho (cf), and Ossa from Sweden.
• I talked shop with Philippe from ftopia, Louis-David (cf. seek funding from Mozilla #637) from Without Model (they published a book that included sections on Gittip and the Open Company Initiative!), and fellow "consultant in the gift" Jean-François Nourad.
• We danced with Denise from Istanbul, and Nancy from Platform Cooperativism.
• We shared dinner with Platform Cooperativism co-organizer Nathan and his family.
• We met and visited with Richard and Nati and Derek and Chelsea and Halley and Daniel and Craig and others related to Enspiral. Picking up from become an Enspiral Venture #421 (comment), Richard and I were able to have a solid conversation together in the burrito line—before meeting on the dance floor later that night. :) Derek and I also had some good conversations.
• I told Mara about GitHub Ambridge and she was like, "That's pretty bad-ass." 💃
• Samir taught me TCP.
• I talked and punched pennies with Guillaume, Etienne, Philippe, Anna, Theo, Flora, and hundreds of others.
• I met @SimonSarazin from Catalyst, who was to be our host in Lille after the Fest (Changaco and whit537 finally meet? #464), as well as Elaine, another member of the informal Catalyst community; she works for ANIS, a non-profit providing fiscal sponsorship for Catalyst projects.
• We went to the MangoPay party with Julia and Fran.
• I met Maxime from Inventaire.io—a Gratipay Team!

After OuiShare Fest we went to Lille for #464, where the relationship-building continued. The format of the event on Monday was a panel discussion with Genevieve from Enspiral/Cobudget, Xavier, me, @Changaco, and Lionel Dricot (aka Ploum). @SimonSarazin and Marion were our gracious hosts. We stayed in their apartment for two nights along with Changaco, Genevieve, and Carole, who together with Sybille facilitated a "free money" workshop the day after our own panel. We explored Lille and shared meals together with them. I met Guillaume, from whom @SimonSarazin originally heard about Gittip back in the day (Guillaume heard about it from Raphael Hertzog), along with other members of the Catalyst community in Lille.

Phew! Surely there are others I've forgotten. We met a lot of people! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

https://twitter.com/aiamax/status/733637909228687361

[chadwhitacre]

photos

speaker portraits

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ouishare/27425678111/ ...

[chadwhitacre]

all videos

[chadwhitacre]

Alright! Any reason not to close this? :-)