On the call: Stasia, Lars, Frans, Sharon, Seigo, Qing, Gien, Silvia
Notes:
Qing introduced herself as a new BoST member. She offered to translate in Chinese website content and documents we recommend as essential.
Lars gave an update on the 2017 events in Berlin. They were a great success with over 800 people attending and many challenges worked on.
Strategic Framework:
Frans has reviewed all the current inputs to the draft and added his vision statement and branding recommendations. He emphasized the commercial aspect of our future organization, including selling products and books authored by OSCEdays people.
Lars explained his inputs to the draft. His vision is to make OSCEdays a 365 days events/tutorials. Find new partners for infrastructure projects, celebrate success. Agrees for a need to find a legal structure, the association application started last year can be revived quickly. Frans will help. The association charter in Germany is flexible, so it will be a good start followed by branches in other locations and/or other forms of organization.
Association statutes
There is a broad agreement that we should work on discrete projects and show results that are convincing about the feasibility of OSCE model we stand for.
A lot of debate on what should come first: decide on the organization type or on a vision statement. Seigo and Sharon will find the common theme in the current vision statements and consolidate them in 3 options to be put to vote.
On the draft document, a lot of groundwork is done, it’s a matter of consolidating current work, simplify it for clarity and relevance. Sharon and Seigo will re-write the draft. Previous version will be saved for tracking everybody’s inputs.
Sharon: Also I really think emphasising the NETWORK and PLATFORM is really useful. I don’t think we necessarily use this very well in our communications.
Qing has an opportunity “Projektträger Jülich” https://www.ptj.de/en/start , but we need funding and in order to get funding we need a legal structure.
Frans: It is possible to “borrow” a partner org for now for funding gs, and start an own at the same time, because this needs some time
Gien: In our Saturday workshop with Dr. Jose Ramos, his group was experimenting with Cobudget:
http://cobudget.co/
developed by Enspiral.
Where funding comes in to an organization…members can contribute money in “buckets” and they can they decide which project it goes to.
Funding agency can be just an organizational bucket.
Gien: in terms of monetizing products and service, we have been engaging Dr. Jose Ramos with his concept of Cosmo-Localization. This is getting away from a centralized store and instead, allowing local producers to download the open source design files for local production:
http://actionforesight.net/category/article/
The centralized online shop is following the existing capitalist paradigm and that seems to nullify the potential impact of open source. For instance, in South Africa, we intend to innovate our ecohome technologies and share them globally , including across South AFrica so that local communities have the opportunity for local production to create their own livelihoods in their local communities. It’s based on the idea that there is enough for everyone. We enable individuals who want to take the risk to produce and benefit in their own local community.
For project work, a matrix with projects on the columns and global participants on the rows…people can just join whatever project they want to. Then the popular projects float up to the top and it gets naturally prioritized within the network. Each project then becomes a Digital Autonomous Organization (DAO) and can get funding if it looks like it has impact.
Silvia: We need to remember that we need a long-term plan, where will we be in five years, we also need an answer when we’re talking partnerships and event organisation, not to mention everything else that has been said on projects…I would not like to post-pone a decision on this, one option is to stay as we are, at least we allow everyone to choose their preference and at least we are democratically deciding things. I agree with Lars, things are nearly ready. We risk losing people if we don’t make some money, which is also in support of what Frans is saying, we need to be both conceptual and commercial. My position is that we need to agree on a certain structure and as soon as possible. If we can do the association in Germany like Lars said, then great, if it’s very flexible.
Seigo: Is there an interim position whereby that OSCEdays can form national legal forms e.g. Germany, UK in line with OSCEdays vision. In the longer term we could potentially pursue Gien’s idea around DAO
Gien: Another possibility is to talk to an impactful organization to see how they went about it. For example, to speak to a strategic member of ouishare to get their insights on how they formed their organization. Did they go through the same growing pains?
yes. Let’s find out where the right place for everything is 
You suggested to do this a while ago already. And now it is time to go for it.