A presentation of how Edgeryders collaborate globally in an online environment. Delivered on Oct 25th at the unMonastery Matera.

1. 25th of October, 2014
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2. Edgeryders started out as an online project hosted under the auspices of COE in 2012. Back then it was designed to encourage its members to share stories of transition outside the box in an online platform– namely telling policy makers how a whole generation was looking to lead meaningful lives outside traditional paths. A year after, when the project was over, we had gathered over 1000members from >30 countries, 150 of whom were invited to an event in Strasbourg.
Most of us met for the first time, and alongside individual discoveries and synergies we’ve discovered something as a collective. We’ve discovered we were a community of free spirited, sometimes radical thinkers and especially doers. We wanted action more than talk. We wanted to spin. And so we spinned off 
After the project was formally ended, some of us had been already committed to take this to a new level.
We became a social enterprise with a mission: to generate project opportunities and paid work for individuals and the group as a whole.
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3. Most of all, we are incorporated to serve the community.
-shared values and goals Most Edgeryders have a conscience of where the world is and more importantly, where it should be. And they are doing something about it, whether it’s building software, building intentional communities, educating themselves and others on responsible consumption etc. Although some of us are famous or at least have some clout, we are certainly not rich. These shared grounds remain the same across fields where we operate. Diversity is one of the most interesting features.
-social relationships with each other and trust
The world wide web is surely not out of social or interactive platforms, but the difference is that very few manage to be governed by trust - that invisible glue which makes a group into a community. We think such spaces for interaction are quite rare.
-sense of direction
When we founded the social enterprise we did so to serve the community and provide a sense of direction. This, in the swarm organisational culture, means making a serious commitment. And R. Falkvinge argues in his book “Swarmwise..” that no loose, distributed mass of people would know where to go or how to get from A to B if there’s isn’t some sort of leadership. Leadership in a network is exerted from the front. You start by saying: “I am doing X. Who’s in?” That leadership missing, he says,
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4. is the reason why Anonymous or Occupy failed to move steps further
-collaboration
This is the most important thing that we do.
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5. So we’re currently fundraising to keep the community infrastructure going (website, community events) and bring in edgy opportunities for citizens at the edge: we engage in client work as a boutique consultancy on developmental challenges and public policy advice, taking on research gigs, running workshops in several countries and deploying the huge amount of skills in the community by creating work opportunities.
4 months: Lote3 with 0 resources
8 months: first substantial contract
9 months: world’s first unMonastery
16 months: Lote4 with travel grants & food
How are we doing all of this? By working together all year round in an open, collaborative, interactive environment
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6. When we spinned off from the European institutions we also re-built or website and migrated all content onto our own servers. This new one, edgeryders.eu is entirely community driven and ever evolving based on users’ needs. We have a tech development team which anyone can join to help improve the website.
Edgeryders.eu is not built as a forum, the focus is on getting work done around each other’s projects.
We teach each other collaboration.
Each project is a Drupal entity that is called a group – and each group functions as a self standing mini collaboration environment: anyone can create a group, can set it to private/public, can invite others to it and start working by creating types of content: posts, wikis, tasks, events.
People interact by commenting each other’s posts, wikis, tasks and through pinging (add an @ before a username). Any time you comment something, you will be email notified of all the replies in that thread.
About a year we have from 500-700 new members (15-20% of which contribute some content), and thousands of comments. In 2013 alone we had over 3000.
The user experience is not perfect on edgeryders, so why are we sticking to it instead of going on facebook?
Contrary to commercial software, we assume that edgeryders are smart and committed people, and are willing to make a little initial effort in order to gain
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7. mastery of a technology they really own.
Another thing is learning to communicate and document our work so that others understand it. When you write, you are forced into clarity. it is easier for others to think and respond.
A chance of building your social capital. Being mindful to other people’s efforts to communicate, showing gratefulness or praise, .. is important if you’re up for becoming a self respected member of the community.
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8. The social software, or the living tech, is about laying down the rules of the space: enabling relationships and keeping a highly distributed network engaged, inspired to join, support and rally behind projects.
You can be as public or as private as you want as a newcomer.
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9. We find ourselves prototyping ideas cheaply, and having fun while doing it.
Weekly community call: online meetups – keeps us in touch and helps better organise the work, involve more people in it.
Twitterstorms: why would you need to do press conferences when you have network power to support a call to action?
It easily gets us hundreds of twitterers, tweets and tens of thousands overall reach. Cheap, fun and good publicity, while pulling together different internet networks/ communities.
Form storms: online events to hack funding applications. Turns out most, if not all of us, hate writing those, so we thought: if we found a way to make it fun and fast, while getting help from peers, we’d probably be more into it.
MakerFox: allows us to barter collaboration – in a way formalising our exchanges.
We steward the knowledge as well, by developing software to make it easier to make sense of all the data -> Edgesense, OpenEthnographer
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10. TThere are several ways you can make Edgeryders your own project space, or become well versed in community collaboration, or build social capital, or use it as a research base.. etc.
Our mantra “who does the work calls the shots” is meant to empower any community member to become a leader, a professional, a doer. If no one gets to tell you what to do, no one will tell you what not to do, so the world is your oyster.
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