Hi @Ana, thanks a lot for your questions! Here are some answers.
#The Site Only Works During These Open Days?
No. The OSCEdays is a platform that is permanently open. You can always register, read topics, add topics, ask questions, interact and so on. People can collaborate here on Open Source Circular Economy solutions - always.
#The Idea Is: Everybody Involved At The Same Time With The Same Issues?
No. The platform is permanently open as said above. Part of the OSCEdays platform is the invitation to set up local events. Everyone can set up a local event under the OSCEdays brand and use the OSCEdays platform and resources.
You can set up an event whenever you want. But from time to time OSCEdays tries to create clusters like we are doing with the Open Labs on the Circular City right now. We set a subject and fixed dates for it and try to get several events on the map happening in parallel to allow synergies between them. But no-one is bound to this dates or the subject. You can do also something entirely else during those days.
#Challenges and ACTIONS?
OSCEdays started in 2015 with the concept of Challenges. People were invited to come up with local challenges to work on during local events and share their challenges upfront and document the results afterwards – to make it possible for other cities to mirror the challenge and build on it. You can find a lot of those challenges here (192 topics with this tag).
But we found this not to be working very well. It is not necessarily hard for people to come up with good challenges but there is no incentive and structure for them to document them in a way, that enables others really to reproduce them and build upon.
So we changed the concept in October 2016 to ACTION protocols. An ACTION protocol is a simple step by step guide instructing practical activities everyone can follow. And it always involves a little bit of documentation. An ACTION is an ‘Open Source Description’ of a working solution. Everyone can take it, follow the steps and feedback to the initial ACTION to improve it collaboratively.
So far there are not a lot ACTION protocols available because we just started with the concept. The goal of the Open Labs is to create more and it seems to be working so far.
There is one topic on the forum called ‘OPEN COLLECTION – Ideas For Future ACTION Protocols’. There you can find ideas like ’Replace A Plastic Case Of A Product’ or ’Create A List Of Circular Products On The Supermarket Shelf’. This are just ideas for ACTION Protocols no developed ACTIONS yet. But people are invited to start the development of an ACTION protocol for this ideas.
A possible way to approach this is to start it like a challenge. Search for a way to ‘Replace A Plastic Case’ and condense what worked into an ACTION Protocol. This is what @transitionmica is doing right now: Her goal is to create an ACTION Protocol to allow people across the globe to write a Food Policy Paper for Circular & Editable Cities. Right now she is going through a process of creating such a policy paper for Berlin. If this is done, she will condense what worked into a general ACTION protocol everyone in the world can use.
A Template for an ACTION Protocol plus helpful information how to create one can be found HERE.
Do you have more questions? Feel free to ask.