/ayni

A barn-raising for the Good Labs platform.

Ayni Project

Introduction

This project is an exercise in ayni - a Quechua term referring either to the concept of reciprocity or mutualism among people of the Andean mountain communities or the practice of this concept.

"As a noun, the law of ayni states that everything in the world is connected, and is the only commandment that rules daily life in many communities like the Q'ero. As a verb, this often refers to the cooperation between the members of a community when one member gives to another, he or she is entitled to receive something back." -Wikipedia

In practice, this custom provides for

Procedure

Here’s my idea for the barn-raising, modeled after Zooniverse project builder:

  1. We start with a planning document - a Google doc hosted on Sensorica. The document presents this agenda and task list to prospective contributors.
  2. We set up a Kanban board on GitHub or Trello for managing tasks
  3. We set up a decision-making forum - maybe on Loomio
  4. We draw up the blueprints - we design the site using the Draw.io free diagramming tool, identifying desired design features and functionality
  5. We decide on a site - a web host, web builder service, etc. This will be decided on the basis of the design features of the site / the site blueprint
  6. We break ground. We build incrementally in Agile style - rudiments / lo-fi version first, then iteratively improve
  7. We get appropriate legal registration for the site’s custodian organization, GoodLabs
  8. We start building labs, projects, and templates for continuity and interoperability between projects
  9. We build up the commons and supportive infrastructure (supply chains, etc.)
  10. We start feeding insights back to the community, organizing and managing community resources
  11. We build our user base, build the community and network for strategic purposes