Monthly Updates - November 2014

1. So the OVN/NRP report for TransforMap is still hanging.
   But at least I have witnessed possible overlaps of interest with the Metamaps crew.
   Additionally PLP seems to evolve pretty well.
   Also I contributed a small PR to a Node wiki (Jingo) that runs our http://wiki.transformap.co through the http://24pullrequests.com initiative. For those who are into deploying communication infrastructure, Mozilla released their Discourse theme as open source which greatly increases readability.
   
2. I am still in redisigning the TM landing page, deploying additional services (PLP, GroupServer for mailing lists, Hackdash and Hackfoldr for tracking and combining contributions, microservices, seen.) and wait for my personal epiphany, which is yet to arrive. An Etherwiki is finally also in the making.
   We're trying to prepare an Horizon 2020 application to the European Comission which may include a great variety of partners.
   I am also trying to understand the relations of the OVN vocab to the TransforMap work and am greatly appreciating any external input on 'the sustainability data spec', the Input-Process-Output Triplepattern appears very usable here. But we have to make sure to integrate it properly.
   
3. Speaking out loud in public here helps me mostly understanding this question.
   It turns out that the TM initiative is not as technologically savvy as one would imagine, giving the topic it covers. On the one hand designing microservices that kind of resemble an organic approach of computing, one app per task (that is tightly integrated into others) and so forth and on the other is the undestructable habit of emailing the hell out of every idea people have. Instead of putting it in a Wiki. Or a Trello board. Or a decent Discourse discussion (which also have wiki abilities, if one needs).
   On the one hand preparing for Linked Ontologies, on the other having people shouting at each other about putting our taxonomy in neat trees. Because they are so convenient. (And used by OpenStreetMap wink) Why TM appears to be so empty to the outside world : because almost nothing happens in the open.
   Unfortunately our developer circle is rather tiny and fluctuous. But I'm getting used to it, taking the whole thing to the next level. Federated Tempospatial Data (a raw source and a nice one) is a term noone really understands, but we all know we need it.
   When you start to feel unsupported because nobody understands your language anymore. If I'd be starting philosophizing on the open world assumption, I would certainly be labeled crazy straight.
   Additionally it's hard to run servers and virtualization environments and the attached networking in the same time as being responsible for any frontend and backend developments needed while being the only online moderator and investigator of necesseties of LD regarding our scope.
   Now when I also think of this shareable article about cooperatives and so forth, I recall a scene at the Elevate festival: One of the last panels was almost finished, I was allowed to leave the last question, the two women on stage eventually stuttered while deciding who is to speak, and Mirian Rasch revealed something, in reply to M. Bauwens who was asking shorlty before me, that I had been thinking all the time there : "We don't need unions, which is already kind of 20th century thinking. Maybe we just need to organize ourselves and go beyond that image of the future as a straight line, surpassing legal and economic boundaries." https://vimeo.com/110353706 2:10:46 me talking first.
4. We'll be having our first tech-only call for TM possibly next week.
   Also reading the first book of Bernard Stiegler revealed so many new words to me that it refreshed my vocabulary (organology, at-tention, re-tention, pre-tention, ...). Also reading about Hegel, Wittgenstein and Deleuze approaches to language and signification helps in decolonizing our simple computational grammar, subject-verb-object patterns, where the Subject itself becomes a continuous differance in movement, because else we couldn't be aware of it.

If I overexposed this spot, please drop me a note. I'll return to factual language then.

1. What have we (Mikorizal) done since last month?
   We've mostly been working on the value equation part of the NRP software, which we also want to incorporate into the OVN vocab when we think it is somewhat stable.

2. What will we do until next month?
   a. Finish the value equation software and write a ton of documentation.
   b. Start a local energy research project, part of organizing another local value network.
   c. Keep working with our first local value network (as well as our global value networks).
   c. Try to help Jon with the OVN-TransforMap convergence.
   d. Keep on trying to grok LOD.

3. What is blocking me from moving forward?
   Nothing that I need the scrum master to deal with.

4. What motivates me most in this process at the time?
   Thinking about ecosystems.

What have I done since last month?
I built 2 websites:
The first is about an exchange system that deals with the problem of "time phase" introduced due to capital investment.
ryaki.org
The second contains information about groups that are practicing the OVN model and info on their (legal or not) organizational structure.
ovns.github.io

What will I do until next month?
a)I will try to finish the metareact project.
github.com/xekoukou/metareact

What is blocking me from moving forward?
What motivates me most in this process at the time?
The forthcoming possibilities.

What have I done since last month?

We've released the new version of metamaps, which was a job of a few months including a full code refactor as well as refreshed identity to the project and full redesign of the interface. This has also included a lot of documentation, clarification and infrastructure work for the project, including a new devlog, a knowledge base and ideation forum, revamped copy across Metamaps. We have also worked to clarify what it means to contribute to Metamaps and how we plan to work with that.

We also have started providing paid hosting and services around Metamaps with a client who is very aligned in values, aptly enough called The Value Web - they are a loose association of stakeholders who facilitate collaboration around the world using shared models / conceptual foundations.

What will I do until next month?

We are currently starting to focus more on governance, where we have quite a few unanswered questions around how decision-making happens in different spheres around the Metamaps project. We're calling this our "gov sprint". I sense this as pretty key to the ongoing development of both the open source platform and our network as a whole, and I'll be focusing on it quite a bit.

I will also be concentrating on:
- developing community and community participation, through well thought-out use of our collaborative platforms
- developing more relationships with potential clients so that we can do more hosting and services
- designing the next set of features/functionality to be built into Metamaps on a rolling basis so that design is ahead of development in some places.

What is blocking me from moving forward?

Now that the new release is out, I'm pretty good to be moving forward - besides the clear need for more talented devs having time to work on Metamaps

What motivates me most in this process at the time?

• the people who are using metamaps and the responses that we're getting from them.
• my immediate collaborators on the project, for pouring so much of themselves into it
• the wider network of explorers and adventurers like yourselves unapologizingly and unashamedly charting the new waters and landscape of value co-creation

What have I done since last month?

I've started working on the network visualisation part of Directory App. This lead me to test out a bunch of graph libraries. I've tried out dagre which is good for drawing tree graphs. Mikey likes the ngraph which is more modular. But I finally settled on WebCola which seems to draw extremely stable graphs (which I think I need for a graph based UI). Unfortunately, Its written in an old-school object global way (and since this is javascript 'old-school' means 'last year'). So I've forked it and have talked to the contributors about getting it published as a npm module.

Loomio is starting to think about their API so I've put together a draft document on recommendations from an OpenApp perspective (based on the work of the OpenVocab team. Please make a pull request or copy it to your favourite collaborative writing tool if you want to contribute.

Until next month Twingl work will continue until NZ shuts down for a month from the 20th. I'm going to take some time off for family but if I'm in wifi range I'll sure to be hacking on the above.

What's blocking me?

Mostly time.

What motivates me

The big update from enspiral-land is that this weekend is the Enspiral Retreat! @derekrazo @ahdinosaur @charlieablett @craigtaubeschock @craigambrose @edwardwest @richarddbartlett @jonlemmon @theodoretaptiklis and others I've probably missed will be physically together in beautiful Otaki forks!

I updated my blog for this question:

http://adistributedeconomy.blogspot.com/2014/12/monthly-update-for-december-for.html

\1. What have I done since last month?

did our second pre-alpha release of Cobudget to run Enspiral's monthly cobudgeting round. been hacking with Bob and Lynn on Linked Open Data models for Open Value Networks. met with the people from the secure scuttlebutt consortium (Phoenix) briefly at jsfest oakland, before leaving for the Enspiral retreat. have continued to do a bit of other collaboration and personal mad science, but less so than previous months.

\2. What will I do until next month?

continue on the same track, one day at a time.

\3. What is blocking me from moving forward?

time.

\4. What motivates me most in this process at the time?

beautiful technology and system architecture. when that's not available, love from the people around me.

@ahdinosaur I like what you are doing, especially linked open data models for Open value networks. It tickles me pink that someone is rushing towards the same area.