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New Affiliate Handbook

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Credits and attributions

[Tibi] March 30th, 2014 - used content from Metamaps Member Orientation Handbook

[Tibi] March 6th, 2020 - remixed content from Ouishare’s Handbook

Mission

We are committed to the design and deployment of intelligent, open sensors, and sensemaking systems, which allow our communities to optimize interactions with our physical environment and realize our full human potential.

Values^[1]

Permanent Beta

Always a work in progress.
Learn by doing, improve by reflecting, giving feedback and iterating.
Keep playing

Do-ocracy

Don't wait to Do good.
Celebrate autonomy and initiative-taking within an interdependent network.
Actions speak louder than words.

Openness

Open-minded: Open to new ideas.
Inclusiveness: Open to diverse people with diverse perspectives.
Transparency: Open access to information
Premissionless: Open access to projects, processes, tasks, including decision making
OpenSource: We share.

Collaboration

Together we go further.
Magic happens when we meet in real life.
We use stigmergy to coordinate at scale
We cultivate social intelligence

Care

Care of your own journey,
Care for each other,
Care for the commons and for the planet.
Three legs of a single stool.

Purposes

nurture a cohesive culture
encourage individual+collective growth and learning
affect high leverage systems change
eliminate barriers between mediums and dimensions
raise the bar on what’s possible for distributed peer production
stay curious and creative and constructive
work in, with, and for communities we care about

Guidelines

We promote a set of behaviors that align with principles and purpose to support our goals.

maintain integrity and trust in all operations

support a positive peer/public perception and reputation
keep the network updated to your status/availability/intentions
keep up basic levels of activity and engagement
sustain meaningful personal relationships
enjoy what you’re doing, and do what you enjoy
we value individual autonomy within collaborative environments
we bootstrap using our own tools and processes

Your first ToDos

Unlike platforms where you’re merely a user, Sensorica’s digital environment is yours. But your freedom and autonomy within the OVN comes with responsibilities. Please follow the steps below to get fully integrated within the network.

Create a Google account

Our shared digital environment consists of some free Google services. It is highly recommended to have a Google account to ease your navigation from one service to another. Also, to make your experience less frustrating we recommend that you to use Mozilla Firefox (or Google Chrome as a last resort) and avoid Internet Explorer or other browsers.

Edit your profile page on the Sensorica website

See example of profile

Use Discord or the Forum to ask permission to edit the website. All active affiliates are entitled.
Log into your Google account, and go to Google Sites. You should find the Sensorica website and be able to open it in edit mode. If not, ask edit permission.

Save your password in your browser. Since you’ll need to contribute to the website, this will make it easier to sign in next time.
If you are signed into your browser and have saved your Google ID, next time you go to the published version of the website you’ll see an edit icon on the bottom right corner of any page, like in the image below. Just click it to make changes.

Open the site in edit mode (being logged into your Google account, from Google Sites). You can now make changes to the site. Be careful! Ask core community members before you make important site modifications.
To create a profile page, you need to be in edit mode and use a profile template to preserve a common format. Keeping the same format, makes profile navigation easy. If you want to improve the profile template feel free to announce your initiative and verify your ideas with the community on the Forum or on the main mailing list.

Find Affiliates in the Pages tab → click it to show subpages → hover the mouse on top of the TEMPLATE Affiliate page → click on Duplicate page.

This will create a copy of the template under the Affiliates page. This copy will be set not to show in the top menu of the published site.

Change the name of this new page to your full name.
Add your picture by replacing the happy face with a pic of you that lives on the Internet.

Add your pic by URL, do not upload a picture to the website. We are trying to limit the amount of data uploaded to the website.

Again, you can propose improvements for the Profile page, which is a template we always use! Before making any changes to the Profile Page template please consult the community on the main mailing list.

Place yourself on the Sensorica map

Open the Sensorica map, you should have access to edit it. If not, ask a sensorican on the Forum or on the main mailing list.

Once you open the Sensorica map, click on add a new marker, like in the picture below.

Once you drop a new marker at your location, you can add you name and a short description

Hit Save. You can also add pictures to your pin!

Get acquainted with the OVN model

Go through the links on the Network Admin page. You can also subscribe to Sensorica’s Facebook page.

Log contributions

Every time you contribute with time, financially or other, go to the NRP_CAS and record your contribution.

ATTENTION: See more on how to log contributions here.

We are trying to improve how logs are made.

NOTE: Sensorica is a mix of a gift economy and a market-based economy. Some contributors' goal is to make money, while others want simply to give, without expecting tangible rewards in return. Logging contributions is not mandatory.

The working space page

Familiarize yourself with the working space page. From there you can access different modules of our infrastructure. You need to be logged into your Google account in order to access everything.

NOTE: propose improvements of this page, it is not used by most affiliates :(

Subscribe to

Recent Blog / Announcements -This will keep you coordinated with the rest of the network for all major announcements.

Events - This will keep you coordinated with the rest of the network for all major events.

Contact us form - This form appears on the website on the Contact us page. If you subscribe to this form you will automatically receive an email whenever someone fills the Contact us form. If you answer someone you must record it on the spreadsheet on the column named Action taken, in order to coordinate with other affiliates. You need to be logged into your Google Account, open the Contact us spreadsheet and go to the main menu, Tools/Notifications rules...

Backup Sensorica database!

This is a recurrent event on our agenda. Go to your Google Drive/Docs account, right-click on Sensorica folder and choose Download. You are entitled to possess all the digital assets sensoricans have ever produced.

Information about procedures

For anything you want to do, see if there is a procedure in the How-to list. If you don’t find a procedure but you think we should have one, please take initiative and create one.

Evaluate Sensorica

If you have time, you can help our community improve our processes. See the Evaluate us page.

Environment

This is like looking at a city map. See also spaces on the NRP-CAS

Digital environment

Get familiar with the network’s digital environment. NOTE: digital tools/spaces are part of the pool of shareables and are administered by Sensorica’s custodian.

Physical environment

Second, take a look at the Sensorica Montreal lab. NOTE: the Sensorica Montreal lab is part of the pool of shareables and is administered by Sensorica’s custodian. Some Sensorica affiliates have used home-based prototyping labs.

Legal structure

Custodians: ACES-CAKE

Exchange Firms: non at this time

Open this document for further information

People

See the Organisational structure doc

What does it mean to be an affiliate within the OVN?

New affiliates come from various places (organizations, cultures, etc.), with various expectations, intentions and capacities. Our aim is collaboration, shaped by our common purpose and culture. The basis of participation comes down to a willingness for creative contribution, and the adaptability to work spontaneously with others without causing anyone’s disadvantage.

An open value network represents a field of collaborative endeavors, or commons-based peer production projects, via shared communication and accounting framework. The OVN embodies a culture of aligned vision and values recognized by patterns of intention, activity, and award.

Affiliation requires a degree of acclimation and mutual trust-building, as a matter of synchronization to the current state of the network. A free and open work environment can be disorienting at first! We’d like to help connect you in a meaningful way. To do so, you’re invited to present personal profile data, past portfolios, a snapshot of individual intentions, and other useful info to place yourself within the scope of the organization. You’ll be provided with a personal profile webpage, please share information about you there.To find your profile page, search your name on Sensorica’s website.

New affiliates gain access to common assets, tools, and work spaces of the network once they have agreed to the OVN framework agreement, outlined in the following sections. New affiliates must be aware of the terms of participation, as well as the different membranes* and permissions for governance and decision-making around assets and work spaces within the OVN.

An affiliate of the OVN will have:

understood our guiding vision, purpose, and principles
acknowledged & agreed to the Terms of Participation*
signed the OVN CLA (contributor’s licensing agreement) agreement
have established a peer profile which outlines background, status, and intentions
is actively working on at least one project or aspect within the OVN, or else has their peer profile marked as on ‘hold’.

*membranes: a flexible boundary layer around groups, spaces, projects, etc. that may be regulated by a permission or governance system

*Terms of Participation: constitute agreement to participate under the rules of the network.

Your advantages as an affiliate

To do

Maria,

How about a welcome package for new affiliates with some 3D printed CAKE / Sensorica business cards? If we are going to expect people to contribute 5%, we also have to make the CAKE / Sensorica layer more visible in our everyday work. Increasing visibility will increase value and make engagement with the network more meaningful to affiliates.

Projects

Go to help about projects

Commons and shareables

Shared digital assets

Document repository

We use Google docs. Everyone has view and comment access, contributors have edit access. If you haven’t contributed yet to Sensorica, you have access to documents through the website, in the context of a project, an event or other important activities. If you are already a contributor, go to your Google Docs/Drive and click on Shared with me. You find the Sensorica folder. See editing rules. IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT DELETE FOLDERS OR FILES!!! If necessary, please coordinate with other sensoricans

Video repository

We use Youtube for our video repository. All videos are public.

Photo repository

We use Google Photo for our repository. Everyone has view and comment access, contributors have edit access.

Software repository

We use Github as our software repository. You are free to join.

Knowledge base

Our knowledge base is on Diigo. Get there, subscribe and install a browser extension. This is important to make it easier for you to add information to our database and to absorb what is already there. For example, with Diigo you can highlight text, to add comments and sticky notes on any webpage you visit, which can only be accessed if you have your browser extension installed.

Procedures

Open procedures page.

Governance

Open webpage.

Where to invest your resources?

In order to make rational decisions when it comes to your participation in Sensorica you need to map the network structure, to understand which project responds to your needs, and

to understand the urgent needs of Sensorica.

Mapping the network

This is about finding who does what and how well. We call that the role and the reputation system. At the moment the reputation system has not been implemented, therefore you still need to ask questions to other network affiliates.

The role topology within the network is accessible from multiple locations. For example, mature projects have a CAS (contribution accounting system) section, which shows a graph with activities logged by different affiliates in that particular project. This will allow you to know who is doing what. See this example. The Dashboard page shows how Sensorica affiliates contribute to community development (this page is in constant evolution...).

Understanding projects

Open help for starting Projects. Open Projects page. Open OVN wiki page on projects.

This is about mitigating your risk investing in Sensorica projects, and about distributing your contributions between use value (creation of projects that will generate revenue for you) creation and social value (creation of value that cannot be monetized directly, but is beneficial for the community or for society at large). Some people are driven by revenue, others by doing good, or both.

Projects are at different stages of development. New projects can be perceived as more risky in terms of investment, because nothing has been proven yet. Mature projects (close to product/production stage) with a high degree of involvement can be perceived as less risky. You can read the project description on the project’s page, estimate by the amount of documentation that has been produced, and estimate participation from the CAS page. Most mature projects have a Path to market page associated with them, which depicts the potential of the project to generate revenue/benefits.

Risk can also be associated with breakdown of the social structure around the project caused by litigation. Projects that are transparent (have good documentation) and for which there is an up-to-date log of contributions can represent a lower risk, because they have a record of development and of participation, which tends to reduce the risk of unsolvable disputes for revenue/benefits redistribution.

Understanding the needs of the community

We all understand that the community is there to support all of us. Therefore, we should all contribute to the maintenance and the development of our infrastructure (physical and virtual). Contributions to the community give back tangible rewards, but also recognition and influence within the community.

Discussions about this handbook

Tibi [from his post here]

I like the Ouishare Hanbook, a great resource https://handbook.ouishare.net/ I wonder what else is needed in terms of written guides. People are lazy, don't like to read. I wonder if the Handbook can be transposed into a video. But again, people are lazy and after 3 minutes they click somewhere else. In my opinion the best practice is to have these written documents (videos require larger time investments to produce and become less dynamic) AND to assign a guide to every newcomer (i.e. to pair a newcomer with someone already accustomed), to use good signalling and highly stigmergic actions and rework the architecture of the digital environment.

For the architecture of the digital environment think about your experience as you travel in a new city. North American cities are built on a square layout. It is pretty hard to get lost if we compare that with European cities which have a spider web structure. Provide a better experience when someone operates within OuiShare's digital environment, and stick to templates for offline activities and events. Local signalization is also very important in the digital and the physical space: always place pointers to things people might want to do next, from where they are. This is the equivalent of the signs you find in a metro station for exiting on different streets or for connecting to other options of transportation, or to the street signs pointing in the direction of a tourist attraction, or the street signs regulating parking, etc. A step further is to think in terms of stigmergy: leave traces of your activities and indicate to others what to do or where to go next. Stigmergy requires a culture. We all need to think about the others that come after us and facilitate/ease their way.

How do you like to navigate when you go to a new city? Do you rely more on the local signs that point you to the next touristic attraction or on a map of the city, or on a friend to take you places? Perhaps the answer is all three of them. Yes, they are all important. So we can settle for a compromise, a minimal generic map and good local signalling and stigmergic action, plus some pairing with old time ouisharinens.

Newcomers need time to absorb the map. To make them productive immediately and to increase the probability that they stay (avoid frustration), the first best thing is to offer a guide. The second best thing is to have good local signalling. The general map (like the Ouishare Handbook) is there for reference, providing the high level overview and will be used as a tool for learning.

[1] Borrowed from Ouishare [see their decision].