Holochain Forum

ALBAYDAR.Earth boosting local regenerative economies and ending separation. Support needed to progress

General Chat
,
#1

Updated!
finally, the draft of the concept is on the landing page albaydar.earth which under construction. This phase 1, should bootstrap the next phases.

I am trying to reach out to resources for further development and realization.
What is your advice at this stage?
Whom and where to ask for a commercial proposal to develop the non-profit solution as Holochain app?
Are there funding resources you can recommend?

Thanks
Wael

#3

@WaelAura I canā€™t speak to any of the business stuff, but I do know that @kristofer and @ViktorZaunders are working on something called ā€˜Shiroā€™ thatā€™s very similar to what youā€™re describing. A Shiro Update ā€“ From idea to prototyping

(You can find more about Shiro on their website and blog.

I know the Shiro folks had challenges finding funding too, but managed to get some through some EU grant; is that right, Kristofer and Viktor? They might be able to give some pointers to help you. I think that, because your projects are so well aligned with each other, you might also find some value in comparing notes, etc.

As for the concept, I love it, and itā€™s a use case thatā€™s really close to my heart ā€“ both the buying club thing (I organise a small buying club among family members) and using economics as a way of standing in solidarity with others. Some personal thoughts after having organised one myself:

  • The timing for bulk orders is hard for consumers get used to. Most of us are used to buying as much as we need every week or so, not planning three, six, or twelve months in advance. It takes a real shift in habits to get accustomed to bulk buying, and I think that any user experience creativity/research will be very welcome. Things that come to mind are:
    • Help people track their buying habits over time and warn them when they might be getting low on an item thatā€™s hiding in the back of their closet.
    • Make visible the things that other people are buying, to help reach the bulk unit quantity by the ordering deadline (see below for more about making things visible).
  • Juggling split units and pricing is hard. Itā€™d be nice to be able to coordinate amongst club members to figure out the right amounts to buy. Ultimately I think that ā€˜collaborativeā€™ orderingā€™ is what Iā€™m looking for. For instance:
    • If I see someone is buying four small units of something, but five small units make one large unit, itā€™d be nice if the system said ā€œhey, you usually buy this thing, and if you bought one small unit everyone could get a better priceā€.
    • Sometimes I buy a large unit but donā€™t actually want that much. Iā€™d love to be able to enter the minimum and maximum I want to buy and let ā€˜the algorithmā€™ figure out how to satisfy everyone, even if it meant they got slightly more or slightly less than they really wanted.
    • Thereā€™s often a point at which shipping gets way cheaper. Maybe some sort of ā€˜gamificationā€™ to help everyone reach that better shipping price point.
  • Being the bulk organiser is a lot of work, so I like that your website talks about DropShops sharing profit ā€“ they deserve to get compensated for their work.
  • What Iā€™ve heard from others is that the community is more important than the tech (see this forum post, where @Aryabhatta says of his own experiences, ā€œTechnology doesnā€™t seem as important as much as community, where nurturing is lacking!ā€). Putting aside all of my previous suggestions, maybe the best approach is, as you say, a Telegram group (and a well-designed shared spreadsheet) ā€“ at least to experiment with as a ā€˜minimum viable productā€™. Being able to see each otherā€™s orders on the spreadsheet would possibly help nurture a sense of community and shared effort to get this group order filled. In your case the connection between the communities-in-exile and the producer-communities seems important too; I wonder how to nurture that?

@WaelAura are you considering building this on Holochain at some point? I noticed you mentioned using Holo-REA eventually.

3 Likes
#4

thanks @pauldaoust for pushing the conversation. I am trying to meet @ViktorZaunders to match parallelities, as I see Albaydar.Earth (AB) is one concrete social business application on holo-REA. So why to do double development of many modules, especially the user management system. I had a sprint with @lynnfoster and @bhaugen last year ā€¦ but the application we spoke about then was not realistic like this time.
If there is a framework existing, we can build AB features on top!

Regarding you concerns
Delivery time
Many responsible consumers and people in exile connected to the root, would wait for their delivery. most of the items are either produced or fast to produce. A container take in a average 10 days from Haifa to Rotterdam as an example. Palettes will be distributed directly to the hubs/clubs/dropshops. When people knows their demand they can order regularly ā€¦
but the idea is more establishing the engagement connection to boost regenerative economies especially in developing countries to end the north-south gap ā€¦ building a bridge for empowering communities ā€¦ etc

There will be a platform cockpit and an interactive map to have an actual real-time response to demand and resources.
The technical discussion is very intense ā€¦ therefore I split the project into phases. This will help to include user experience and proposals from the beginning, so they are part of the design.

Units and bulk
I found a way to solve this issue. The order will be optimized to the next box quantity.
For example, if 1-liter olive oil boxing has 12 pieces, and your club ordered 15 pieces, you will get 2 boxes. The remaining 7 will be stored in the club for further sales.
It will be a self-learning system, where we improve the features according to users behavior and demand.

And yes, the community is even more important than profit and money. Thats why the consumers determine the end price. And they can for example donate for other users in exile are in need and wish to buy their homelands products. There will be an account for money to take away for value as soon as long the transaction is booked within the extended community-space ā€¦ so that we create a space of trust.

Now the project needs a sponsor or organizational assistance. Phase 1 can go without system-architecture-design.
It needs little development efforts:

  1. copywriting and translation
  2. framing the subscriber and link them to the map with dynamic metrics
  3. Establishing the crowdfunding channel and legal terms

Then users can start boarding and get visible on the map.
Anu support to finalize this phase is very appreciated

1 Like
#5

Very exciting stuff and Iā€™m really looking forward to watching it progress. Hoping you can find the right sponsors and business connections, because this sort of thing needs to happen. I like that youā€™re identifying the most important thing all ā€“ human connection. IMO this is the differentiating factor for the ā€˜newā€™ economy. Itā€™s not a recipe for unlimited scaling; instead itā€™s a DNA for human-friendly economics.

1 Like
#6

please let me know if any organisation came into your mind.
I think it make sense to talk with Shiro project before starting a whitepaper from scratch.
But the landing page can be of great support to get more details from the field. Then the App will be more realistic demand.

#7

hey @WaelAura (and @pauldaoust :slight_smile:)

Yes, I got your message, Iā€™ve not had the capacity to respond before now. I am mostly shouldering getting our local fledgeling mushroom and microgreens business off the ground since oktober and while we continue to explore, design and prototype Shiro components in various ways, we are not able to give it the kind of time we would like.

What @pauldaoust alluded to around our funding was that we did get a little bit of funding this year (from the Swedish dep. of Agriculture) to run a project here in sweden where we have explored different food coops and buyers clubs that already exist in sweden, documented and generalised some patterns around how they work (handbook in swedish) and begun an effort to network them together.

This has given us a very solid grounding in the intricacies of running buyers clubs and food coops which we hope to help guide us as we continue explore and play in this tsunami of food system re-design. We are very eager to start playing with some possible components of Shiro but being unfunded at this point we are not able to pursue it as quickly as we would like.

Your application around diaspora connecting back to support their root regions is a great example of what we hope our modules might help achieve. We are very much still figuring out what is ours to do in collaboration with the wider Holochain ecosystem and the modules that are coming into being within it.

From what I gather from your website, what you are looking for does seem to have a lot of similarity to the prototype @kristofer has made and tested with some local producers. A quick walkthrough of it here:

We also had a conversation with @lynnfoster and @bhaugen where we related that to the ValueFlows vocabulary and talked about how this plays with HoloREA, there is a recording of that here:

I am happy to talk more at some point early next year, but as I am currently awaiting the arrival of a new family member, there is very little time for me to engage right now :slight_smile:

Hope this helps and I might be able to keep corresponding here from time to time

2 Likes
#8

Thanks @ViktorZaunders for updating! And good luck receiving new life :slight_smile:
Albayadar is including additional scenarios and incentives by including millions are connected to their roots to the scene.
We have 2 circles

  1. producers connected to processors in ancestral country
  2. Consumer connected to community hub abroad

There are many details I can share to design the solution but that is not crucial at the moment.

If we manage to prepare the landing page I am confident we will attract big amount of crowd funding, that we can use to develop the whole application that covers national and international bundle ordering directly from producer/processor.

There are thunder millions of people with imigaratikn background willing to engage with their homelands. Palestine should build the prototype for larger replication.

More important the side effects for this dynamics, community building, freedom, self-organsation and empowerment ā€¦

If there resources to help accomplishing the landing page, through partnership agreement or what ever, would be great.

I am really not willing to buy that work for activation phase, because it will be great lesson to cocreate it. This will prove that the idea is widely needed and co-owned.

After this is arranged we can talk in details about the work needed.