Weekly call about Karrot development 2021

Karrot Meetings
#1

Date: 2021-01-04 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Bruno, Nick

1. Agenda

Nick had to leave. following pending:

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • comment on Daniel’s sketch (Bruno)
  • ask for some feedback on Mastodon about the landing page

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-01-11 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno
Where: https://meet.jit.si/karrot

Weekly call about Karrot development 2019
#2

Date: 2021-01-11 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Bruno
Notary:
Participants: Bruno, Nick

1. Agenda

2. Actions/Outcomes

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-01-18 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Nick

#3

Date: 2021-01-18 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Katie, Bruno

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • trial activities
    • backend PR started Add trial activities by nicksellen · Pull Request #1105 · yunity/karrot-backend · GitHub
    • more thoughts on Applicant trial pickup proposal - #26 by nicksellen
    • can it be united with newcomer role and trust system?
    • integrating with trust seems a good idea, less confusing to have just one system
    • step by step idea coming into group: newcomer -> approved -> editor
    • useful for foodsharing stockholm?
      • on language: also could work as introduction/welcome for new people
      • currently use green mark on the pickups to see if it’s all new people, should have somebody else there
      • being able to mark them as welcome for newcomers could be nice and welcoming
      • some members might just do editor-like stuff, and maybe don’t do pickups so approved role is less relevant
      • trust carrots seem to work, the trusted people do have the trust carrots
      • people not quite sure how many carrots are needed
      • including an explanation could be helpful to make them more familiar with trust systems
    • existing gamified systems out there, hopefully design can make it clear how it works
    • limit who can give trust?
      • anyone - existing system
        • could work fine, as groups already decide how to do tasks like that (e.g. applications)
      • only approved/editors?
      • newcomers can only give trust to people they did pickups with
    • maybe have 3 trust carrots to get approval, and 5 to get editor (for example, would vary with group size)
  • place types
    • can model it on activity types
    • maybe we don’t even need place types, and just have the options directly on the place?
      • on chatting it does seem useful having them
      • gives ability to filter
      • easier to see on map the types of places
      • could be useful to have some types that you don’t want to see on the map normally (keeping track of various places)
    • … also talking about “tasks” (activities without times)
      • … and currently you require a place, maybe this should be more flexible
      • or just have a direct location (lat/lng) on the activity, rather than a whole place
    • custom statuses?
    • focus on conversations?
    • in stockholm
      • pickup places and distribution places
      • not so important though
      • clear enough what kind of place it is from the activity type
      • nice to have though :slight_smile:
      • use facebook, often get older people on there, who wouldn’t be likely to interact with karrot
      • facebook people more likely to complain :slight_smile: or come a long way then be disappointed
      • younger people on instagram know what to expect a bit more
      • maybe can grow more community to people to update facebook with more info, and build more idea of community than service
    • could be something that goes in the direction of publically visible places?
    • in gothenberg:
      • topic of whether to publise on facebook when food is available
      • with routines it becomes less needed to do that
      • facebook dynamic can occur “uuuururr is there still food”
      • public places are an idea to try and bring people out of facebook
      • so don’t always need an account, can have some public updates from karrot
      • other case being able to embed a map on a website, or support groups who cannot setup their own website
      • maybe have a short link they can use (e.g. karrot.world/somegroupname)
    • will people use other platforms than facebook?
      • disagreement!
      • “people won’t use other platforms”
      • “if people want access to information/resources they’ll come to the other platform”
      • joining karrot seems like people are becoming a volunteer, vs casual participation on facebook, asking them to commit more they’d say “ah I don’t have much time”
      • public places in karrot could be to give access to certain information without account, so makes it more accessible… would need account to interact/comment
      • aim to try and direct facebook people to public landing page on karrot
      • often message gets lost “free food!” - issue of being on facebook
      • we could have simpler login methods? facebook, phone number, temporary account with email confirmation? login link?
      • email as an interface? subscribe for updates?
    • aim to bring together these different levels of participation in one place, more community feel
      • start as casual person, have leads into more participation if/when they feel it’s right
      • community ? framework, mentioned in Katies paper on queueing
      • the wider topic of how to help people understand community participation
      • “take back the economy” book
      • post-capitalism (shhhh don’t tell them it’s communism)
  • how to make sense of all these things we want to do?
    • idea to have a more visual sense of all these topics
    • outlandish use theory of change
    • maybe another slower rhythm, weekly -> 3 monthly (roadmap) -> longer? (6/12 monthly?)
    • maybe focus on Big New Release (more general purpose, co-incide with publicity, etc…)
      • e.g. connection to transition movements
      • maybe this is a good focus
      • build a map on how to get there
      • maybe chat at next weekly call about it
      • how to avoid big waterfall approach?
    • chat about it more next week :slight_smile: (well, actually do it!)
  • values discussion
    • not this week
  • nlnet funding application?
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • co-working
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • write on community forum to see what daniel thinks about unifiying the system (nick)
  • write on rocket chat to guages the level of interest/participation that various people might have (nick)
  • co-working? Tuesday? confirm later… 11 UK/12 ish

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-01-25 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno
Where: https://meet.jit.si/karrot

1 Like
#4

Date: 2021-01-25 12:00 (UTC+1)
Facilitator: Nick
Notary:
Participants: Nick, Fabian, Kristin, Dominic, Bruno

1. Agenda

  • checkin
  • chat with "pogopaule"and his team about their interest in contributing
    • see chat: Foodsaving Worldwide Chat
    • based in Freiburg
    • they work on a PWA app (nuxt) for visualizing energy usage
      • collects data from energy devices (e.g. solar panel)
      • makes forecasts about the data, for consumers or engineers for monitoring purposes
      • a startup
      • corona reduces working hours, kurzarbeit sheme
      • at least 4 months of available, maybe longer, maybe shorter
      • after that depends on peoples personal motivation to work on karrot
    • interest in karrot?
      • looking for open source projects in sustainability topics
      • volunteer from local foodsharing community
      • seems well documented and well written
      • right size, not too small or too big
      • nice tech stack
      • foodsaving topic interesting
      • something beneficial for our society
      • making foodsaving activities in a legal way
      • local foodsharing in Freiburg motivating, seeing it in person
    • foodsharing.de vs karrot?
      • foodsharing.de more messy codebase (from hearing it)
      • perception of not easy entry point for new developers
      • more appealing technology stack in karrot
      • feels a bit old, and outdated technology stack of the future
    • reduced working hours for them at the moment, so spare capacity
    • interest in learning new technologies
    • hopefully finding some UX topics :slight_smile: (as GitHub issues mostly about coding issues)
    • they have a nice team that works well together
    • having fun would be nice! to enjoy coding with others
    • new to open source for some
    • karrot moving towards more general purpose use cases
    • how to contribute for UX?
      • we’ve been struggling a bit here, and not so well structured
      • we try and work closely with the users
      • we would very welcome people with more expert knowledge
      • finding a good structure for it
      • a lot of small things to do! some of them on the community forum
    • idea to find the team a whole chunk of work they can work on as a team
      • maybe a small bit to start with
      • improving existing areas for improvements in karrot
        • notifications for messages
        • signup process
        • … and many more
      • we did some usability tests before (in Gothenburg) finding out where they got stuck
      • Bruno is motivated to go through and assess all these topics to make it more coherent
        • thumbs up from Fabian and Kristin
      • they would be interested in doing usability interviews to hear it themselves
      • we often have trouble with these topics as we are a very small team
      • PWA? cordova? capacitor? TWA?
    • we work in quite a “non-professionalised” volunteer way
      • so, quite slow pace, but steady
      • nobody full time
      • sometimes peaks of activity, in waves
      • very dependent on the natural rhythms of our personal lives
      • aiming to reduce frustration if it seems slow to them :slight_smile:
      • they have 2day/week time when they are together potentially for “mob programming”, but not planning to work on karrot 8h/day :slight_smile:
      • tuesday/thursday mornings for working ~9 --> ~12/1pm
      • how to co-ordinate our ways of working? using our forum? chat?
        • we have a transparent approach to allow others to see what we’re doing
        • finding the balance between the subgroup and the wider karrot group
        • meeting continuity has been helpful for us
        • perhaps they could join the weekly meeting? or a short meeting on the tuesday or thursday to synchronize? 20 minutes?
        • the weekly monday meeting seems it could work (not everyone)
        • they will use their existing signal group for communications
      • testing out how mob programming works for them
    • how to get started?
      • an existing feature they can explore, to start with UX analysis, then proposal, then go forward
    • community design process that we’re trying to evolve
  • how to make sense of all these things we want to do? (kept from last week as we thought to do it this week!)
    • idea to have a more visual sense of all these topics
    • outlandish use theory of change
    • maybe another slower rhythm, weekly -> 3 monthly (roadmap) -> longer? (6/12 monthly?)
    • maybe focus on Big New Release (more general purpose, co-incide with publicity, etc…)
      • e.g. connection to transition movements
      • maybe this is a good focus
      • build a map on how to get there
      • maybe chat at next weekly call about it
      • how to avoid big waterfall approach?
    • chat about it more next week :slight_smile: (well, actually do it!)
  • values discussion
    • ?
  • pick facilitator for next week
  • co-working
    • Tuesday with Bruno and Vasileios (chat on rocket chat)
  • checkout

2. Actions/Outcomes

  • them to come up with a name for the group of them (“Freiburg group”)
  • other people to join karrot rocket chat (“Freiburg group”)
  • karrot team to come up with some existing UX tasks to start with (Bruno)
  • see about finding more code-only “fun” tasks (Nick)

3. Next

Next meeting: 2021-02-01 12:00 (UTC+1)
Next facilitator: Bruno
Where: https://meet.jit.si/karrot

#5

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: GitHub - yunity/karrot-prototyping: 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

#6

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: https://meet.jit.si/karrot