2021-05-04 Hypha Worker Co-op: OC Applicant Interview - Flancia

from template | Meetings | Calendar | Tasks | Code | Drive

Time: 3-4:30pm ET
Location: https://link.hypha.coop/calls
Attending: patcon, bl, vera, eduardo
Cultivator: pc
Notetaker: pc, eduardo, bl

Notes

• intros
  • personal
    • benhylau. hypha with 7 ppl. dawn. yurko, udit. elon. ben. garry. patcon.
      • met through mesh networks, community networks, hacking spaces back in toronto
      • collaborated in a few projects together before hypha
      • types of projects
        • digital governance work + traditional software stuff
        • some commercial work + social projects
      • hypha as infrastructure for “better futures”
      • software engineer background
        • aether takes a majority of time: https://getaether.net/
        • was hypha client, then joined as a cofounder earlier this year – p2p reddit
        • forum + chat in one place
    • patcon
      • biochemistry background, didn’t like lab work though
      • stumbled into technology
      • got into bitcoin
      • lived in central america, got into open source; got homesick eventually
      • while in toronto, tried to figure out how to escape from for-profit
      • became part of a space that became a cooperative
      • interested in infrastructure that supports groups working in loose organizations
      • cooperative development
    • vera
      • portland! born and raised! work history in startups. finance and realestate. some social media startups. personal intereset distrib networks and federation. build ostatus before activitypub.
    • flancian
      • eduardo. AR originally. sicily now? working at Good SRE for 8 yr. syseng. sysadmin prob. “bad technologist”. “hacker” in that hack till they break. bg before sysadmin = linguistic and lit. them compsci. then dropped out. #dropoutsforLYF
      • … community in open source. small contribs to linux. 2y ago trying to come out of shell in company. get outta company mode. outta the private universe. trying to dedicate free time to something else.
      • interest in crowdsources fiction/plans. how to blur online and real world. real needs of ppl in worse position than we are. longterm goal = here. give ppl the tools to build the world they need.
      • bl: both investing in ppl, trying to find the right ppl.
      • atheist <3
  • orgs
    • flancia
      • started as project to bridge all eduardos interest. tech + narrative. interplay bwette fiction and nonfiction. meet at the form of “plans”: a form of fiction to live. a member of social.coop
      • eduardo: started as exercise to take privilege and do something with that. re: social network direction… about our blind spots. to not assume too much.
      • bl: shared goals? many we’re tracking. glad to find vera.
      • original goals: anger at indifference. even my own. “so easy to believe after awhile that the world is this” – re: switzerland, and google.
      • exercise: want to believe the world will change. imagine a world that’s better, in the future. started as utopian, evolved to protopian. incremental utopia. esc from high modernist dangers.
      • in flancia, they solved the coordination problem. how could it be solved? oracle procedure. “scheduler”. all you write are the perfect ones, but you live the imperfect schedule.
        • image magic device. comming from narrative perspective. if you have the device, what could you use it for? will build a coordination device.
        • if a had a crappy coord device, would try to build a better one
        • vera in chat: “take model of the world m. m prime results from applying well-defined transforms, alterations, procedures over m. Transformations are modeled as having attributes like [[cost]], [[feasibility]], [[probability]], [[pros]], [[cons]] as evaluated by a diverse community of modelers.
        • agora is more like a viewer
    • hypha
      • digital gov work. traditional programming. infra to support social projects for “good”. open collective. financial sustainability infra. host bigbluebutton servers via meet.coop. bunch of things we do for money and for causes.
• questions
  • Who will be making approval decisions for expenses?
    • Members of the collective should, 3 members! 5-6 soon. vote? vera as first MVP approver. vera = liasion.
    • pc: can also change this later
  • Do you expect your collective to receive > $10,000/y?
    • money out to others, seed it with money. source, not sink. eduardo will top up. using OC interface to submit reimbursements.
    • e.g., tech workers doing well might want to donate a monthly sum.
    • plan to seed with 10k
    • pc: no strings attached. “non-exchange based transactions”.
      • hypha can figure out “taxes” later, but just not now
  • What sort of payouts do you expect? type? frequency? amounts? who?
    • 2 types
      • open source project monthyl contribs
      • expenses
      • invoicing for work? admin. eduardo: thinking about this stuff. runnning a sep project. boris mann. “fission”. maybe we want to pay ppl to do dev. “moa”? public service we run. if a problem, can run outside collective.
      • as long as someone billing
      • not paying anyone in canada right now. though boris is canadian. flag: if canadians are invoicing, hypha might need to have a bit more process.
      • pc: paying ppl for labour is fine from this.
  • What sort of donations do you expect? one-time? recurring? amounts?
    • only eduardo for now. once/year or once/month.
    • bl: less transactions is normally better for fees for internal labour.
  • Do you plan to hold money, or spend it down soon after receiving it?
    • 50/50 spending down right away. some for saving.
    • bl:
    • vera: thinking about using liquid democracy for driving where
  • Will you need fast turn-around on transactions? Is an upper limit of X many days alright?
    • pc: shared process.
    • e: if we ever need faster, can do it out of band
  • What does your collective do?
    • we try to run services that will provide public utility
  • What is the scope of activities you expect?
    • supporting open source projects. running costs for agora.
    • donations - effective altruism
    • bl: to donate to colletives, need to ask them to invoice
    • vera: can you submit expenses on beahfl of other collective.
  • Who do you serve? Associated organizations?
  • Size of your group, what does membership look like?
    • 10 people
    • 3 rn. 10 ppl in the next year.
    • vera: anyone who participates is essentially a member, no solid roles.
    • “do you want to be a part a part of this collection”
  • How much money are you expecting to flow through?
    • 5-10k yearly, but unclear
  • Reasons you want to use Open Collective?
    • Transparency :)
    • value-alignment with both OC and Hypha
  • How is the donation and payment process working now? How do you hope it changes?
    • Individually made, but would like to make this a group process
  • Example of what an expense looks like?
    • NOPE
  • Who are you expecting to pay out to?
    • vera. logseq. tools. projects that are aligned. same space. personal knowledge management. social networking. open source in this space. governance.
  • Risks that you see?
    • we could die
    • lose the money
    • someone could take over.
    • employer could presumably take objection to some of projects. it’s all open source and approved by my employer though :)
    • we’re anarchist, ppl come and go
  • Plans for the future? 6 months? 2 years?
    • https://flancia.org/goals and other pages
    • thinking about seeting up legal foundation in switzerland. a legal entity.
    • get run over by bus tomorrow and stuff still goes on
  • What sort of organizational/leadership turnover do you have?
    • 2y. no turnover so far. anarchic, ppl come and go. may be downfall #risk.
    • hard to guess, bc we’re many associated projects
    • 25 ppl in matrix
  • What’s your groups mission and/or goal?
    • agora = headline project
    • https://anagora.org/tagline
    • The [[aim]] of this [[agora]] is to pro-socially maintain a [[distributed knowledge graph]] tailored specifically to the general goal of solving problems: those of its [[users]] and [[society]] at large.
  • How do you handle money now?
    • SKIP
  • Have you considered other ways of formalizing or handling money?
    • nothing else except foundation. considered continuing with individually,
    • considered social.coop as host. goals could merge. hasn’t happneed.
  • How did you hear about Hypha? Open Collective?
    • Ver know about open collective. Boris via Vera.
  • Do you have a loose timeline of expected financial activity, in and out?
    • drop a bunch of money right away. moving recurring monthly stuff in.
    • personal donations can’t be recurring. collective account.
    • invoices are not recurring
    • #todo:flancia request recurring donations.
    • #todo:hypha can bring this fwd
  • how does currency work?
    • with hypha, everything in accounted for in CAD dollars. (in UI)
    • no extra work for foreign currency. transferwise very low costs.
    • lower risk on tax front. no canadian tax collected. zero-rated. would find
  • #todo:pc share details on FACTTIC
    • https://facttic.org.ar/
    • https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-other-coops
• q: how does crowdfunding fit into the collective’s vision?
• accounting, legal
• [[generosity of leadership]]
  • ask another person to make the pitch
  • “building leaderful organizations”
• wages
  • if the person doing work
• post-call
  • some blockchain overlap with flancia in UBI initiatives.
    • circles and proof of humanity
  • bl: also other AR groups we are connected with:
    • altermundi.net
    • sutty.nl

_{Edit this page}