Engagement Circle Meeting Tuesday Nov 14th

Agenda Highlights:

Kick-off with an introduction, meet and greet and a glimpse into the vision of our circle.

The Vision

Getting to Know Each Other: Share your unique stories.

Miro Board:

Dreaming Big: A brief discussion on our role and the potential impact we can create together.

Exploration: Dive into thought-provoking questions designed to ignite our imaginations and foster deep discussions. Feel free to bring more questions to the table:

The Roadmap / The Journey Ahead: Discuss the importance of staying connected and our plan for regular virtual gatherings.

Closure: Reflect on our shared excitement and what each of us feels inspired to explore or contribute next.

Questions:

Notes:

The technology is not the primary focus anymore

There are more people that care than I thought

Think more around the story telling part of bringing communities together.

How do we cast the net so that the people that fall out of the old system

Co-creating experiences, content engagement.

Offers:

Quick recap

ReFi and Robin discussed their experiences and future plans, including ReFi's travels to Europe and Robin's view of Oslo. Maya expressed her interest in learning more about the project and potentially getting more involved in the future. The team also discussed the concept of an unconference, which is a space for people to bring their own topics and facilitate discussions, and agreed to explore ideas, experiments, and prototypes during the Demo weeks.

Summary

Exploring Future Plans and Project Engagement ReFi and Robin discussed their experiences and future plans, including ReFi's travels to Europe and Robin's view of Oslo. Maya then joined the conversation, expressing her interest in learning more about the project and potentially getting more involved in the future. Robin introduced himself as a circle steward for an upcoming unconference and explained the purpose of the circles, which are designed to create more engagement across the Region Alliance. David, who works in urban development in the United States, also joined the circle, sharing his background and interest in exploring the potential of Web 3 technology in their model. Rebuilding Communities With Regenerative Practices David outlined the project's mission to rebuild communities and keep wealth within them, while also incorporating ecological and regenerative practices. Robin facilitated the discussion, and ReFi shared about the mission of ReFi Dial and its efforts to support and empower the regenerative ecosystem. Jan expressed his focus on community building and storytelling, emphasizing that web3 technology is not his primary focus anymore. All participants expressed a desire to engage with the community and find solutions for a more regenerative future. Community and Event Organization Introduction Jan, Maya, Sergii, and Robin introduced themselves in the meeting. Maya, who is transitioning out of academia, expressed her interest in hands-on involvement in the community and event organization. Sergii, who has a background in software development and is currently working on a decentralized leisure technology, shared his involvement with various blockchain communities. Robin, the founder of Tribe, introduced his work in digital facilitation and coordination and his interest in using technology for important conversations. Unconference Theme and Next Steps Robin and the team discussed the concept of an unconference, which is a space for people to bring their own topics and facilitate discussions. The upcoming unconference's theme is centered around creating and strengthening alliances in the regenerative ecosystem. Robin also clarified that the unconference is open and self-organized. In terms of the next steps, the team agreed to explore ideas, experiments, and prototypes, which could be practiced and learned from during the Demo weeks, from December 6th to December 20th. Maya asked about the schedule for the next unconference, but it was clarified that this would be decided by the team. Community, Sustainability, and Real Estate Development Jan, Robin, ReFi, David, and Sergii discussed community building, sustainability, and real estate development. Jan expressed interest in a bioregional identity and learning centers, while Robin and ReFi showed interest in local community efforts. David shared his community's efforts to rebuild and generate economic activity in Baltimore, highlighting the potential of Web 3 technologies in equity distribution and governance. He also mentioned a proposal to capture stormwater and trade credits. The group also explored the idea of a virtual workshop or facilitated conversation around a specific topic. Sergii shared about his work on rebuilding Ukraine. Exploring Web 3 Tools for Community Building David discussed his experience using technology for community building and mentioned his lack of expertise in building Web 3. He expressed a need for experiments to explore the distribution of equity and governance tools. Robin suggested summing up the challenge as an invitation to problem-solve or explore. David also shared that they have a workaround co-op for governance and hinted at a possible blockchain-based solution for creating an immutable record of resolutions. Jan questioned the necessity of building Web 3 tools from scratch and suggested exploring existing platforms. She also raised a point about the media's influence and asked if there were any successful lobbying attempts to convince them. Media, Lobbying, and Impact: Promoting the Movement Jan proposed the idea of leveraging media and lobbying to further promote the movement, expressing the need for more successful outreach efforts. Robin agreed with Jan, noting the potential for these efforts to be a focus in an upcoming demo week. David expressed his support for such initiatives and shared his aspiration to create a video portfolio showcasing their neighborhood's compelling stories. ReFi acknowledged the value of such efforts but also highlighted the operational challenges, such as limited resources and the need to generate income. The group agreed on the importance of focusing on the impact of their work on the ground, rather than solely on the underlying technology. Mapping Regenerative Projects in Web 3 Jan shared his experience and a project she developed that aims to map out regenerative projects, specifically in Web 3. He expressed his hope to activate more 'stewards' in the space and create a visual representation of the size of the regenerative movement. The team discussed the challenge of fragmentation within the ecosystem and how to make the maps more engaging and useful. ReFi shared his project with refi.eco and mentioned the potential use of a catalyst network for data interoperability. The team agreed to continue the discussion asynchronously and explored possibilities for future collaboration.

Full otter Transcription:

Robin T. Sverd

Hey David.

Unknown Speaker

Hi Robin. How are you?

Robin T. Sverd

Very good. How are you?

Speaker 1

I am I'm good also. Thank you. Where are you?

Robin T. Sverd

I'm in Oslo, Norway. Wow. Yeah. Are you taking them from

Unknown Speaker

Smith's Burg Maryland, the United States? Alright. Yeah, that's okay.

Robin T. Sverd

That's the globe. Hey, Sandy, welcome.

Speaker 2

One moment. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Robin. Nice to meet you, David.

Robin T. Sverd

Likewise, are you checking in from

Unknown Speaker

currently Puerto Rico?

Robin T. Sverd

Okay.

Speaker 2

Yeah. You used to be in New York and I got in my hand prior to that for a very long time. It used to be your brain where the where the place where I was checking in from door to everywhere. Okay. Claim wasn't my maximum joke.

Robin T. Sverd

Where my

Speaker 2

maximum shock he invited me. Oh, cool. Yeah.

Robin T. Sverd

A friend of mine, a friend of many, I assume.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. Friend of mine as well.

Robin T. Sverd

Welcome, welcome. Welcome. What's What's your name? Rafi. efeito.

Monty Bryant

Sorry, Monty here, Monty

Robin T. Sverd

were with before I think where we met I think previous conference and conference.

Monty Bryant

The AI one Yeah. Oh, yes. Nice. Well, nice to see you again.

Robin T. Sverd

I likewise. I guess. What are you checking everyone? That's a fun question in in the global world today, where people are from. I'm currently

Monty Bryant

Sorry, I was eating an apple. I'm currently in Bristol, in the UK.

Robin T. Sverd

Oh, cool. Cool. Oh,

Monty Bryant

I remember this flap. But yeah, I'm grounding a bit for Christmas. I think I've been on doing the crypto conference circuit a little bit in Europe and need some time I think to just be in one but of course of course. What about you are you I can see a nice view out your window.

Robin T. Sverd

That's, that's great Oslo. We're getting we're getting the full now. It's now it's going into darker times. might get some more lights but it's getting darker. Nice.

Monty Bryant

is a bit of a timezone difference. Yeah.

Robin T. Sverd

We also got in Maya, welcome.

Speaker 3

Hi, guys. Um, hey, sorry, I can't see the whole thing but I'm super stoked to learn more about this new project. I've been involved a little bit with Rifai Tao and refer community broadly by looking to actually potentially getting more involved in the future.

Robin T. Sverd

Oh, welcome. That's what we hear. I guess I guess we can slowly starch. I guess more people will come in. My name is Robin, and I'm one of the circle Stewart's in this unconference. And yeah, we were soon heading into the unconference in a few weeks and a big part of this conference is inviting people to join circles and in the circles we have a space to play with ideas and experiences or, or things we would like to try with the purpose of C. Yan Henrik with the purpose of learning more about how to create more engagements and cross their region alliances. So in this week, there are other circles joining and they have different topics they would like to try out. And, yeah, so we have an hour to, to meet and talk and share ideas. About what we'd like to experiment with. So that's kind of like the main topic of this session. Welcome, young Henrik. Good to have you with us. Um, before we get into get into it, I would like to just invite for for a small check in small round with the question of who are you just a few words and what's your background or like context for coming in? And why did you want to join the circle? What kind of like Drew you towards meeting up today? So I'm just going to throw the ball to you, David, you would like to start

Speaker 1

Okay, my name is David lids. I am in Smith's Burg, Maryland, United States. i My work is we raise money to lift up distressed neighborhoods in urban environments like specifically in Baltimore. So we buy houses we fix them up and we use that work to employ the marginalized. And then the reason why this aligns with maybe what's going on here as we distribute that equity to those workers and to other people in the neighborhood. So it is a cooperative or a defi. kind of model. And I guess I'll just leave it at that. I'm kind of on the perimeter web three, but tried to get a little deeper in because I think there's great uses for the technology and our models.

Robin T. Sverd

Follow up question, what kind of like interested in with joining the circle What drew you towards this?

Speaker 1

Ah, okay, so I joined two circles and you remind me which one I'm in this morning because I've had a hard time keeping up

Robin T. Sverd

please. Morning over there. Cool. Here's even Yes, these are wearing the again, engagement circle.

Speaker 1

Ah, yes. And I answered this question the engagement circle, um, I'll make and the mission or the project that we're supposed to. It says it's a great strength and Alliance and the regenerative ecosystem. Got it. Okay. I got it. Okay. So we have a we have a bunch of challenges. So we are taking like really beat up houses and really beat up neighborhoods, and we are rebuilding them and trying to rebuild community and then keep wealth in community. So there's all kinds of economic justice challenges that I have alluded to there, including, like getting people to get it like to understand exactly what this thing is that we're trying to do by keeping wealth and neighborhood as we lift it. And then there's also an ecological regenerative mission there which is we have this great opportunity as we rebuild these houses to make them very eco friendly to redesign the spaces in an eco friendly way. So I think of engagement on several different fronts there first, engaging the people into joining this community effort, and then engaging the ecosystem. In a in a new, healthier holistic way to how's that?

Robin T. Sverd

Cool, cool. Who do you want to throw the ball to?

Speaker 1

I want to throw the ball to the guy from Bristol.

Monty Bryant

That's me. Hello. Yeah. Well, nice to be here. Yeah, I'm Monte. I'm one of the founders of refi Dow. And, yeah, we've been recently going through some changes but essentially refi dolls mission. My current mission with it is to basically in support and empower the refi ecosystem. And so from the beginning, we've been doing things like the refi podcast, the refi blog, of which we've worked with Mayor before on a on a refi roundup we did together back in the day. And most recently, we have this network of Rifai local nodes, which are local communities across the globe that are experimenting with regenerative technologies and solutions and trying to implement them on the ground. And so all of that involves quite a lot of engagement. It's essentially kind of our core thing. Of what RIFA Tao was trying to do is how we can actually engage whether its founders, investors, builders, contributors, whether from the web 3d space or more traditional spheres, bring them into this refi ecosystem to start using and developing and deploying these regenerative tools in the real world. And so yeah, we've we've, you know, there's a number of different ways in which we tried to do that, but I'm curious to be a part of this circle and come up with some other ideas and brainstorm, brainstorm with you

Robin T. Sverd

can just throw the ball throw

Monty Bryant

the ball? Yes. I'd love to throw the ball to Jan as you haven't we haven't heard from Jen. Don't think

Speaker 4

yeah, I joined a couple of minutes late. So I'm young. The name is actually was born close to the Dutch border, but on the German side, that's where this comes from. I live in New York. I've been here for 14 years. I have been in the web three crypto space for quite a while. And about two years ago, two and a half almost right. When when when I believe we crypto in as a as a very, very loose community reached enough size that within crypto, all the people that have that region mindset and then wanted to use the technology to solve coordination problems and all these things that we are surely going to talk about. For me a critical mass was reached when we saw clean model and to can protocol and some of these tools and communities forming refight ours as one of them Monty. So that made my decision then to really focus with with a technology that I love, right, these centralized systems, but apply them really very, very focused. So I left I left the startup that I was working for and have been spending the last almost two years but without landing on a project. So if I stay close to people like the region network, Rifai Tao or other other people in this community trying to figure out what do we need to do? And this brings me a little bit to your I think, question what why this circle? And that to me has is a and an insight that I have at least gathered is the technology is not the primary focus for me anymore. It is very useful, but something that has helped me personally is through this journey. I've met people like you and 1000s others now that have shown me that there are more people that care than I thought and that gives me hope that inspires me. Right and, and so, for me, the reason why I'm here is I want to think more through the storytelling part, the connecting people part the bringing communities together, and that web three can help but it's not a prerequisites, in my opinion, but this sort of how do we cast the net so that the people that fall out of the old system through this illusion men or and they wake, they're starting to wake up and they are so many more than than I previously thought and this is really where I think a lot of a lot of motivation comes for me personally. Thank you, Maya.

Speaker 3

Um, hi, everyone. I'm Maya. I am. I'm on the West Coast right now in California. So it's 7am here so it's only the beginning of the day. And because of that, sadly, I'll have to get going at the half hour for other work commitments, but I really wanted to make sure I joined in at least a little bit to introduce myself and because I'm very excited about this initiative. Truth be told I'm not that familiar with the format of unconference because actually, I've never participated in one. I've only participated in more traditional conferences and other virtual events. But I've heard some good things about the formats and I guess space. Kind of more from a distance, I would say, I've been in grad school for the last few years, and actually refi as an emerging field and community has been the focus of some of my work here. And you know, through that work, I got an opportunity to connect with some people on the ground doing refi work like refi Del Monte, like he mentioned with writing some blogs for it. And as I'm transitioning out of academia, actually, very soon, this December, I realized that I really want to be more involved, hands on in the community. I'm kind of tired of doing sort of this, like theoretical work, I really want to bring more impact, do some practical things and they relate to what yawns you said storytelling, bringing people together. So I guess the reason I'm here and I joined the circle is that I'm actually very interested in CO creating experiences, event organization, content creation, but also engagement. And I really just want to get some hands on knowledge and experience doing that and hopefully as I'm transitioning out of academia find my, my, my role in the community and providing some more value. So yeah, that's my little spiel, hopefully to hopefully I'll be able to join for the global next session. Next time whenever it is. And on the last one is Sergey.

Speaker 2

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Maya. And thanks, everyone. So yeah, my name is Sergey Greenock. I was born and raised in Ukraine. About 12 years ago, I moved to New York. Almost all my professional life. I was involved in software development, and actually, in 2020, I was a technical co founder of the company, which was acquired by one of the Fortune 100 companies. And after that, I, I moved to Puerto Rico. That was a FinTech but not a blockchain not super large acquisition, but I mainly move to Puerto Rico because there is a very developed blockchain community here. So Indiana, Texas also is good. So currently, I have I work on three things. Number one, I called multiple positions at IEEE as vice chair of the standards group as co chair of IEEE Ukraine blockchain group, and that will be coming soon. Some more of those. The second thing I'm I work basically on fifth of December I'm defending my PhD. And the result of my PhD is actually innovative distributed ledger technology, which is very decentralized. And we are currently preparing for the launch of it. And the third is actually the work with web three Institute, which is the project office of Ministry of digital transformation of Ukraine. And my colleague Max Semin joke. He the case invited me to share the information about this event. So all three activities on the different perspectives related to engagement, D for different types of communities, different levels of engagement. But that's what that was the reason why I joined here and yeah, happy to participate. Thank you so much. I have nobody to pass.

Robin T. Sverd

So keep asking me. Um, thank you so much for the introduction around I guess I can introduce myself also, I didn't really do that. And my name is Robin. I've started a company called Thrive which is working with the digital facilitation and coordination. So I'm a I'm a digital Community Coordinator, coordinator that kind of like my, my personal profession. And I'm actually pretty new into the web tree field. I'm coming out mostly from actually a lot of workshop facilitation and Festival event design, etc, etc. I've run a lot of open spaces physically. During COVID I started a company where we ran a lot of virtual events. And so my, my kind of like angle into this engagement circle is my passion for creating a virtual spaces for important conversations. How to apply technology for that is kind of like, like one of my biggest questions. So I was asked by Max a few days ago to if I wanted to, kind of like step up and take kind of like a hosting role for the circle. So I'm not an expert role I like I'm as fresh as most of the you guys into this circle. But what I'm seeing right now is our shared excitement for how to create engaging experiences across or different networks. So that I'm really excited about. Also, just you had a question, Maya, which I guess also touches upon the topic of what this unconference is like what is an unconference so opposed to a conference where everything is planned down to the last minute detail, like everything is thought through, and then conference is more of a space where we invite people with a question to show up and bring their own kind of topics and IDs to present for each other. So for example, an open space we invite put a question and then the people are show up, they create the agenda. That's kind of like the main definition of what an unconference is. So you can say, and we ran two previous conferences, one on AI, and the other one was on printopia and futures, where we had I think, AI was like 80 people and then put open futures I think we're like 150 people that met over two weeks, and self organized, different sessions and conversations based on what people wanted to kind of like invite each other into exploring. So for this, for this conference now going coming up, the theme is the key ideas how to how can we create, support and strengthen the alliances in the regenerative ecosystem, through creating experiences for each other? That can be conversations that can be workshops, games, activities, experiments that can be showcasing different technologies we're working on, that we think can contribute to the engagement of the other participants in the unconference and and all the participants in its own conference are invited into different circles. This is the engagement circle. And our kind of like circle purpose or intention is how can we leverage technology or social media to increase engagements, participation and amplify collected impacts? How can we create collaborative and inclusive decision making processes etc. And our task or circle is could be to, to come up with ideas, experiments, prototypes, we would like to practice and learn from ourself and together, create experiences for the others in the demo week, demo weeks, which is the demo days which is December 6 till December 20. So it's a very open space to do what we would like to run the experiments. We would love to try to have the conversations we want and invite more people into them. So that's kind of like the that's the general, I guess, context for for our circle now. And how we can Yeah, cooperate the next weeks.

Yeah, sure. See, I gotta see. I'm sorry, I lost my I lost my Chatfield in the did. Did I have a question? Maya? Oh, yeah. There's

Speaker 3

no question Yeah, sorry. I just like so. Because that this is the first circle from my understanding, right? And like, is there really like a set schedule for the next ones or is it sort of like free flowing you're gonna decide at the end of this one, when is the next one going to be because I'd love to join for for more but like I said, I'll have to like hop off soon today.

Robin T. Sverd

Just yeah, of course. Of course. I think I think a little of my role is that whatever. Whatever the circle like people in the circle and would like to do, I can support with setting up calendar invites and kind of like inviting people to think so there's kind of like an overview, and the calendar and the in the back and the calendar, so you get an overview that way. But as of now, it's very open ground to to us. Yeah, setting the road ahead. If want to have a motorcycle meeting or how we want to do it that's that's up to us. Yeah, but um, but uh, on discord in the engagement, chat on Discord. That's where Connor or circle will have all the updates. So if you follow that you will have the updates. And you Yeah, so that was my little intro rant that circle. And now this actually just like a standing invitation to, to dive into and start I know, like, what would you like guys like to experiment with or like, what kind of conversations would you like to jump into? Etc.

Speaker 4

Maybe we can do a quick round of topics. Just see see if there's overlap between anyone in this group.

Robin T. Sverd

grayed out there. And when I hit it off, sure, because

Speaker 4

I think what what my eyes touching upon is something I've been thinking about. And David, I think mentioned something as well is, Can I do something where I live? And I'm not talking about rewilding your own property? That's, you know, I think there are instructions for this. It's more like the community building part. There is there are different local groups sustainability groups where I live I'm in Westchester, just north of New York. But there is nobody and it is a big like along the Hudson River is a big sort of sustainability movement here. But the things that we're working on which goes, for example, also, the web three has actually permeated into groups around bio regional identity and bio regional learning centers, which is Joe Brewer. That's the knowledge that I find and I want to kind of import it and spread it where I live. So that's so I want to topic I think I want to put out there is building a local node building a local community. That's number one, I'll pass it on to somebody else. I have other ideas, but I'll let somebody else go.

Monty Bryant

Well, just to say I think that's quite a good topic as well. And obviously I have some things to contribute on that front as well. And it sounds like Mayor expressed some interest in in the local community kind of stuff as well. So yeah, the other thing I might offer as well is that there's gitcoin is starting tomorrow. And I wonder who else in this call either has a project in there or will be donating to projects on there because obviously it's a huge with quadratic funding there's it's all about engagement and and whether you can get people to engage with your project and other projects out there to cast their vote with their dollars and so and with the with aloe protocol, now we're going to see probably a lot of different quadratic funding rounds. For all sorts of different communities. And what does that mean for engagement in terms of being able to keep up with all these different things that are going on? Because it can be a lot of noise? Sometimes, but also you want engagement in the right places, so just offer that one as well.

Speaker 1

I'll, I'll go. So when I when we were asked this question in the discord spot I posted this quote from Kevin Locky from his podcast where he says it's like we're eating digital potatoes that have no actual impact in the world. People can't eat a digital potato that is not connected to anything. So how do we rotate into things that actually have an impact are useful to people in their everyday lives? So that's, like I hear statements like that made on podcast. And in our case, we have, like, legit we've, we've raised $5 million. We go into really poor poor neighborhoods where there's just a ton of vacant land simply because the buildings there have been collapsed and have bulldozed away. We start rebuilding the land and the buildings and then using that rebuilding activity to generate economic activity jobs and so forth. And then we build a real estate portfolio that we then want to distribute the equity of, to those workers to the tenants that are moving in and to the people that have been in that community for a long, long time. So building wealth and community and keeping it in instead of pushing out which is what gentrification usually does. And we think there's a really rich case for defier web three technologies. One is in the actual distribution of that equity and then the corresponding governance that would go with it and then all the other cool tricks you can imagine with W three like gatekeeping you know, making protecting the impact and the distribution of that equity. So some PE fund doesn't just come in and take it all away, rage quitting, you know, so that, you know, if it's starting to go stripe, people can take their money and their ideas out, federating or poly centrism. So you can create communities like this throughout the city of Baltimore and then maybe throughout the planet, and they can figure out the way that they want to join their efforts. So I bring that like we have the community that that wants to explore the tools that I think you all are building. Now we're building houses and you're building the technology and we really want to find a way to to connect with you. And then I'll just shut up with saying there is some adjacency here. So I'm adjacent to Joe brewers work one of the guys the wnt. tech guy I have on my team is affiliated with Joe Brewer and building an app that supports the bio regional kind of work. And we also do have like a little get K get coin proposal which is figuring out how to capture the stormwater off all the buildings that were renovating and recapturing it to develop the green space and and then using technology to tell that story and maybe use it to take to put the trade in some of the credits that are available out there in the world if you if you do things like capture stormwater, so I'll shut up at that. It's

Monty Bryant

awesome. So where was your community base us at Baltimore or

Unknown Speaker

somewhere? Yeah, Baltimore, Maryland. Yes.

Monty Bryant

Is that as Jesse? Sorry, I'm not very good. Yeah. Yes. That

Speaker 1

I love that you don't. That's great that I guess Baltimore is a city. It's just a couple of ticks, as you know, to 200 miles or 120 miles south of New York City. And by the way, yawn I was just up in Yonkers, where I also saw these neighborhoods that are kind of similar to Baltimore, where I'm looking man, like there's some neighborhoods that could really be rebuilt here. And we could like use our model. And as I looked to the east at those neighborhoods, I looked across the river to the west at the other side of the Hudson, where it was just like all autumn foliage and beautiful rocks and I was thinking of the you know, the bio region there and the the, the community and the communion of economy and ecology. So

Speaker 4

yeah, my, my brother in law is a real estate developer in the city. And but I have tried for many years now to sort of at Thanksgiving conversations to get him to pay attention to the movement or how to, you know, support this. So that that's something I'm hoping maybe as a side effect to get out of these conversations as well to learn how you guys are approaching the people that are still stuck in the old ways in the old thinking and so on. Just a quick question, David, who, what's the name of the your colleague or the person you know, that is working or building an app for Joe?

Speaker 1

His name is Todd Youngblood. And yeah, yeah, okay. already clicked Perfect. Okay, okay. And by the way, we've like looked at New York city neighborhoods to because the real estate market is so different there it I'm not quite sure how our model works. But in Baltimore, we can still like we're going to closing in two weeks on a property for $8,000 Right? So you can still buy a house for $8,000 it makes the economics workout a lot more easily. So

Speaker 4

I don't want to deviate us or push this group in a certain direction. Just want to mention real quick and David, we can always talk offline or on this court. But I have a huge interest in the in the topic of housing. I've been talking to architects in different cities, who basically went to live in Europe and came back and say why can't we have walkable dense inner cities climate Adapted Housing, right get away from double loaded corridors and all that those topics? So I'm very interested in that. Just wanted to let you know that I might. I might, we might do a virtual coffee or something.

Speaker 1

Yeah, let's do that. That is all part of our thesis like these are pretty desolate neighborhoods. So there's this opportunity for holistic redesign, including building and walkability including turning brownfields into Greenfield restoring forests, urban gardens, like the whole bit. So

Speaker 4

if you have a link for your project or your company, if you don't mind putting it in the chat, that'd be great. Okay.

Monty Bryant

I also thought I'd just share in the chat, the refurb website where we've got the different local communities listed. I've just had a look at it can't see one for Baltimore, yet, yet is the key one of the key words there. But there is one, there's a green pill New York City, so I wonder if you're connected with that community. And I think there is the beginnings of a refi New York City as well,

Speaker 4

but you know, we'll meet up at 7pm tonight and I'm going to try and make it there. Nice.

Unknown Speaker

Cool. Yeah, just like Jenna,

Robin T. Sverd

what about us Saturday?

Speaker 2

Well, war, I think basically, what we are what we are working on actually the biggest and the most impactful thing we are currently working on is actually the plan of rebuilding of Ukraine. This is this is this is the, this is the reason of actually, this is what we work on with, with Marx and different other colleagues of ours is basically how to how to make it right how it should happen, basically, because Ukraine as a country, like inherited some, some we can say not the good things from Soviet Union, and it is going it was going away, et cetera. And you know, that there are countries in that region, which were kind of more more willing to return to the past of the Soviet Union and there are countries who are willing to more deviate of this Ukraine is one of the debate and once and this is one of the reasons of this, again, we don't want to get this conversation, political, but basically, what it is for us currently, many things in Ukraine are getting destroyed. And they are they will need to be rebuilt. And if when they will, basically during the rebuilding process, we can accelerate the innovation because we should not reveal them the in in an incorrect or an outdated way which was back in the days. inherited from Soviet Union, but we can do it in the right way. And currently we are teaching ourselves exploring all the opportunities and that's that's what we do. Thank you.

Robin T. Sverd

Thank you. All right. A question that comes to mind for me is well, first of all, something I would like to contribute but also during this time, is I guess also playing a little bit with showcasing or showing possibilities when it comes to engaging in virtual spaces like basically soon calls. Like, like simple things. I do as as, as a digital host, like breakout rooms, few cool visual things. So there's something there with creating virtual spaces. Another idea that Max mentioned for me was that there was a guy that he has a game called game changers, and he wants to run a virtual board game session, as I think, to our call or something during the period, that's also another idea that's on the table. That's coming in. And a question for me that comes to mind is also how can we use use our time together to experiment with these ideas we're had, how can that look like? Is that is that a call like facilitating conversation? Is that a workshop is that a demo presentation? Yeah. How can we that? Yeah. How can we experiment during during the demo week?

Because I'm David, it sounds like it sounds like my interpretation of your idea was, that could be some kind of a zoom call like mini workshop, inviting fellows to have conversation around your topic.

Speaker 1

I think that would be great. Is that what we would call an expert like, when you say experiment, can you tell me a little bit more like, what that would look

Robin T. Sverd

like? Yeah. So we can run. We can we can invite other participants for having a conversation around a question or a topic. We can have a workshop, which is more facilitated. We can create a game out of something or if want to try a certain technology, we can experiment with that in a session with a few people.

Speaker 1

Yeah, well, I mean, so I made the case. For all the technology uses we have for our community building effort as a person. Like I have built I've used the SAS called Zoho to build like a bunch of technology to support all this stuff. Finance, bookkeeping ops impact, but you know, I'm not a technology guy. I watched some videos I learned

Speaker 1

so all that to say like, I don't know anything about how you build web three. So if I were to say something like, oh, we want to distribute equity or we want to, we want to create a governance tool for the participants for the people that are participating in this economy or this ecology. Like I can say a thing like that, and not have any idea about how big of an ask or that is or what kind of small experiments we could try to you know, at least get a taste of it. So I guess that would be my caveat. But I can give you a million of those, you know, a million of little things that we could try within if you just imagine rebuilding a community you know, taking baseline impact data, how many vacant lots are there how many crumbling buildings are there now? How many trees

Robin T. Sverd

ever maybe. So, so. If you were to sum up that in a question like what's the what's the question of your challenge? You could invite people to problem solve or like explore with you because that's what we're doing

Speaker 1

well, I by ask for some offline time to think about that. But yeah, of course of course. Off the top of my head, we have built the coop like so we have a workaround Co Op, that is where we do governance now. So yeah, I better think about it a little bit more, but it seems like there could be some kind of tool that we could build that would Oh, I've got I got one I got I got one, maybe. Here's here's one that we've kicked around. Okay, so we have a little coop that's running this thing that we had so far, and it has some bylaws and it has some policy and procedures Doc's and then we all get together and have like meetings and then there's a resolution to say change this or that and this governance doc or that governance doc. So I think I think there is a an on chain a blockchain, a case for this, which is you can create an immutable record of the original document. And then any votes that have that have happened over time to change that document. Because right now what we have is a Google Drive where there's a bunch of resolutions and a bunch of notes and Nobody's really sure you know, what we passed what version of what proposal we passed back in April and so on. That's one idea. Well, thank you.

Speaker 4

I honestly wonder if we really have the time to build to experiment via building ourselves, because it is quite complicated, complicated in the web three space, unless you already have a platform. So we are now certain things are emerging, where you can go and just you don't have to code anymore. For example, to create a Dow, you have different options. For example, Dow Dow is on the cosmos ecosystem. You just click you just register click and click a few buttons and you have a dial with a voting system setup. So my idea would be we could go through examples in the space where either we have now we have a platform that would be good to know about or see what, see what it looks like. And that way we don't spend a lot of time it's really more of getting an overview we can invite people that have done this. Monte is probably one of the best examples but we also have what comes to mind is the cocoa network is they created a Dow they had a process they they they picked a certain digital tool. I think they use something from Dow house or Moloch Dow fork and then started implementing that. So maybe we can invite them to share their experience and say why did you pick this What was your decision making? Because then I think we can use that information in our own or to speed up our own processes. That would be my my idea. So while I would absolutely love to sit down with you and actually deploy a Dao contract or set up something and then play with it. My reservation is that it might take a long time.

Speaker 1

I think that's why now having tossed out a few like notions about what we are imagining for the future, I defer to you all who actually build this stuff for you. You can ask me what it takes to build a house. And and I will and I will speak authoritatively on that but I will defer to you all when it comes to building web three tools. So point well take

Speaker 4

um, I have a question. Before we reached the end of this meeting in for an area that I keep running into as a main inhibitor in this entire predicament and getting the movement forward which is the media. And I keep dreaming about getting a few people on our side, influential people so that you could end up for example, pushing these positive stories about regeneration or making the transition into a TV series or even having it mentioned a little bit more on the on the news. Europe is much much further in terms of what you hear on public networks. So my question to you is, Have any of you heard about any successful sort of lobbying attempt almost to the media to convince them because the grassroots aspect is good. We're making progress we're awakening more and more people are we're catching them as they self awaken. But but it's not it's not going to be it doesn't scale fast enough, in my opinion. And so getting getting somebody on the media even doesn't somebody in refi refi is large enough, doesn't somebody have a connection to somebody in Hollywood to just that we can send and say go have dinner with a producer and just talk about this and see if somebody is willing? I mean, we had we had that TV series interpolations, I think extrapolations.

Robin T. Sverd

I love that one.

Speaker 4

And I haven't gotten through the first episode yet but again, but it's an example. Of there was a huge chance of weaving some of these success stories from actual people on the ground are these examples that we're already seeing today into these future narratives. So that's an open question right is about media for me is media. Outreach and lobbying is I think something that this movement is not not doing enough or not being successful at it. I don't know.

Robin T. Sverd

This for me, there was a lot of resonance in in what you share now. And I imagine that could easily be in the session during the demo week to invite where we would like to explore exactly that question, to dive into that. And like if we have a 10 people exploring that question, and maybe have a small goal of within an hour How can we hack out a small fun campaign just for fun? Yeah, that can be a session in my opinion.

Speaker 1

The odd for that, I dream of that all the time. And, you know, we're starting to get a little bit of I don't know hafter momentum now so I'm trying. I'm writing 2024 budgets right now and I'm trying to like peel off $10,000 or so. To, you know, have Video Experts are a team that would, you know, we have some really compelling stories in our neighborhoods and catching those and then adding them and then turning them into some kind of portfolio of videos. I think yours is a much grander vision than that. All I'm describing as a start, but all that to say I, I share in that aspiration, and anyway, I could contribute to it. I would. I would be I guess

Monty Bryant

one of the things I might say is we recently launched a new episode of The refi podcasts which are specifically on telling the story of regenerative innovators. And so we did it with Andy Krishna on the story of regeneration in Curacao from collectivo which did some projects out there and so it's just a format we're experimenting with. But yeah, I think in terms of how we, you know, actually scale that up to reach more people. I mean, that is definitely like, I mean, we've got a lot of content that we find out now, but it could have a lot more views. And so how we reach new channels and audiences is definitely like I think a good area of exploration. I did have a meeting a few weeks back with the chief head of sustainability at the economist, which was interesting. And so I think that could be quite an interesting channel but like I don't personally have the time to follow up on on all of this and like, I've just got a lot of operational things and immediate priorities that seemed to kind of get in the way, because in a way, it's kind of like a public good, right? Like, the whole space benefits, but it's difficult to to I mean, I right now I'm focusing on a few opportunities that just bring in enough income for me to survive right and continue, continue doing the things I'm doing and it's quite a lot of effort to convince someone that crypto and blockchain isn't a scam and that there's cool things going on in Rifai that they should care about. And then once you do, it's like, cool. Okay, well, that's great, but you know what I mean? So it's a difficult challenge, but it's obviously a very much needed thing for the space. And it's obviously partly what we're trying to do with reefer now, but with limited resources.

Speaker 1

So interestingly, I was on a, I can't remember I was on a conference or call a couple of weeks ago where we were discussing exactly this point where we were it was an ownership economy kind of call. And we were just just talking about the usefulness utility of web three technology to support the work just like everything I've already blathered on and this point of overcoming the current view of you know, Sam Bateman free etc. To to make it possible that we, we could get back into web three with this distributed equity kind of stuff. Anyway, the point everybody got to him kind of greed as agreed to kind of aligns with what I first came to. You don't really even talk about the technology talk about like the impact, like the thing that is happening on the ground, whether it's ecological restoration or the thing that we're working on, which is, you know, economic redistribution, economic fairness, however you want to characterize that and you don't even mention what the underlying tools are that are that are really, you know, making this scalable or catalyzing it or catapulting it. And then later when people start to look under the hood, and they say, Oh, wow, you're using crypto to do this. Now you've got like a really compelling media. Strategy, you know, and fairly organic, though. Two cents.

Monty Bryant

Yeah, like that. Sounds good. Good point.

Speaker 4

Um, I want to share something with you real quick, just so you have it is I made I made a little app last year too. And unfortunately for the past seven months, I was also you know, too, too thinly spread to keep working on it. But what this was supposed to be is wasn't just a Rolodex for me. But with a map so that when I find regenerative projects, especially in web three, I stick a pin on the map. I can, you know, I collect you know, here's their LinkedIn, here's their Twitter here. You can read more about it. And what it allows me to do is, is discover relatively quickly that there is a user group in this space that I lovingly call the stewards of the stewards and that's basically us because it sits you know, they're the stewards are the people that stick their hands in the in the ground and do the hard work. And then there are people above that on a level to coordinate so so I made this app hoping that I can activate a few of these stores of stores and then say, hey, you know, 20 projects and you know, 50 just let's throw them all in here. So that we get we can get an overview of the size of the movement and can also people can go in from a geospatial perspective and say, Well, what's in my area? Is there anything I can go visit talk to and so on, that makes it easier. But again, it's been it's been paused for a few months because obviously there is no business model or anything. This was I thought a helpful tool but I wanted to share this with you because I want to hear from your experiences. This is based on mine because I see how large spaces but I also see how fragmented it is. And there are good platforms out there including restore dot e call. I think CRO their lab has one and so everybody is building redundant infrastructure to show hey, look, we are shepherding these 120 region projects, and everybody builds another map everybody builds right. And so these are islands and I wanted to build a very thin layer over that. To say, Well, you know, you guys keep doing what you're doing. There's no competition, but I need to I need to elucidate the size of this movement. Because once I have 5000 pins on this map, I can take this to a media outlet and say, Look, there's a story here. Are you interested in this? So that was kind of the idea behind it, but also to show the regenerative movement, its own size. I really after spending a year and a half now in this community. I think the region movement has no idea how large and powerful it is. And this was an attempt to hold a mirror up a little bit but you can see if you look click on the link, I have 142 entries that all come from me. So but again, I keep I keep putting stuff in there. Yeah, if if there are any thoughts, but I think the main reason why I posted is is right refiled our ecosystem the same thing, right? We keep making the same things I talked to talk to now they're called, used to be called Ecolab, right sunflower Ecotec seven Nightingale. And in a few other projects, there is my Celia, which is trying to build the social network. And so I wanted to create a data collection to then donate to projects like this and then so now let's make the social graph out of this. I'm

Monty Bryant

working with Darren Zell. We're just doing my Celia where Yeah, exactly. We're, we're turning the refi knowledge graph that I just posted. The into like an AI interface to engage with that is one way and then the next thing we're doing is trying to use catalyst network to actually create interoperability between these different datasets, which is a super hard challenge, because like you just said, you're making a map loads of other people are making a map, but they're all fragmented, don't really update with each other. So super difficult challenge but there's a platform called Catalyst network. That is, so yeah, it's an area of exploration of mine. But yeah, there's there's lots to do on that call to see that you've got your own kind of thing on this. But

Unknown Speaker

no, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Robin T. Sverd

No, I just wanted to, to ask the meta question. What's the what's the question behind this conversation we can invite more people into, because it's a super exciting topic.

Monty Bryant

I think one of the questions is there's lots of mappers but how do you actually make the maps engaging and relevant, interesting and useful? Because sometimes the maps get made, and the only person who actually looks at them is the person who has made the map.

Robin T. Sverd

That's a good question

Monty Bryant

in the space, and so actually how you make those useful and create value and engaging is is I guess the important question relevant, potentially. So I assume we're wrapping up now I've got another call for but I assume you'd be making some there's some notes or something of some of the ideas that have been shared. In the chat and we can kind of follow up async notes

Robin T. Sverd

will come. Yeah, maybe a quick check around just like whatever you want to share, checking out David

Speaker 1

I'm excited and I don't know. I'm excited. I'm excited to see what we can build. Thanks.

Speaker 4

John, same here. i I'm looking forward to a lot more conversations because that's for me is the ping pong of ideas. That's that's the catalyst to getting somewhere. And I have a I mean, I have I have a job right. I have to make money somewhere. But I have a certain amount of time reserved to spend on doing something building something and I'm hoping to find collaborations.

Monty Bryant

No, that's the beginning. Yeah, I'd love to I'd love to. I'm looking for new collaborations as well. Of course, with the work we're doing a refi now so yeah, grateful to have met you both. Sounds sounds super cool. And Jan, maybe maybe we'll we could do something together. But let's see.

Robin T. Sverd

Anyway, that's exactly what we're here. I want to thank you for participating this hour, a lot of new ideas. So I'm just fun to just open up and just meet you guys and see where this goes. So I'm looking forward to talking to you on Discord and our future conversations. And with that, have a brilliant day. Bye everyone. Bye.

Unknown Speaker

Take care guys.

Monty Bryant

Thank you, Robin. Thanks. Bye Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai