CAN NETWORKED COMMUNITIES STEWARD PUBLIC ASSETS AT SCALE?

STEWARDS, TOGETHER
Alberto Cottica, Inga Popovaite, Nadia El-Imam
30 April 2015

Photo: Danny Dimita

CONTRIBUTORS

THANK YOU!
Alberto, Amiridina, Anthony Rimoli, Anna Peregrina, Auli, azzura,
Bembo_Davies, Ben, Bezdomny, Billy Smith, Bjorn Ekblom,
christine_timebank, CommonFutures, cristina, danohu, Danny Dimita,
dante, Darren, Dorotea, edwin, eimhin, ElaMi5, elf Pavlik, elviapw, emkay,
emmanuele, Ernest, Fabrizio Barca, Faizal Karmali, george, Hazem,
henri37, Hexayurt, Hkaplinsky, Ida Leone, Iamkat, Inge, ireinga,
IrmaWilson, jaycousins, jimmytidey, johnasweeney, Jordan Lane, Juha
Vant Zelfde, julianavahn, Katalin, Kei, la_Gaia, lasindias, lauren, leo, lilian,
Linda, mAdrien, marc, mariabyck, Matthias, mishek, mstn, Nadia, Natalia
Skoczylas, NicoBis, Noemi, Oamax, Ola, Paolo Verri, Patric Andrews, Piero
Paolocelli, Rbavassano, Remy, rielm, rmchase, Rafaella Pontrandolfi,
Robert_TrashOut, Rossella Tarantino, Sam Muirhead, Steve Clare, teirdes,
Theresia, vgratian, Vidrij Da

PART ONE

DATA AND FINDINGS

Photo: Anthony Rimoli

PURPOSE

Living On The Edge 4 The

Stewardship is a massive online-offline

conversation convening a diverse
community of hacktivists, social
innovators and policy makers, that took
place in October 2014. Its goal was to
assess if, and how, communities could
take care of physical, immaterial and
relational assets.

OpenEthnographer is a software tool to

capture trends and insights from large

online conversations. The first iteration
of the software development and testing
is supported by the Rockefeller
Foundation.

Photo: Juha Vant Zelfde

METHODS & DATA

Edgeryders collected and

analysed ethnographic data by

fostering an online
conversation in August 2014 January 2015. It built upon the
annual Living On The Edge
participatory Edgeryders event.
The dataset consists of 106 posts

and 565 comments from 70

individuals in over 10 countries.
Photo: Azzurra Ragone

ENGAGING THE
NETWORK

The conversation on stewardship

(orange) tended to involve the

most central of the Edgeryders
network, as well as a few lesser
connected newcomers.
Dots represent participants, arcs

represent interactions between

them. Orange arcs represent
people talking to each other
about stewardship.
Visualisation: Benjamin Renoust

MASSIVE ONLINE
ETHNOGRAPHY
Ethnographic coding was applied to

106 posts and 564 comments on

the Edgeryders platform. Coding is a
standard ethnographic technique. It
consists of reading all contributions
and assigning relevant keywords to
snippets of texts.

Keywords become then second-order

data, and can be analysed in various

ways.

226 tags in 7 categories were

identified as recurring all along the

Stewardship conversation.

HOW IS IT DONE?

Seed a conversation through high-quality

content that is relevant to the theme. Start

with people at the edge and traverse the
social graph through social media.

Grow your conversation by community

management, respectful interaction and

connecting people to each other.

Harvest it through OpenEthnographer,

built into the Edgeryders platform.

People select themselves to participate.

This ensures enthusiasm and eliminates

researcher selection bias (the usual
suspects effect).

Photo: Sam Muirhead

PEOPLE

Participants in the Stewardship are

20-65 years old, socially active,

community oriented and mostly not
working in public administration or
traditional third sector organisations.

Diverse professional identities:

artists, architects, economists,

engineers, entrepreneurs,
pharmacists, scientists, students

Individuals, not organisations:

Participation is based on
disintermediated conversation, peer
to peer.
Photo: Anthony Rimoli

EXAMPLE PROJECTS:
COMMUNITY-BUILT
RING ROAD RAMPS
The citizens of the Al-Mutamidiya

community in Cairo built four ramps to

access the ring road from their
neighborhood.

Formally illegal, they were built to

government specifications. Their cost is

estimated at 25% of what the government
would have spent to do the same work.

Construction happened at the time of the

revolution, when the security apparatus

was busy in Tahrir Square. The postrevolution government decided to accept
the ramps as a citizen-funded
improvement and built a police station
nearby.

THE PEOPLE OF AL-MUTAMIDIYA NEEDED TO

BUILD THIS EXIT FROM A LONG TIME AGO AND
WHEN THE CHANCE OPENED FOR
CONSTRUCTING IT THEY TOOK THE CHANCE
DURING THE TEMPORARY COLLAPSE OF LOCAL
AUTHORITIES.

EXAMPLE PROJECTS:
THE URBAN SHEPHERD
OF STOCKHOLM

A group of residents of a Stockholm suburb called

Gubbngen introduced chickens to a garden where
two apple trees were infested by moths (chickens
eat moths and their larvae). The need to take care
of the chickens led to neighbours building,
together, a chicken coop. The need to build the
coop led to the need to borrow tools, and
eventually to build a common tool shed. At each
step of the way interaction across neighbours is
encouraged.
Over time, local authorities have noticed a drop in
the crime rate. Sunday morning socials and
spontaneous community events like BBQs have
increased. Children are encouraged to feed the
chicken and play with them.
Residents hope to ensure communal spaces for
agriculture and husbandry in the ongoing
renovation project for Gubbngen.

Photo: Jordan Lane

AS ALL RESIDENTS HAVE EQUAL RIGHT AND

ACCESS TO THE GREEN SPACE, IT WAS
IMPORTANT TO FRAME THE SYSTEM
INCLUSIVELY AND NOT MAKE THIS A PRIVATE
PROJECT. "

EXAMPLE PROJECTS:
THE UNMONASTERY
Inspired by 6th century Western

monasticism, the unMonastery is aimed at

addressing the interlinked needs of empty
space, unemployment and depleting social
services by embedding committed, skilled
individuals within communities that could
benefit from their presence.

A first prototype was led in the city of

Matera, Italy, in 2014. Hackers, artists and

activists helped the city in its successful
bid to become European Capital of Culture
2019.

About 25 unMonasterians from all over

the world were involved.

Photo: Ben Vickers

WHEN IT COMES TO WORK IT IS INCREASINGLY

DIFFICULT TO RECONCILE MAKING MONEY WITH
MAKING SENSE.

MAIN KEYWORDS BY OCCURRENCE

53

60

38

34
20

Communities Platforms
Stewardship Cooperation

ACTORS

45

CONCEPTS

30

16

12

DiversityAlternative economy
Data collection Sustainability

TOOLS

11
Involvement

15

6
Motivation

CHALLENGES

SCALING,
TOGETHER
Most experiences of stewardship

are collective and highly socialized.

Networked communities are seen

as a credible candidate for

stewarding large assets.
Photo: Bjrn Ekstrm

Platform technology and

knowledge-sharing skills, such as

the ability to write good
documentation, enable
communities to function at scale
without losing coherence.

MISTAKES ARE UNAVOIDABLE AND THEY HAVE

TO BE DOCUMENTED, SO THAT THE WIDER
COMMUNITY CAN WORK ON TWEAKING AND
IMPROVING THE PROCESS.

THE HARDSHIPS OF
SCALING

As communities take on larger

stewardship tasks, their

coordination costs increase.
Coordination tasks tend to be

thankless and unrewarding, not

well suited to volunteers, and to
stay with one or few committed
individuals.

Photo: Bjrn Ekstrm

OFTEN STEWARDSHIP PROJECTS ARE POWERED

BY ONE PERSON WHO MAKES A HEROIC
CONTRIBUTION AND THEN BURNS OUT. TO BE
SUSTAINABLE, PEOPLE WHO MAKE LARGE
CONTRIBUTIONS NEED SOME KIND OF
RECOMPENSE TO SUPPORT THEMSELVES.

COMMUNITIES VS.
COMMODITIES
Successful companies in the

sharing economy solve the

problem by professional
coordinators, paid through fees
collected at a point of
monetisation.
Photo: Nicola Bisceglia

Many feel that this model is

unfair. It produces excess profit

for investors, blocks potential
competition and commodifies the
community, in a Tragedy of the
Commons rerun.

MY ISSUE WITH AIRBNB IS THAT THE VALUE OF

THE COMPANY RESTS ON ITS ABILITY TO USE
NETWORK EFFECTS TO LOCK IN THE WHOLE OF
THE ROOM SHARING MARKET, AT WHICH POINT
IT WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE BIG PROFITS
WITHOUT FEAR OF COMPETITION.

NETWORKED
MARKET FAILURES
Stewards and the market economy

exist in mutual interdependence.

Stewards use excess capacity in the
market economy to do stewardship
(eg. using income from a secure job
or pension to engage in their
activities). The market economy
benefits from the asset being
stewarded.

Photo: Hazem Adel

This exchange is perceived to be

unfair and inefficient: stewardship as

such is generally not compensated.
There is no market for stewardship.

PEOPLE DO WORK TO MAKE A LIVING. OTHERS

DO WORK TO MAKE MEANING. BUT THE TWO
WORKS ARE NOT THE SAME WORK.

HACKING THE
ECONOMY

The economic logic of

stewardship is recognised as
fundamentally different from that
of market operators in textbook
economics.
Photo: Ben Vickers

There is a growing fascination

with alternative economic models:

local currencies, crypto
currencies, network bartering
algorithms, time banks

STEWARDS MAKE DECISIONS ON THE BASIS OF

RULES OF THUMB LIKE MAKE SURE WHAT YOU
DO DOES NOT AFFECT NEGATIVELY THE NEXT
SEVEN GENERATIONS OF THE TRIBE, OR OUR
FAMILY SHALL HAVE ZERO DEBT: IF WE DON'T
HAVE THE CASH, WE CAN'T AFFORD IT.

PART TWO

WAYPOINTS TO STEWARDSHIP

Photo: Danny Dimita

ACKNOWLEDGE
INVISIBLE WORK
Increase the visibility of invisible

work spent in tasks like

coordination, and acknowledge the
people who do this kind of work. This
could encourage more people to chip
in, and help stewardship projects to
scale.
Communities that coordinate through

online platforms might consider

making this work publicly visible
through tracking mechanisms. This
was experimented, with promising
results, at Living On The Edge 4.
Photo: Danny Dimita

RETHINK SOCIAL
CONTRACTS
Many organisations who engage

with communities do so in ways

that are potentially extractive.
Many people have become weary
to join new initiatives for fear of
being exploited.
As individuals take part in a

stewardship initiative, an effort to

rethink the social contract across
them could unlock more
participation and enable scaling.
Photo: Ida Leone

EXPERIMENT WITH
ECONOMIC MODELS

Encourage innovation around

economic models.
This should be broad-scoped,

and include the more radical nonmarket approaches like selfsufficiency (growing you own
food) and moneyless models.

CONTACT
This report was built by members of the
Edgeryders community using Open
Ethnographer, Open Source software designed
and built by Edgeryders LBg with the support
of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Find out more about the community at
edgeryders.eu
Find out more about the company at
edgeryders.eu/company/home
Or write to contact@edgeryders.eu
Photo Credits: indicated on individual photos

This work is property of the Edgeryders community and licensed

under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License.

Photo: Danny Dimita