Civic Tech Lab: Community Tools 23 February 2021 9-12 am CET

[civictechadmin]

Do you want to grow a community with the help of digital tools? This lab is for you! We will both see examples, talk about best practices and try out tools during the lab.

When

February 23, 09.00 to 12.00

Where

Digital, whereever you are, on Zoom (you get a Zoom-link after you register)

The lab is free to join and all you have to do is sign up. After you have signed up we will also send you stickers and chocolate in the mail! Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.se/e/civic-tech-lab-community-tools-tickets-140276682333

Civic Tech Sweden is the growing community in Sweden for people working with technology for the common good and digital tools for community + democracy + transparency. During 2021 we will have labs on different subjects and before, in between and after we’ll talk about them and much more here in the forum.

The entry point for this lab

People already talk about your organisation or your subjects in one way or another. So the question is not “should we have a community or not?”. Rather the question is in what way you can lean in to the existing conversations about your organisation or subjects. This is our entry point for the lab, and together we will explore this!

Facilitators

Pernilla Näsfors Östmar and Mattias Jägerskog who both have decades of experience with community building in Sweden.

Special guests

Francesca Pick
Francesca is an ecosystem builder that helps people and organisations all over the world work with participatory governance, network building, collaborative decision-making and budgeting. She has been key in building up communities such as Enspiral and Ouishare and uses that knowledge to help others shift to participatory and transparent practices. Read more about Francesca and see videos from her talks on https://www.francescapick.com.

Hugi Ásgeirsson
Hugi is an instigator of participatory places, events, and communities who likes to make decentralized communities tick and tock. He’s a co-founder at Blivande, co-director of Edgeryders and project manager for the civic tech project Plato.

Who can participate?

This is an open lab for everyone. We encourage participation from at least two people from the same organisation or project in the lab, so that you can work together on exercises and better support your organisation to absorb and apply what you learn.

Program

• We start at 09.00 on Zoom and will be done before lunch at 12.00.
• We love conversation and doing! The lab will have lots of time for conversations between participants.
• Real examples rather than theoretic. Our focus is for you to be able to implement what you learn both during and after the lab.

We believe in transparent conversation and would love to hear your thoughts about Community Tools right now. Join the conversation in the comments to this post!

Questions?

Talk with us here in the forum, send an e-mail or contact us on LinkedIn.

Pernilla Näsfors Östmar - @Pernillan - pernilla@civictech.se
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pernillan

Mattias Jägerskog - @mattiasjay - mattias@skjutsgruppen.nu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattiasjagerskog

[hugi]

Hey gang, this will be great! If you have any questions running up to this, don’t be afraid to ask. About Edgeryders, Plato Project, Blivande, or anything else.

[phoebe]

Hi! Can’t wait for this event and to meet other civic technologists. This is something relevant I wrote from some work I did with Local Trust in the UK: https://medium.com/digitalfund/communities-essential-guide-to-digital-tools-for-mutual-aid-groups-c1664d30b525 currently working on the community toolkit based on ethical tech instead (incase anyone wants to chat about this) and it’s also what led to the creation of https://dontgobacktonormal.world/!

[hugi]

@phoebe

what led to the creation of https://dontgobacktonormal.world/ !

I see the potential for cross-pollination of this list and the projects curated by Civic Tech Sweden. There is very little overlap between the two. For example, you could add these ride-sharing and decentralized public transport projects to your list @phoebe:

Åke

https://civictech.se/projects/libretaxi-en/

Skjutsgruppen

And it just so happens that @mattiasjay is the go-to-guy on open-source ridesharing!

[mattiasjay]

@phoebe

currently working on the community toolkit based on ethical tech instead (incase anyone wants to chat about this) and it’s also what led to the creation of https://dontgobacktonormal.world/

Glad to have you with us @phoebe! + thanks for the cross-pollination suggestion @hugi!

I love dontgobacktonormal.world! The page has such a good and educational way of explaining things: “do x differently”. We need this in Swedish, maybe as a merge with onboarding into civic tech as we talked about on the fikas @pernillan?

[mattiasjay]

Francesca Pick is joining as a special guest!

For those of you who don’t know Francesca, she has been key in building up communities such as Enspiral and Ouishare.

I’m updating the main text above about Francesca and you can see videos and more at https://www.francescapick.com/

[giorgos]

You’re making really difficult to not participate @mattiasjay , if not impossible

Oh well, now I know what I’ll be doing on the morning of 23rd…

[pernillan]

Want to warm up the conversation before the Lab? Join us on our weekly Fredagsfika at 3 pm on Zoom with Meeting ID 87834088118 and Passcode 424242! Hope to see you both today, next Friday and on the 23rd!

[mattias]

Invited

• https://jakmedlem.se/login (jak.se)
• Mysociety.org / alaveteli.org

[mattiasjay]

@mattias

https://jakmedlem.se/login (jak.se)

Nice @mattias! I’m sitting here with the JAK magazine next to me (Grus & Guld). What forum are they running on https://jakmedlem.se/login ? Is it Discourse?

[mattias]

. OK. It’s members of JAK running that inofficial forum. Yes it is Discourse. Officially the bank pays for proprietary platform Kundo which is not a proper forum but rather more like a pre-moderated FAQ in which the organization can filter out questions they find unsuitable: https://forum.jak.se/org/jakforum/ which is also used by SR.se https://kundo.se/org/sverigesradio/ and skb.org https://fraga.skb.org/org/skb/.

[pernillan]

Have you registered on Eventbrite? If not, register with a shipping address before Friday and you will get chocolate and stickers in the mail!

[mattiasjay]

Next week we will look at how “the trinity of digital comms tools” can be used together!

When we are new to tools like this we can understand them by making parallels to what we already do face to face.

For instance, Swedish non-profit organisations are world champions of meeting face to face and having a “fika”. A fika is a break with something to drink (often coffee) and often a pastry. The fika can have the function of an informal meeting, which we find the parallel to in the “Realtime” section of the picture. The digital chat is just like the fika informal and has a sociable atmosphere. As you see above in the thread we have digital realtime fikas for Civic Tech Sweden on Fridays.

Non-profits also do a lot of collaborative decision-making, when we talk about things we want to do and add on each other’s thoughts. Common practise is to combine thinking by yourself, reflecting in a smaller group and bringing reflections to a larger group. These things are not simultaneous (that would be chaotic). The parallel in the picture are “Asynchronous tools”. Trying asynchronous tools such as the digital forum you’re in right now is a great practice during the pandemic so it can be weaved into the face to face practices when we get back to that.

Lastly, documents. Documents are “the organisational memory”, as stated in the picture. This part is probably what most non-profits already have digitized. But are the documents accessible and part of a collective memory, or locked away? To make parallels again; remember the small physical and collaborative libraries some non-profits still have? Imagine that, as a digital tool.

Next week we will look closer at all of this, and how to use the tools based on what you’re doing. Maybe the fika is not the same place as where you make decisions?

Thanks to The Hum for the picture.

[pernillan]

This event might be interesting to people attending our lab: Tactical Tech organises a digital workshop on Personal Data and Working in a Community on 26 February 2021 10:00-12:00 (UTC+1). Read more and register on https://rewritingthefuture.org/schedule/personal-data-and-your-practice/

[mattiasjay]

87 participants have signed up for tomorrow!

Also, @petter from Collective Tools is joining us and will tell you how they can help you.

There’s room for 100 participants tomorrow, so there’s still time to sign up or invite a friend or colleague. Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.se/e/civic-tech-lab-community-tools-tickets-140276682333

[hugi]

In my session, I will be showing you things on a Miro board. You can follow along here:

Civic Tech Tools

[JTDJosefin]

Hi, what is the code to enter MetroRetro?

[JTDJosefin]

Civic Tech Lab: Community Tools (zoom.us)

[angylp]

Hi , could not attend the meetup… Is there a video recording or summary I can check out ?

[pernillan]

Hi @angylp! We didn’t record the event unfortunately, but we will write a summary! Can ping you when we publish it!