Source: Edgeryders
KEEP CALM AND #LOTE2!
DECEMBER 6-9, BRUSSELS. SEE YOU THERE!
Friends, old and new. There has never been a better time to come together, support one another and get things done!
Edgeryders 1 is complete. It’s generating a set of recommendations that you can read (and poke holes into) here and a Handbook for Policymakers to be published at the end of the year. As a listening experiment the project has already achieved more than we formally set out to do. So much so that the European Commission and Council of Europe are giving us a formidable challenge: breaking new ground in the fight against precariousness, social exclusion and poverty .
Over the last year we have come across multitudes of initiatives with experimental and alternative answers to the question of how we want to live in the future while facing enormous challenges (climate change, lack of resources, new forms of mobility, gentrification, unequal chances in the educational system etc). We all agree that we need a lot of innovation to solve large urgent challenges like global warming, ensuring food security, dealing with the fallout from financial crisis, upgrading our educational systems to better prepare our young. If you’re new to Edgeryders, the CAMPAIGNS page is where you can get a quick overview of Edgeryders 1.0 themes and ongoing discussions.
This new structure of 2.0 should support concrete initiatives at local level, but also policy research, design and delivery, all while scaling the community – this gives us a pretty wide space where everybody can play an active role. The community is not only a protagonist, but this time around we’re designing the project ourselves and taking more concrete roles in seeing it through, based on what we want to pursue as a collectivity. Also splitting the work amongst ourselves so everyone who wants to be a part of it can build up something valuable and have full ownership. And we’re kicking it off with a big event in Brussels!
The big Edgeryders meetup in June was hands down one of the most meaningful gatherings we have ever had the fortune of participating in: many of us still haven’t gotten our heads around the experience of thinking, talking, working and partying with some of the most incredible people we have ever met. The world looks different to me after those four days. Better. Worse. Uglier. More beautiful. More complex. Smaller and infinitely bigger all at once. It has already had an impact on the trajectory of my life. My brain is sharper, my work better, my ambitions and determination much stronger. I think I learned more during those four days than I have during my entire formal education, about stuff I never could have imagined existed, let alone could forsee myself being interested in! http://epilogger.com/events/lotesxb .
So of course we are doing it again. And if you haven’t already jumped on board we would like to welcome you to join our Edgeryders family. We’d love to see you in Brussels on December 6-9. The time to let us know if you are coming, and make travel arrangements is NOW. It’s easy. Just click on the “Edit Your Edgeryders profile” link on your Edgeryders Profile Page and tick the “Yes, I’m coming to the Brussels event on December 6-9!“. Please also fill in the other relevant information to make coordination easier! If you don’t already have an account on Edgeryders, sign up now . This makes it much easier to prepare and follow up on the results of the event. ? Ásta Helgadóttir is volunteering to help with the p2p coordination around the practicals like accommodations and travel, so get in touch with her about this A.S.A.P
Pick your topic
Pick your team!
The TEAMS page here are the way we’re getting down to fleshing out the agenda, not just for the event itself but as a starting point to build EdgeRyders next iteration. There are three main tracks where anybody can make a contribution and help brainstorm ideas, and each track will be dedicated ample time during the event in Brussels.
Pick a team, but don’t worry, you can always vote with your feet on location!
,
TEAM #1
Take the Local Action Hero Challenge!
Many people, places and projects contribute in different ways towards improving the well-being of people in their local environments without nearly enough support and access to local resources. Participants in this track are figuring out concrete ways in which individuals or small groups can draw support from their peers and the insitutional legitimacy of the Edgeryders project to unlock local resources, make their initiatives more resilient, or diffuse their approach internationally and raise awareness about the value of the work they do. As well as how members of the Edgeryders community could support and nurture future change-makers, on and offline. Want to know more? Check out the team page!
What is it? A two day workshop in which a diverse gathering of policymakers, radical thinkers and lifehackers work together to debug Europe’s next generation of policies around innovation, sustainability, education, labour and employment, social cohesion and resilience. This is a great opportunity to challenge yourself and your peers to think critically about our diverse experiences and bring them together into something that would make a positive contribution towards enabling the adoption of creative solutions to our most pressing societal. Know a bit about policy or are interested? Sign up here!
TEAM #3
Take the Community Actions Hero Challenge!
Over the past year there have been many ideas thrown around about how to build on the community and how participation in Edgeryders could better support the community members needs and facilitate collaboration on concrete initiatives. One idea is to position Edgeryders as a viable alternative for generating independent, legitimised, high quality knowledge work on wicked problems, bottom up. Another is to turn it into a powerful machinery for generating proof of concept of radical solutions and getting them into the political agenda. This track consists of two interrelated parts 1) Exploring alternative business models and revenue streams, to support participants own local initiatives and for the Edgeryders community as a collective 2) Developing the technical platform to better support those alternatives.
Be part of the biggest community-driven initiative to support radical innovation work in Europe and beyond ! Join this track!