The Interledger Community 🌱: Erica Hargreave

Making Connections & Helping Others to Catalyze Potential Opportunities & Explore New Pathways - Final Ambassadorship Report

Erica Hargreave — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 06:43:47 +0000

Reflecting Back Upon My Initial Goals with My ILF Ambassadorship

As I sit down to write this final report for my Interledger Foundation Ambassadorship, I find myself reflecting back on my initial goals and the journey those have taken me on. Those goals were to:

test out new Web Monetization tipping features;
engage in public outreach with Web Monetization to media, digital creatives, and open education communities by hosting workshops and tipping parties;
create an edited version of the live Web Monetized at MozFest Podcast; and
engage in outreach on Web Monetization and Interledger Foundation opportunities to indigenous communities and disabilities communities.

I've done that and whole lot more through this Ambassadorship, which I very much think of as journey, one that meandered and had to be re-routed at times. While my Ambassadorship is at an end, the journey that was a part of this Ambassadorship continues with new paths beginning ahead.

My Interim Report Series

Last summer I shared much of this journey in an Interim Report Series:

The Focus of this Report

That Interim Report Series was a final report unto itself, so I am not going rehash those earlier aspects of my Ambassadorship in this report, but rather focus this report on the piece of my Ambassadorship that caused me to extend it into 2023, and specifically to the Interledger Summit 2023, which was to do outreach to indigenous communities and disability communities with the Interledger Protocol and opportunities and possibilities that the Interledger Foundation and broader Interledger community represent.

As the Summit allowed me to further build and learn from a few pieces I spoke about in my Interim Report Series, I will also highlight those here, specifically the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon and Community Lead Podcasting.

Indigenous Communities and Disability Communities Micro Grants

As I spoke about in my 'Outreach and Community Building' Report, when I had to rethink the Indigenous Communities and Disability Communities Micro Grants that I was initially envisioning as a means of creating more engaging outreach with those communities (due to Coil closing and Web Monetization being temporarily unavailable), Chris suggested reimagining these micro grants as a way to bring key individuals from the indigenous communities and disabilities communities to the 2023 Interledger Summit. I loved this idea, and am pleased with what was created, the micro grantees it attracted, the program established for those micro grantees, and how the micro grantees embraced the opportunity.

Selecting Candidates for the Micro Grant

For those of you curious as to how this micro grant was set up, the goal was to invite a diverse group of micro grantees who are active within indigenous communities and disabilities communities. By diverse, this meant searching globally for people active in indigenous and disabilities communities, who are engaged in different community initiatives from fintech, technology, financial literacy, digital literacy, indigenomics, entrepreneurship, education, accessibility, and digital media. As indigenous communities and disabilities communities are themselves broad, representing a diverse range of cultural groups, believes and lived experiences, the goal was to similarly take the diversity of such communities into consideration in reaching out to as broad a group of micro grantees, as possible.

I found those grantees by searching globally, reaching out to colleagues around the world for introductions, cold emailing, and having exploratory meetings. As this was an invitation based micro grant application, and was during the summer when many people were 'away from the office', it was a bit of a balancing act of deciding how long to wait before reaching out to other avenues. Some people were going to apply (like a couple of indigenous education and digital groups in New Zealand), but did not in the end, others were interested, but the timing wasn't right, and still others reached out with interest past the deadline. I will create a full list of the organizations and contacts I found for Julaire. If anyone else is interested in that, let me know, and I will make you a copy.

From there, the micro grantees filled out a very similar grant application in Submittable to other Interledger Foundation Grants, and like with other Interledger Foundation grants, these applications were reviewed by a few people, before the micro grantees were formally offered a micro grant to attend the 2023 Interledger Summit.

My one change that I would make to this process would be to start it earlier, in the Spring, both to give more time in reaching people and to create a broader pool of people from these two communities, by encouraging some of them to apply to speak at the Summit.

The Micro Grantees

I was very pleased with the amazing group of individuals that the micro grant attracted, and with how they embraced the opportunity, making valuable connections, and being open to ideas and partnerships. The micro grantees included (in the order in which we received their applications):

@tinthit joined us at the Summit in her role as lead systems designer for the Indigenomics Institute. The Indigenomics Institute acts as an Indigenous economic advisory for public governments, Indigenous communities and the private sector. They focus on four core areas in overcoming Indigenous economic barriers and addressing challenges: as a dialogue platform for indigenous economic solutions, economic policy / research / analysis / planning, education and training, and partnership development. Additionally, Tinthi is a film director and producer, social justice advocate, and a Co-Founder and Director for BIPOC-CA. Read on for Tinthi's reflections from the Summit.

Bernard Chiira is a leader in the African innovation ecosystem and a pioneer for assistive technology innovation and entrepreneurship development in Africa. His passion is to inspire, catalyze and bridge success for individuals, startup founders, organizations, and businesses. Unfortunately due to a visa issue, Bernard was not able to join us at the 2023 Interledger Summit, but the hope is that he will be able to join us at the 2024 Interledger Summit.

@hforeman is a program director at New Mexico Community Capital (NMCC), which helps grow sustainable Indigenous economies through technical assistance, grants, and access to capital. He is a specialist in facilitation, development, and implementation of engaging learning experiences for students of all ages. He has created a variety of curricula around education, health, and entrepreneurship, including with the Indian Country Digital Trainers program with the National Congress of American Indians, and as Grow With Google Digital Coach for Indigenous Communities. Read on for Jake's reflections from the Summit.

@nehaarora is the founder of Planet Abled, a globally recognised travel brand promoting inclusive travel for persons with disabilities and the elderly. Planet Abled’s core business is mainstreaming accessibility into the tourism frameworks, practices, and market opportunities to enable growth, scale, and a customer-centric approach to have an amplified positive impact on travellers. She approached the Summit with accessibility in mind, speaking with people about how we can address accessibility throughout our ecosystem, starting right from the code, and reminding people that part of creating an accessible environment is making those that are providing that accessibility (like the sign language interpreters) feel like valued members of the community. She even helped me when I badly aggravated my concussion symptoms in one of the sessions (due to too many sensory stimuli hitting me at once), reminding me that I needed to prioritize calming those symptoms down so I wouldn't be out of commission for the rest of the Summit, and making sure Vineel understood from a audiovisual standpoint what could be done in future sessions to limit further aggravation of my symptoms. Read on for Neha's reflections from the Summit.

@artproctor is a Neurodiverse, Afro-Indigenous, Black Scotian Mik’maw, and a Social Finance, Open Payment, Indigenomic advocate, Tech Steward, Entertainment Technologist, Artist, Activist, and Community Builder. He is also the founder of Indigitech Destiny, designed to foster unity, learning, and technological progress within Indigenous communities, with an objective of employing technology as a means of reconciliation and collaboration. Additionally Art has been helping to develop and deliver digital literacy programs to IBPOC individuals, and is exploring partnering on a multi-pronged initiative that addresses digital and financial literacy, developing an open learning curriculum tailored to assist IBPOC individuals with varying levels of neurodiversity, physical, and hearing challenges. Read on for Art's Summit reflections.

The Program Created for the Micro Grantees

It was important to me that I gave the micro grantees everything they needed to make the most of the Interledger Summit, catalyze future opportunities, and for their time at the Summit to be beneficial, both from their perspective and that of the Interledger Foundation. Ultimately, I wanted to set them all up for success in gaining an understanding of what the Interledger Protocol is and how it can be benefit their communities, learning more about the Interledger Foundation and the opportunities that exist with the Foundation, and making them connection within the Foundation and broader community for future allies, partnerships, initiatives and collaborations. To do this, I did the following:

Before the Summit:

group email introducing the micro grantees to one another and to Santosh and Carrie
an invitation to add their bio and photo in a shared google doc, if they wished me to introduce them before the Summit in the community forem and in the community Slack
a shared google doc for them to add their wish list of the types of people and specific individuals in the Interledger community that they'd like to be introduced to at the Summit and / or in the Slack community
an invitation to co-shape, create and record a podcast together at the Summit, to share their ideas and reflections on their experience

During the Summit

a pre-Summit micro grantee get-together upon our arrival in Costa Rica for everyone to meet in person
a WhatsUp group for connecting with each other throughout the Summit, including around catching up over meals ...etc.
Santosh and I made introductions and connections between the micro grantees and people from the Interledger community whom we thought there might be a good relationship and / or opportunity with
we hosted two live from the Summit community podcasts, that we invited others whom we connected with to, one at the end of the first full day and one at the end of the last day
initiated an idea for a group collaboration, of which we met as a group with Roberto of The People's Clearinghouse, and have plans to draft a proposal together with The People's Clearinghouse and ThitsaWorks.

After the Summit

followed up with everyone on their Micro Grantee Reports, a reminder on what to include and a template and imagery to help get them started
a broadened WhatsUp Group for conversations as we further develop the group collaboration that was sparked at the Summit

Santosh Viswanatham kindly offered his help with our cohort in playing co-host to the micro grantees, acting as a source of knowledge for their questions, and helping make them introductions in the community. With his help, all of the micro grantees not only came away with a greater understanding of the technology, community and Foundation, but many new friends, allies, and future collaborators. Best of all, they all ended the Summit with multiple potential opportunities to follow up on.

I also need to give special shoutout here to Neha and Art, who made full use of every opportunity offered to them.

The thing that made me the most happy and proud of our micro grantees is that they came together to start exploring ways that they could support one another's initiatives, and when a group collaboration was suggested, they embraced the idea, along with Roberto of The People's Clearinghouse and Nyi of ThitsaWorks. Meaning that this is just the beginning of their journey together. That would not have happened if a program had not been established that made them colleagues and collaborators from the start.

This was a valuable experience for all involved, and I greatly hope that the Interledger Foundation continues to host Summit micro grants targeted to inviting underrepresented communities within the Interledger community to the Summit to learn and take back what they learn to their community. And I hope that in hosting those micro grantees, a program will be set up for the future Summit micro grantees, so that they too gain the most they can from the Summit.

Special Thank Yous

While I am thankful to the micro grantees for how they embraced this opportunity and to everyone at the Summit for making this a valuable and welcoming experience and opportunity for them, I also want to say a few special thank yous:

to Chris Lawrence for suggesting this idea, ensuring that I was able to take it in a direction that was meaningful to me, and making it possible for me to host an initial micro grantee get-together upon our arrival in Costa Rica
to Ayesha Ware and Vineel Reddy for looking after the logistics of getting our micro grantees to the Summit,
to @devcer for helping me to play host to our micro grantees, acting as a source of knowledge for their questions, and helping make them introductions in the community
to Anna Sheard for helping to review the micro grantee applications
to Lawil Karama for offering the remainder of her Ambassadorship discretionary fund to further support this micro grant

Wikipedia Editathon

I am thankful and appreciative of Alex Lakatos, Vineel, and Chris for seeing to it that space was made at the Summit Hackathon to host the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon that I'd been advocating for, with the hopes of beginning to tackle both the lack of Interledger enabled technology on Wikipedia and the lack of noteworthy people and organizations within our community on Wikipedia. This was hugely appreciated, as was Ionna's attention to making sure that my previously aggravated concussion symptoms were protected from further triggering factors in the audiovisual displays.

I am also appreciative of Santosh offering his support to prepare knowledge banks in GitHub and Jeremiah Lee for helping to tackle the strategy around the event with me. And an enormous thank you to everyone in our community who cheered this idea on and began to add to our Wiki Article Prep Spreadsheet in advance of the day.

The idea for the day was to create a friendly, 'everyone and all knowledge and comfort levels' are welcome space. To do that, we created jobs that people could work on, whether they felt comfortable editing on Wikipedia or not.

People were invited to:

pick a topic to research and add to the Wiki Article Prep Spreadsheet,
begin writing Wiki Articles on shared Google Docs that they added to the ILP Community Wikis Underway Spreadsheet, and
strategically begin to create new Wiki Articles, adding a piece of a pre-drafted article, and then having others create subsequent edits to add more parts to a Wiki Article (creating a community of editors behind it - making it less likely to be removed by Wiki editors that like to control the content on Wikipedia).

I wasn't really sure what to expect on the day, other than that Jeremiah, Ayden, and Victoria would at some point be swinging by to help. What happened, further filled my love for this community as various people wandered over to check out what we were doing. Most had never edited anything on Wikipedia and had no intention of participating in the Edit-a-thon, but between @jeremiahlee and I, we welcomed them, walked them through what we were doing, and invited them to participate in whatever way they felt comfortable.

What those who sat down to participate did was amazing, as they took on some of the tougher knowledge pieces to research and write, including some who were newcomers to our community and still somewhat skeptical, not being sure if our goal was to create puff pieces on aspects of the community. Jeremiah and I assured them that we were looking for balanced, unbiased articles, in the fashion that Wikipedia is designed for, mentioned that we were both at an arm's length from the Foundation ourselves, and that we openly express our concerns and constructive criticism when we have them. From there we fell into our roles, me welcoming people, helping them get started, and creating the educational and organizational resources as we saw what was needed. Jeremiah helping people to research and shape their articles. Both of us answering questions as they came up and gathering people in the know, like members of the tech team, Stefan, and Briana to interview, as needed. Later, Ayden joined us to help with the strategic adding of Wiki Articles, in stages from different editors.

James Dailey drafted a Wiki article on Mojaloop
Nandini Harihareswara began researching and mapping out the Interledger Protocol, which Cristina and James have begun to write up and add to Wikipedia
Kevin Crew and Jeremiah researched and began to draft a Wiki article on the Interledger Foundation
Cristina Sanda drafted a Wiki article on Rafiki

The day was not without its hiccups. We learned that:

we need to begin to teach people in our community to write Wiki articles, to ensure they meet Wiki article and citing criteria;
we need to foster more editors within the Interledger community, so there are more than four of us creating and editing Wiki articles;
if hosting a Wiki Edit-a-thon with everyone in the same location, we need to let Wikipedia know, so that our location is not flagged and blocked from making edits for the day; and
to create the knowledge bank on Wikipedia that we are aiming to create, it is going to take time.

Despite the hiccups, I am happy to share that we were successful with our multi-editor strategy and ended the day with our first community built Wiki article. The article in question is the one James wrote on Mojaloop, and that Ayden and I created and did separate edits to on Wikipedia. I'll admit that this has put a huge grin on my face.

My thanks to Alex for suggesting that we make Interledger Wikipedia Edit-a-thons a monthly activity, for Vineel for following up on that, and to Jeremiah and Ayden for being game to join Vineel and I in creating an Interledger Wikipedia Edit-a-thons Working Group.

We will be getting underway on that working group soon, so stay tune in the Forem and on the wikipedia-editathon Slack Channel for Wikipedia Writing and Editing Educational Resources, an invitation to a Wikipedia Writing and Editing Workshop, and our plans for future Wikipedia Edit-a-thons throughout the year, and hopefully at the 2024 Interledger Summit.

Community Lead Podcast

Sometimes the best things come out of things that you are not initially successful with. That was certainly the case with the panel that I pitched for the Summit with our cohort of indigenous and disabilities communities micro grantees. While this session did not get a space in the program, it forced me to think of alternative ways to give our micro grantees a platform to share their insights on both the potential of the technology that the Interledger community is building could have in their communities and the challenges that need to be addressed to make it accessible to their communities, as well as to share their insights on the potential that their communities bring to Interledger. I decided to suggest the idea of a micro grantee lead podcast to our cohort, which we all (Santosh and I included) co-create and share ownership of. I am happy to say that everyone embraced the idea, which lead to us hosting two podcasts, one at the end of the first full day of the Summit and one at the end of the last day.

The beauty for me with these, is that they didn't stop at being co-created by our cohort of micro grantees, but became a community lead and co-created podcast. Best of all, we'd created an environment where people felt safe in sharing their honest reflections and insights in a roundtable style, in which everyone had an equal voice, no matter how old or how new to the community, and no matter whether they'd been previously offered a stage or not. You can see the raw, unedited, live from the Summit version of that podcast below:

I will be creating an edited version of the podcast to release to Castopod to syndicate across the digital verse in the coming months.

I'd like to see the continuation of community lead, co-created podcasts at future Summits, as if we are only creating the official Summit media with the same people that work for the organization or are on the board, then we are creating an echo chamber and not fully sharing that ecosystem that we speak. Such a podcast offers that community voice in such a way that allows people to reflect, share more deeply, and share in a way that they might not feel comfortable when the official Summit media are interviewing them.

My thanks to all whom participated with Art, Neha, Jake, Tinthi, Santosh and I in creating this podcast, including Saloni Garg, Stephanie Perrin, Carlos Villasēnor, Eunice de Asis, Malou Lintmeijer, Savannah Koolen, and Raashi Saxena. With special thanks to Saloni who joined us both days, and took the lead with Art on the second podcast in getting it organized and gathering everyone together.

A Hope for Future Summits

For any of you who have read this in it's entirety (which is greatly appreciated), you will know that among my hopes for future Summits are that:

the Interledger Foundation continues to host Summit micro grants targeted to inviting underrepresented communities within the Interledger community to the Summit to learn and take back what they learn to their community;
a program will be set up for the future Summit micro grantees, so that they gain the most they can from the Summit, like this year's micro grantees did;
the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon become a regular part of the Hackathon Day at the Summit; and
a Community Lead, Co-Created Podcast become a regular part of the Summit.

I do have one more hope for future Summits that came out of what Carlos Villasēnor shared in the second Community Lead Podcast at time marker 19:11. Carlos points out that aside from the entertainment, we didn't really involve the locals in the Summit. He was the only local participant, and only because a friend that was attending invited him. In participating in the sessions, he kept thinking of local organizations and stories that would have tied in nicely with the Summit, and thought that not involving the local host country / community in the idea sharing was a huge missed opportunity.

I agree with Carlos, it was a missed opportunity and one that the travels and conversations that Neha, Carrie, Santosh, Malcolm and I had in Costa Rica following the Summit further highlighted. I will write more on that in a future post.

For now, my hope would be that at future Summits, we involve the local host country / community in the conversation, idea sharing, and problem solving with the technologies that we are creating.

One thought for this, that David Ramirez and I recently chatted about was to invite locals to share case studies, presenting challenges that they are looking to address, inviting our community to brainstorm with them, and then in teams that include both locals and community members, pitching ways of applying Interledger’s technology to creating solutions for them. Perhaps this could even be a technical and non-technical offering as a part of the Hackathon Day. Even better, we could create a Field Trip Day as part of the Summit to visit the local organizations sharing the case studies and learn about their needs and challenges first hand and on-site. This could have a much deeper and more meaningful impact for all, as you don't really learn about a place and its realities inside the walls of a resort. Thanks to our post-Summit Costa Rican exploration and conversations, Neha, Carrie, Santosh, Malcolm and I discovered this really drove home the importance of the technology our community is building when we saw the challenges that the Interledger technology could solve first hand. We also saw the challenges of different payment systems from different countries not working well together, from members in our group that didn't have the local currency with them or secondarily small US dollars on them. Some food for thought.

An Overarching Theme of Making Connections & Helping Others to Catalyze Potential Opportunities & Explore New Pathways

The highlight of this Ambassadorship for me and the overarching theme that I keep coming back to as I reflect on this has been one of making connections and helping others to catalyze potential opportunities and explore new pathways. Thats come in many different forms throughout the Ambassadorship through:

making introductions between people in my life and people within the Interledger Foundation to navigate new realms or where I saw potential mutually beneficial opportunities and possibilities;
doing outreach into other communities to introduce them to Interledger and how they might apply the technology
helping people explore the technology and community to figure out how it might fit into what they do and what they do might fit into the community;
helping people to hone their ideas and pitches;
helping people navigate the path to ask for the opportunities they wished in grants, contracts, or a job;
inviting people to collaborate on ideas that I have;
helping others with their initiatives; and
encouraging partnerships and collaborations on new initiatives within the community.

I'd forgotten how much of this I had done, until I was at the Summit's Opening Night Mixer and had lovely people like Jeremiah, Andrey Torres and Marc Zuze remind me, and thank me for the impact that had on them and / or their work.

I learned that these are things that I am good at, and that I very much enjoy, both as it allows me to get to know people better and as I like to help people shine and do what they love to do.

What’s Next?

My Ambassadorship may be done, but you will still see plenty of me.

In terms of what is on the horizon for me, aside from my teaching and storytelling work, a few things that I am looking forward to in the coming months that pertain to our Interledger community:

beginning to meet and plan with the aforementioned Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Working Group;
drafting a Wikipedia Writing and Editing Guide;
hosting a Wikipedia Writing and Editing Workshop;
beginning our monthly Wikipedia Edit-a-thons;
drafting a proposal for the idea that our micro grantee cohort, The People's Clearinghouse, ThitsaWorks, and I began to discuss at the Summit;
creating an edited version of the Community Lead Podcasts from the Summit to syndicate with Castopod;
tinkering and experimenting with Fynbos, Chimoney, Rafiki, the newest instalment of the Web Monetization Standard, and any other fun new things that emerge;
updating StoryToGo's Guides and Open Education materials with the various new fintech that is emerging in the community; and
getting active on gFam again.

Oh and I am helping Art with a couple of conference proposals, that we will hopefully involve others in our community in the Montreal area.

Should the opportunity arise, I'd also love to:

host some tipping parties with the communities we were not able to, when we had to put Web Monetization on hold;
develop any educational materials for the community;
help shape the vision / reality for the idea I shared above of involving the local host country / community in the conversation, idea sharing, and problem solving with the technologies that we are creating at the next Summit, possibly with a field trip day and / or as a part of the Hackathon. Thinking that could be quite fun to create with Vineel.

Oh, and @laka - Jeremiah and I are still eager to help you set up an Interledger Castopod Instance and begin to demonstrate for people what they can do with it.

Thank you to all of you that made this Ambassadorship a wonderful experience for me, for all the wonderful idea sharing that you invited me into, and for the friendship that I have with a number of you. It is very much valued.

Guide to Participation in the ILP Wikipedia Editathon

Erica Hargreave — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 16:50:19 +0000

Welcome to the Wikipedia Editathon!

Thrilled you have found your way here and are game to participate in the ILP Wikipedia Editathon!!! Thinking strategically, we have created this Guide to lead you to the resources to participate in the ILP Wikipedia Editathon, whether at the Interledger Summit, remotely from afar, during a remote scheduled editathon or in an on-going way throughout the year.

Our goal is to make the ILP Wikipedia Editathon inclusive of you, no matter your technology comfort level, so that you can participate whether technically savvy or not.

Resources to Participate in the ILP Wikipedia Editathon:

Start Here: Participating in the ILP Wikipedia Editathon (includes ways to get started, jobs that you can take on, the purpose for each job, and our strategy to adding new wikipedia pages)
Wiki Article Prep - add ideas for future Wiki Articles here, and begin to compile the details for that article and research to support its notability
ILP Community Wikis Underway - share the Wiki Articles that you are working on here, so that we don't double up on the work

More to come. This is just a start!

Thanks for your contributions!

Meet Henry Jake Foreman, a 2023 Interledger Micro Grantee

Erica Hargreave — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 01:14:30 +0000

I am thrilled to introduce you to one last micro grantee who will be joining us at the 2023 Interledger Summit to learn more about the Interledger Protocol, Foundation, and our broader community; and discover the work we are doing to build new pathways to financial equity and inclusion. Please join me in welcoming Henry Jake Foreman who will be joining us to learn more about the Interledger ecosystem for his work with Karuna Colectiva, the National Congress of American Indians' Indian Country Digital Trainers program, and New Mexico Community Capital.

Jake Foreman M.C.R.P. (Absentee Shawnee) is a specialist in facilitation, development, and implementation of engaging learning experiences for students of all ages and has created a variety of curricula around education, health, and entrepreneurship. He is the founder of Karuna Colectiva, a social enterprise that delivers the principles of engagement, innovation, and application through mentorship, bicycling, and cooperative economics. He is also the Program Director of New Mexico Community Capital, and manages the Business & Marketing Essentials course that is designed to help build a solid foundation to form and grow business ideas with a personal financial plan for success. Since 2019, Jake has been a part of the Indian Country Digital Trainers program with the National Congress of American Indians, and has recently become the first Grow With Google Digital Coach for Indigenous Communities. Indigenous methodologies and epistemologies guide his research approaches to working with youth trainers and communities to promote the health of our biosphere.

Jake's interests in approaching the 2023 Interledger Summit are around Digital Inclusion, Equity, Financial Inclusion, Creator Economy, Web Monetization, Open Payments, Standardization, Partnering for Growth, Leveraging Donors and Investors, and Interoperability.

He is hoping to meet developers, creatives, and entrepreneurs.

Meet Art Proctor, a 2023 Interledger Micro Grantee

Erica Hargreave — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 18:21:03 +0000

I am happy to introduce you to another micro grantee who will be joining us at the 2023 Interledger Summit to learn more about the Interledger Protocol, Foundation, and our broader community; and discover the work we are doing to build new pathways to financial equity and inclusion. Please join me in welcoming @artproctor who will be joining us to learn more about the Interledger ecosystem for his work with Indigitech Destiny, other Indigenous initiatives, and potential future work with disabilities initiatives within Indigenous communities.

"Kwe' Ni'n Teluisi, my name is Art Proctor. I am an Afro-Indigenous, non-status individual of Black Scotian Mik’maq heritage. I'm a neurodiverse advocate for Indigenomics, a Tech Steward, Entertainment Technologist, Artist, Activist, and Community Builder. I'm based out of Treaty 7 in Alberta, residing in Moh’kinstsis, which is Calgary. My roots connect me to Mi'gma'gi in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the Caribbean.

I'm a seasoned international arts and corporate management professional, a digital transformation analyst, an award-recognized veteran in arts and creative industries, a start-up survivor, and a social enterprise advocate. I am an outspoken cultural catalyst and a socio-political unwilling prophet and futurist.

Currently, my attention is directed towards social justice and data sovereignty, educational technology, and digital and financial literacy. I'm specifically committed to supporting underrepresented and underserved First Nations and racialized individuals on Turtle Island.

I serve as an ad-hoc Digital Justice, Research, and Corporate Engagement consultant with the Indigenous Friends Association. Additionally, I'm an advisor and committee member of several organizations, including the Digital Governance Council of Canada, Rainforest Alberta Innovation Community, IncluCity, Indian Resource Council, and Aboriginal Training Services.

I'm the founder of the Indigitech Destiny Symposium, an annual event held in association with Innovation Week Calgary from November 15th to 23rd. This event spotlights Indigenous Professionals in Tech, Innovation, and Creative Industries. Our long-term goal is to create a nonprofit sharing circle of resources and establish a community-led Indigenous Innovation Hub, Education, and Wellness Centre. Our aspiration is to become the premier international Indigenous Innovation, Technology, and Creative Industries conference within five years.

I'm currently in the process of exploring and partnering with local and national organizations on a multi-pronged initiative that addresses digital and financial literacy. We're developing an educational open learning curriculum tailored to assist IBPOC individuals with varying levels of neurodiversity, physical, and hearing challenges. The platform offers training and exposure in Coding, Fintech, Art/Music/Dance Therapy, Gaming, and Film.

Interestingly, I'll be applying the insights and experiences from the ILP Summit in real time at the Indigitech Destiny Event. I've also been invited to share my experiences on the Rainforest Alberta LWOL hybrid podcast, discussing the ILP Summit, Social Finance, and Indigitech Digital Transformation.

I'm looking forward to connecting and collaborating, as my favourite pastime is to brainstorm and strategize towards a world characterized by total and complete ethical world domination."

Art's Professional and / or Community affiliation, include:

Indigitech Destiny Institute
Indigi-X
IPAC
Indigenous Friends Association
I.A.T.S.E Local 212, 210
VRARA Alberta
Digital Alberta
Rainforest Alberta Innovation Ecosystem
Creatives Empowered
Centre for Social Innovation YYC
IncluCity Usability Testing
Civic Tech YYC
Canadian Blockchain Consortium
Dyslexic Disruptors

Art's interests in approaching the 2023 Interledger Summit are around Community Building for Social Transformation, Accessibility, Equity, Financial Inclusion and Freedom, Creator Economy, Web Monetization, Open Payments, Standardization, Partnering for Growth, Leveraging Donors and Investors, Interoperability, and Subscription Services.

He is hoping to meet Social Changemakers, Entrepreneurs, Community Builders, Donors and Funders, and Disruptors.

Meet Neha Arora, a 2023 Interledger Micro Grantee

Erica Hargreave — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 16:31:20 +0000

I am pleased to introduce you to another micro grantee who will be joining us at the 2023 Interledger Summit to learn more about the Interledger Protocol, Foundation, and our broader community; and discover the work we are doing to build new pathways to financial equity and inclusion. Please join me in welcoming @nehaarora who will be joining us to learn more about the Interledger ecosystem for her work in disabilities communities and with Planet Abled.

Neha Arora is the founder of Planet Abled, a globally recognised travel brand promoting inclusive travel for persons with disabilities and the elderly. Her 39 years of experience of knowing her parents' needs (her father is blind and her mother is a wheelchair user), gives her a unique perspective into the needs of people with disabilities, as she creates a Planet more Abled. Over the years, Planet Abled has been a service provider, destination consultant, and ecosystem builder for disabled travellers. Planet Abled’s core business is mainstreaming accessibility into the tourism frameworks, practices, and market opportunities to enable growth, scale, and customer-centric approach and have an amplified positive impact travellers.

Neha is a recipient of the Most Influential Leaders in the Tourism Industry Award at the Global MICE & Luxury Travel Conference; and the Exceptional Women of Excellence Award at the Women Economic Forum.

She is also a keynote speaker at global platforms like ITB Berlin, Global Sustainable Tourism Council, World Tourism Forum Lucerne, International Congresson Tourism and Technology in Diversity in Malaga, Spain, TiECON, Zero Project Vienna, TEDx, Women Economic Forum, and various acclaimed platforms.

Neha's interests in approaching the 2023 Interledger Summit are around community building for social transformation, accessibility, equity, financial inclusion and freedom, creator economy, Web Monetization, open payments, standardization, partnering for growth, leveraging donors and investors, interoperability, and subscription services.

She is hoping to meet social changemakers, entrepreneurs, community builders, donors and funders, and disruptors at the 2023 Interledger Summit.

Meet Tinthi Tembo, a 2023 Interledger Micro Grantee

Erica Hargreave — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 16:15:38 +0000

As we get set to embark for the 2023 Interledger Summit, I wanted to begin to introduce you to some of our micro grantees, who will be joining us at the Summit to learn more about the Interledger Protocol, Foundation, and our broader community; and discover the work we are doing to build new pathways to financial equity and inclusion. Please join me in welcoming Tinthi Tembo who will be joining us to learn more about the Interledger ecosystem for her work with Indigenomics and the Black & Indigenous People of Colour Creative Association (BIPOC-CA).

Chithinthi Tembo is of bi-cultural heritage from Zimbabwe and Zambia. She is a film director and producer, social justice advocate, and lead systems designer for the Indigenomics Institute. Additionally, she is also a Co-Founder and Director for BIPOC-CA in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Tinthi's interests in approaching the 2023 Interledger Summit are around universal access to open source systems, which are inclusive of all peoples.

What / Who in Our Community is Missing from Wikipedia? Prepping for the Wikipedia Editathon at the Interledger Summit

Erica Hargreave — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 17:54:44 +0000

As some of you may recall, I have previously written about discovering that much of the Interledger community is missing from Wikipedia. To begin to resolve this, as a part of the Hackathon at the 2023 Interledger Summit, we will be hosting a Wikipedia Editathon.

Leading up to the Summit, I will be sharing some guides to how people can participate in the Wikipedia Editathon, both at the Summit and from afar, including an introduction to editing Wikipedia pages and adding new pages to Wikipedia, as well as a best practices guide to doing so.

First though, in preparing, I could use everyones help in identifying what and who from our community is missing from Wikipedia and begin to compile information on them to add to Wikipedia. To do that, please:

add to this editable Google spreadsheet with technology, people, events, organizations and platforms from our community that you wish to see added to Wikipedia;
as you can't add yourself and your own projects directly to Wikipedia, please don't be shy about adding your names and projects on the spreadsheet, so someone else can add those for you;
fill in as many details on the spreadsheet as possible, as that will help those participating in the editathon on the day; and
if you see columns that should be added to this spreadsheet, please add them.

Thanks so much!

Outreach and Community Building - Part 3 of my Ambassadorship Interim Report

Erica Hargreave — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 08:27:51 +0000

As in many creative communities, one of the things our community often struggles with is the outreach and community building side of their projects. So much focus goes into the build, that by the time it’s done, they are either out of funds, energy, time, or at a loss on where to start with doing outreach and community building around what they’ve created.

The reality is that we need both the build and outreach / community building around that build to be successful in reaching broader communities with everything that we’ve been creating in the Interledger ecosystem. We all need to be a part of that outreach and community building, as we are all connected to different communities that trust us.

The Field of Dreams notion of “build it and they will come” is an illusion. Rather it should be “build it, go out and find your desired niche community, engage that community, and then they will come.”

Throughout my Ambassadorship, I have been strategising on this Outreach and Community Building piece in a few different ways.

Talks / Panels

One approach was addressing this subject head on at the 2022 Summit with a panel on Community Building for Innovation and Sustainability with Ayesha, Lawil, Tabi Bonney of Itadi Coffee and Skincare, and Karl Carter of Snake Nation.

Ayesha and Julaire also hosted a wonderful Open Payment Huddle on Building a Niche Audience with Imani K Brown and Rashon A. Massey, prior to the 2022 Summit, which you can watch by clicking on the link above.

Community Idea Sharing

In continuing these dialogues for past, current, and future grantees and community members, I think we would also benefit from a space where we as a community can share ideas that are working well for us in our outreach and community building efforts, share resources, and ask each other questions and for advice on. While certainly the Interledger Community Forem provides such a space, I think having a less formal and involved, quick question space for these sorts of conversations may be beneficial. As such, I have set up an Outreach and Community Building Channel on the Interledger Slack geared towards such conversations. As I know there are others in our community who have been tackling this, including @gfam, @micopeia, Free Music Archive, Elementari and others, I do hope you will consider sharing what is working for you there.

Other ideas for Outreach and Community Building that have come up throughout my Ambassadorship include:

1) Digital Course Building

A wise woman in our community, if memory serves me correctly - Maria Bustillos, suggested that I start building out digital courses on Web Monetization on more mainstream course sharing sites like Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare … etc. While this was not something I had time to do during my Ambassadorship, I think this is a great idea for when there are new pathways for Web Monetizing digital assets and other course materials around the Interledger Protocol.

2) Wikipedia Project

Wikipedia helps improve discoverability on the internet, adding perceived credibility to organizations, movements, technologies, and individuals with mainstream internet users. Yet in searching Wikipedia to see what and who in the Interledger community are represented there, you will find very few entries involving aspects of our Interledger community. Added to this there is also a recognized gender bias and racial bias on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is trying to address these biases through WikiProjects and events like Wikimania, hosting edit-a-thons to build more diverse representation across Wikipedia. As I suggested in an earlier post this year, I would love to take action as a community to improve upon the diverse representation across Wikipedia and build up our own community there by beginning a WikiProject and hosting edit-a-thons of our own.

3) Sharing Conference Speaking Opportunities

@muraldouglas_62 gave me the idea, through a query to Chris, to begin building out a spreadsheet of conferences and festivals that people in our community might wish to be aware of to pitch sessions to on things related to Interledger. Here’s a copy of the editable conference spreadsheet for the broader Interledger Community to use and add to.

While not on the topic of outreach and community building, I also created editable spreadsheet of Surveys Conducted by our Community to help Nicole Kang out. Sharing it here, in case it is helpful to others among you.

4) Hosting Events

I was honoured to have @vineel include me in his strategising around creating some microgrants to help members of our community to host events to further share the Interledger Protocol with their communities. I think this is a great idea that he has been building.

5) Mastodon

As we’ve seen the rise of a number of concerning elements on Twitter over the past year, I, along with @jeremiahlee, began advocating for the Interledger Foundation to join Mastodon. Aside from both Jeremiah’s and my concerns over what is happening on Twitter (now X), Mastodon makes sense for Interledger as it has been built to address a number of similar concerns around decentralisation and the exploitation of users and their data that members of the Interledger Community have expressed over the years. As such Mastodon has attracted a community that shares similar values to the Interledger community around open source, inclusion and accessibility. Mastodon is built on open source technology and has been attracting an early adopter community, interested in social good movements. This is a platform rich in the technologists, educators, and media that our community wishes to reach. In fact, a number of organisations that Interledger has been involved with, along with those we’ve been speaking to are already there, including Mozilla, Creative Commons, and the OEGlobal community.

Jeremiah has launched an Interledger Mastodon Instance this summer and talked about some of what he’s been working on around Mastodon in June’s Open Payment Huddle.

September’s Open Payment Huddle will continue this conversation on growing within the Fediverse with Jeremiah, @benjaminbellamy and @yassinedoghri (of Castopod fame), and myself.

My Outreach and Community Building Focus

In terms of my own Outreach and Community Building throughout this Ambassadorship, my main goal has been to do more outreach to Indigenous and Disabilities Communities.

Why the Indigenous and Disabilities Communities?

Both Indigenous and Disabilities communities have been met historically with oppression and damaging stereotypes that members of these communities continue to work to change today. Added to this, both the indigenous and disabilities communities often find themselves in secluded and remote situations without the same access to work opportunities. In the case of indigenous communities this may be due to wishing to live on their traditional lands, dealing with disabilities resulting from genocide, having loved ones that need caring for at home, or discrimination. In the case of people with disabilities, this may be due to being limited in the work that they can accept as a result of their disabilities and the accessibility of the work to them, their degree of mobility, their ability to work regular days outside the home, and how others perceive their abilities and value as a result of their disabilities. This can place both of these communities in financially vulnerable situations. Being able to earn through digital avenues presents new possibilities for both of these communities, particularly for those whose available working hours are limited.

In exploring the statistics around this, the 2020 Canadian National Advisory Council Report on Poverty shows both Indigenous people and people with disabilities among those at greatest risk of poverty in Canada.

This is echoed by a 2020 International Labour Organization report that found the indigenous peoples are still more likely to be poor and face particular hardships in the world of work. According to Amnesty International, Indigenous peoples make 15% of the world’s extreme poor, due to discrimination.

The International Labour Organization also found that, “unemployment among the persons with disabilities is as high as 80 per cent in some countries. Often employers assume that persons with disabilities are unable to work.” A 2003 study by Rutgers University found that “one-third of the US employers surveyed said that persons with disabilities cannot effectively perform the required job tasks. The second most common reason given for not hiring persons with disabilities was the fear of costly special facilities.” (Dixon, Kruse, Van Horn, 2003) In this study conducted by the Western Michigan University, it was found that “The economic self-sufficiency and independence of people with disabilities depend largely on their capacity to maintain financial stability. As a group, such individuals have among the highest poverty rates, lowest educational levels, lowest average incomes, and highest out-of-pocket expenses of all population groups. Any substantial shock to the financial stability of people with disabilities can threaten their access to necessary housing, nutrition, medical care, and other resources, the absence of which may result in further vulnerability and possible poverty.” The World Bank states that “Barriers to full social and economic inclusion of persons with disabilities include inaccessible physical environments and transportation, the unavailability of assistive devices and technologies, non-adapted means of communication, gaps in service delivery, and discriminatory prejudice and stigma in society.” In contrast to ableist fears and stigmas, this US study by Darlene Unger shows that “Companies report that employees with disabilities have better retention rates, reducing the high cost of turnover.” This is further supported by other American surveys that reveal that after one year of employment, the retention rate of persons with disabilities is 85 per cent. Added to this the US 1990 national census revealed that persons with disabilities have a higher rate of self-employment and small business experience (12.2 per cent) than persons without disabilities (7.8 per cent).

The Interledger Protocol and Web Monetization Standard presents new opportunities for both of these communities to earn in a way that could bring hope, new growth, and innovative ideas from people who are used to having to adapt and problem solve to survive. But in order to do that, they need to be introduced to and to learn about the technologies, community, and opportunities in a way that feels safe to them from people that they trust.

Outreach to Indigenous and Disabilities Communities

Aside from attending events and speaking with individuals in these two communities directly about Interledger, I’ve also been reaching out to the broader indigenous and disabilities communities by sharing the various Interledger grants available in digital niche communities designed for each of these groups. With this (and by now what must seem like an obsession for spreadsheets), I have been creating spreadsheets of the community groups and forums where these communities can be more broadly reached. If these or the open education or media community spreadsheets I have been creating would be of interest or use to any of you, please let me know, and I can create copies for you.

Additionally, I have been brainstorming on microgrants for these two communities to help introduce them to and immerse them in the Interledger technologies.

Initial Microgrant Idea Around the Web Monetization Standard

Initially, I was going to create two committees - one with members of indigenous communities and one with members of disabilities communities to help create two different microgrants for their respective communities. The general idea for each of these microgrants was to invite members of each community to create and Web Monetize digital assets, and then host tipping galleries / parties to spotlight the Web Monetized assets that were created as a part of the microgrants.

The goals being to:

introduce the Web Monetization Standard to these communities,
encourage them to begin to Web Monetize their digital assets, and
invite their communities to celebrate their Web Monetized digital assets, while also introducing them to the Web Monetization Standard.

While I wasn’t able to follow through with these microgrants, due to Coil closing, I do still think this is a good idea, when there are new pathways to Web Monetizing your digital assets.

2023 Summit Microgrants

As my initial idea for microgrants wouldn’t work, Chris suggested creating a microgrant to bring a small cohort of people from indigenous and disabilities communities to the Summit to introduce them to the ideas, technology, and community in the Interledger ecosystem. I love this idea, which we are just about to launch from my Ambassador slush funds and the remainder of Lawil’s Ambassador slush fund.

If you have a suggestion of a good candidate for this microgrant, please let me know. We should be able to bring 5 people on this microgrant.

Creating a More Accessible Community

With building our community out further into disabilities communities, there are new opportunities for our community to learn as a whole about accessibility. While there are definite best practices with digital accessibility, it is important to remember that there is no one path, fix all solution.

As an example, one of my colleagues in my Masters and I both have post concussion syndrome, which has been problematic for us in reading academic papers online. This aggravated both of our post concussion syndrome symptoms. For the other student, screen readers were a solution to this issue. For me, screen readers did not work, and in fact further aggravated my symptoms. Instead for me the solution was natural voice readings of the materials. This is much of what has inspired Lori Yearwood and I to begin to have the authors on our digital magazines record audio readings of their articles.

As triggers for an individual’s symptoms getting aggravated and solutions for accessibility are particular to the individual, it is important to create an environment in which people can share their needs for a healthy, accessible work environment, when they feel they need to. With that, it is also important to allow them to do that in a way that feels safe for them and respect what they are sharing with you.

To give you an idea of the importance of this, I know for me, with my post car accident disabilities, this takes trust in sharing, and if I am sharing what I require it is because I need to, as my symptoms are being triggered. I have to constantly work at managing my pain to be able to work and live life in general, and I have a team of medical professionals that help me with that. For me part of that is ensuring I am in healthy work environments in which my needs are respected. If my requests for what I need are not met in a positive way, my symptoms get out of control and aggravated for months, further limiting how much I am able to do. That is not something anyone deserves.

People with disabilities can be some of the most loyal advocates, allies and employees for these reasons, if you create a healthy work environment for them, as they understand the value and importance of that.

For these reasons, I love that there were talks like this one that Erin Brown gave on The 5Ps of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the 2022 Summit:

I also greatly appreciated Sharon Wang for inviting me to take part in her panel with Victoria Coker of Black Web Fest, Andrés Arauz of People's Clearinghouse and Karl Carter of Snake Nation on Broadening Financial Inclusion…what does that mean? at the 2022 Summit.

Other Outreach

Other outreach I have been doing over my Ambassadorship includes to natural fit communities with a focus on building digital assets, like the open education communities (such as OEGlobal) and media and journalism communities (like TMAC). Along with making introductions and connections into other education programs, like the Master of Digital Media Program at the Centre for Digital Media.

I also helped Kokayi in his goal to reach out to more people in the Middle East, including Lindsay Margenau at the Canadian Consulate in Dubai, Fady Ramzy at the American University in Cairo, and Raghda El Halawany with MasterPeace in Egypt. I need to particularly thank Lindsay, as she took the time to talk to Chris and Ginny to explain how business works in Dubai, and to share her thoughts on pathways into that market.

Closing Thoughts

I love seeing how our community builds together and supports one another. In what I’ve shared here, I think there are a lot more opportunities for doing that and to helping to share what our community is building more broadly, from:

building mini-courses on elements of our ecosystem on mainstream learning platforms,
sharing ideas and troubleshooting with one another over Slack discussions,
building our community out on wikipedia,
sharing conference speaking opportunities,
hosting events,
building in the Fediverse,
establishing microgrants and hosting tipping parties,
sharing niche community spaces for outreach,
to further building our community to be more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities with building upon our community’s knowledge of what that means and how to be truly accessible.

Your Thoughts and Ideas?

I would love to hear your thoughts on other ways of further improving upon our outreach and community building in the comments below.

Thanks for reading and joining me on this series of posts exploring what I’ve been working on throughout my Ambassadorship.

Building Educational Assets, and Troubleshooting Pathways to Share Those Assets - Part 2 of my Ambassadorship Interim Report

Erica Hargreave — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 23:58:15 +0000

In getting set to share some of the educational resources that I intended on creating and / or editing as a part of this Ambassadorship (ie.tutorials on the different creative platforms enabled for Web Monetization and an edited, condensed version of the live, studio audience broadcast recording of the 'Web Monetized at MozFest' Podcast that we recorded at MozFest 2022), it was decided that these would be shared from Interledger itself (as opposed to StoryToGo). While I was happy with this, it posed a few new challenges, as the Interledger Foundation was not properly set up on YouTube or with a podcasting client with Web Monetization enabled.

YouTube

As I had Bjorn building the first of the video tutorials of Web Monetization enabled content creation platforms on WIPS.art, I addressed YouTube first. There was an old Interledger Protocol YouTube Channel, but no one had access to it and the temporary YouTube channel had some unexpected issues, due to some changes on YouTube that limited the ability for multi-users to effectively manage the account. The latter was an issue, as it limited full management to one person who did not have the time to take on that task, and posed an issue should that person ever decide to move on to something else.

With some patience from @chrislarry, @laka, and @erikad, we found and set up a solution that would allow for a YouTube account to be set up from the Interledger Foundation with multiple managers with the privileges to effectively build and manage the channel.

While there is still work to be done on this channel, some of the initial things I did, in consultation with @vineel, include:

creating an aesthetically pleasing, branded look to the channel;
adding Interledger’s bio, links, and social media feeds to the channel;
searching for Interledger related videos on YouTube to create playlists in order to highlight the broader Interledger community on the channel’s homepage;
searching for and following members of the broader Interledger community on YouTube;
adding grantees to our featured channels; and
organizing playlists on the channel’s homepage to spotlight Interledger Community videos and channels.

Also to begin to build community to the channel, I engaged with some past Interledger related videos on YouTube from the Interledger Channel and shared a community post on the new channel.

Next, as it is better with YouTube’s algorithm to stagger videos out over times, as oppose to doing large video dumps, I created a content sharing google doc, so we could make sure multiple videos were not all added on the same day, with multiple posters.

Other best practices for YouTube that I shared as part of setting up the channel included:

properly titling videos with descriptive keywords;
writing full and complete meta descriptions on videos, including:

reiterating the main keywords in the first paragraph,
writing the full names of the people in the video,
chaptering the videos with time markers,
sharing links to organisations, platforms, tools, and / or people highlighted in the videos, and
adding a closing signature with information on the Interledger Foundation and Community and how to engage with them at the end of each video.

adding appropriate long tail tags to the videos;
filling in the advanced settings in uploading the videos;
adding properly sized, custom thumbnails to the videos;
proofreading and editing the closed captioning transcript on the videos; and
doing your keyword research on the videos to tailor the title and meta description for SEO when time permits.

Occasionally when I have the time, I fine tune some of these things on the channel.

As time goes on, the channel would benefit from:

adding new Interledger Community videos (from other channels) to the playlists;
doing the keyword research on all the videos and fine tuning their titles and meta descriptions;
proofreading and editing the auto transcripts; and
adding edited versions of Open Payment Huddles to the channel.

I also think there is an opportunity with YouTube Shorts on the channel, in taking poignant short excerpts from Community Calls, Open Payment Huddles, and talks and interviews from the Summit to share as shorts. Currently these shorts, if properly titled are getting a lot of SEO attention from YouTube and Google.

Your Thoughts and Ideas

If you have other suggestions for the channel, please share them in the comments below.

With the tutorial videos that I was supporting young people in creating, we got the first one up from Bjorn Yearwood on WIPS.art.

I had lined up some other young people to create tutorials on other Web Monetized enabled content creation platforms. Unfortunately, when worked with their school schedules coincided with when Coil went down. I have pondered whether to continue working on those tutorials or wait until Web Monetization is back up and running. Waiting makes more sense, so that Web Monetizing your digital assets on the platform can be made part of the tutorial, as Bjorn did in the WIPS.art video.

Castopod

With the ‘Web Monetized at MozFest’ podcast, I was stubbornly determined to find avenues to share this podcast that were Web Monetized to further highlight pathways to Web Monetizing your digital assets.

Initially I was thinking Free Music Archives as they’d begun to share their own podcast there. But as Free Music Archive doesn’t syndicate their content, that still meant sharing the podcast to other platforms that were geared to podcast listeners. After searching the community Forem for other Web Monetized podcasting solutions and asking around for any potential solutions, I decided to do one last internet search for Web Monetization enabled podcasting platforms, and I found Castopod!

This is one of those moments in life where I am grateful for my determinedness in finding an alternate solutions, as Castopod is an absolute gift to podcasters. I will do up a proper guide to Castopod at a later date, but for now, it is basically a WordPress-like management system for podcasters, allowing them to build a website around their podcasts.

Some of features of Castopod that I love, include:

hosting multiple shows from a single Castopod instance;
ability to give backend access to multiple users with varying privileges depending on their needs and the role that they are taking on;
ability to add a payment pointer to Web Monetize your podcast;
syndicating your show across podcasting platforms; and
prompting you to consider other methods for monetising your podcast.

Added to this the team behind Castopod, of Benjamin Bellamy and @yassinedoghri, are incredibly gracious and helpful. In experimenting and setting up my first self-hosted Castopod instance for Roamancing’s podcasts, I ran into some issues for which Yassine kindly tried to help me troubleshoot through their discord, and when the troubleshooting was not enough due to a server issue, they set me up with their Castopod hosting. Through my conversations with Yassine, I discovered that even though they’d discovered the Web Monetization Standard, and had enabled it on Castopod, they were not familiar with the Interledger Foundation or broader Interledger community. Thanks to this being before the 2022 Summit, I suggested they apply for a travel grant and submit a talk, which they did, meaning a short while later I enjoyed meeting them in person!

Another exciting element to Castopod is it is a part of the Fediverse, so when @jeremiahlee and I began encouraging the Interledger Foundation to join the Fediverse last Autumn, and began educating them on it, it was not just Mastodon that we were nudging them towards, but Castopod too.

While I’ve explained what Interledger needs to do to set up a Castopod instance, this has been a slow easing into the Fediverse, so the Foundation is still working towards their Castopod instance, delaying the sharing of the edited version of the ‘Web Monetization at MozFest’ podcast. With the changes happening in the community, I am also waiting to hear whether or not we are still going to be calling this ‘Web Monetization’ or ‘Browser Payments’ or ‘Open Payments’ or something else, as if the name changes, I’d change the name of the podcast to match.

Aside from the ‘Web Monetized at MozFest’ podcast, there are other exciting opportunities for the Interledger Foundation and other members of our community with Castopod. Take our Roamancing podcasting experiment as an example. As it is easy to set up multiple podcasts on a Castopod instance, that then syndicates your shows for you across the web, we’ve created three podcasts this last year from Roamancing.

Roamancing Reads
Culture Travels
My Ukrainian Heritage

Roamancing Reads is a project that Lori Yearwood and I have long intended to do, in which Roamancing authors record an audio reading of their articles. Our intent with this is to improve accessibility on our digital magazine. We know that we could add a screen reader on our site for this, but the reality is that screen readers actually aggravate my symptoms with my post concussion syndrome; whereas natural voice audio readings make things more accessible for me. This has the added benefit of also exposing new audiences to our articles on Roamancing.com. Best of all though, our authors enjoy creating these audio readings and they allow readers to hear the author reading the article, giving the reader more of a connection to the author, and it means the author earns a bit of extra money for creating the audio recordings to accompany their articles.

Culture Travels is our long form travel and culture podcast in which friends from around the world teach us to create something from their culture, while we chat about history, language, local food … etc. We recently won 2nd place for the Nathan Fong Memorial Award for our 3rd episode with Manami and Maya Calvo on Making Mochi and Exploring Japanese Canadian Culture. The judges highlighted how they liked how we shared this story in different ways in the accompanying article with audio, video and the written article, making it more accessible for the reader to consume in a manner that suited them.

Our Culture Travels Podcast Won 2nd Place for the 2022 Nathan Fong Memorial Award! - YouTube

Thrilled to share that the our third episode of our Culture Travels Podcast, 'Mochi Cooking Class', was just awarded 2nd Place for the 2022 Nathan Fong Memor...

youtube.com

Finally, My Ukrainian Heritage is a series of then and now diary entries in which one of our writers, writing under a nom de plume, shares her family’s stories of fleeing persecution in Russia to Ukraine, and then immigrating to Canada, while discussing the scary similarities to what is happening to Ukraine since Russia declared war on them in 2022. This podcast has recently been selected for the Baltimore Next Media WebFest.

I am under no illusion that these podcasts are perfect. There are many ways I wish to improve them over time, but by pushing forward and beginning, we have already gained attention and an award towards them, but more importantly through the professional recognition that the award and screening selection represents, I have made it possible for three of our newer storytellers - Manami Calvo, Maya Calvo (12 at the time of recording), and Anne Webster - to be recognised professionally as storytellers. This has helped build their confidence, made them eligible to apply for membership in the Canada Council for the Arts, and has helped to add to their credentials for future projects that we’ve been developing together. All because we began and put what we created out there.

Closing Thoughts

While the intended educational resources are on hold until we have pathways for Web Monetizing again, there are a lot of positive solutions for hosting and sharing digital assets that were built in preparation for these, which I believe hold many potential possibilities for Interledger Foundation to gain more attention to the Interledger Protocol, Web Monetization Standard, and the broader Interledger Community:

from fine tuning the videos published to the Interledger YouTube Channel for SEO;
to taking advantage of the opportunity that YouTube shorts offers;
to syndicating podcasts across the internet.

Your Thoughts and Ideas

If this journey has sparked ideas in you, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Thanks for reading. Tune in for Part 3 of my Ambassadorship Interim Report next on Outreach and Community Building.

Outreach and Education with Tipping Galleries and Parties - Part 1 of my Ambassadorship Interim Report

Erica Hargreave — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 04:49:45 +0000

Hello Everyone,

This is a long overdue checkin on what I have been working on with my Ambassadorship.

My Original Goals

As some of you might remember when I set out, my goals were to:

experiment with tipping galleries and parties as a way of engaging people around the Web Monetization Standard, as well as to do outreach and education around the Web Monetization Standard;
do outreach and education on Interledger and the Web Monetization Standard with Indigenous Communities and with Disability Communities; and
do outreach and education on the Web Monetization Standard with communities of digital creatives, media, and creators of open educational materials, who can easily Web Monetize their pre-existing digital assets, and make this a part of their practice with their future digital assets.

As a part of this I was going to:

host tipping galleries and parties, both to do outreach and education around the Web Monetization Standard and to celebrate and connect our community around our current Web Monetized works and platforms;
work with some young people to experiment with and create tutorials on the different creative platforms enabled for Web Monetization; and
edit and reshare a condensed version of the live, studio audience broadcast recording of the 'Web Monetized at MozFest' Podcast that we recorded at MozFest 2022.

The Journey

True to typical form for me, I set out on what I thought was a direct path of set goals and deliverables, but instead became a meandering journey of discoveries, lessons, experiments, research, and lending a helping hand to others in the Interledger community. Much in the fashion that the 10-year-old me would walk home from school or my cat takes a wander through the neighbourhood, this became an epic journey, which is why I am still working on it. There are a couple of pieces I still want to address in a more meaningful way, and aside from the side projects that I have helped with throughout this Ambassadorship that took time, I was also met with a few challenges of my own this past year.

Part 1 : Tipping Galleries and Parties

The Beginning

This journey began, thanks to a tipping feature that Coil was testing out and a goal of the Interledger Foundation to experiment with this tipping feature at MozFest, as way of doing outreach and education at the festival around Interledger and the Web Monetization Standard.

To encourage people to begin to experiment with Web Monetizing their digital assets, Coil gifted everyone at the festival a 6-month prepaid Coil membership, along with $10 US of prepaid tips. The initial idea was to introduce the presenters to the Web Monetization Standard, so that they could Web Monetize digital assets associated with their MozFest session, making it possible for attendees to tip the presenters, if they desired with their tips from Coil. This ended up evolving into the Grand Web Monetization Experiment in which asynchronous and synchronous options were created to introduce MozFest attendees to the Web Monetization Standard. Festival goers were invited to Web Monetize their digital assets and have them shared in the 'Web Monetized at MozFest Gallery', so that others could peruse their work and spend their Coil tips as a way of celebrating that work.

As is the fashion with gallery showings, we decided to host a party in the gallery to attract more attention to it. This was fun, as it brought new and old friends together from our community and from MozFest's community, introduced them to a vast array of interesting work (including a Treasure Hunt created by @meghan, @hessel and the Free Music Archive team and Exquisite Garden created by @tani and the Mysilio team specifically for MozFest) and interesting people, as well as for many, new-for-them ways of Web Monetizing their digital assets (including with Free Music Archive, Mural, wips.art and Fliptoons from our first MozFest Tipping Gallery and later Hyperaudio at our second MozFest Tipping Gallery). One of the Tipping Galleries / Parties was hosted during the main festival in March, and the other was hosted at the end of the extended festival in June.

Further Tipping Parties and Galleries

To introduce the concept of tipping galleries and parties as a form of outreach and education to our broader Interledger community, and allow them to experiment with the tipping feature that Coil was testing, I built a virtual gallery in Spatial to host a summer tipping party for our community and others interested. This was again made possible thanks to Coil again gifting all attendees with a tipping account with $10 US in prepaid tips.

To date, this has been my favourite gallery, as it visually displayed the community's work in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and was fun to 'walk' around and explore the gallery space and people's work. I see the potential in using a gallery space like this to showcase the community's work long term with this or a bigger gallery space, changing it up to host different themes of work within the community, grant cohorts, or time periods.

This lead to ideas for other tipping galleries and parties in our community, including for:

Unfortunately, only Black Web Fest was ready for an actual tipping party in the Autumn of 2022; and by the time Pipe Web Monetization was ready technology wise and Sonar Muse was ready launch wise, Coil had announced their closure.

There was also talk and interest for tipping galleries and parties:

to spotlight Web Monetized assets and connect people to Web Monetized platforms on the African continent;
to spotlight Web Monetized audio assets and connect people to different Web Monetized audio platforms;
to spotlight and connect people to different Web Monetized social media platforms;
to host a Web Monetization workshop and follow up tipping gallery and party with the Open Education Global (OEGlobal) community, as a community experiment in exploring and provoking conversations around sustainable funding models for open educational resources;
to host a Web Monetization workshop and follow up tipping gallery and party with the Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC) to introduce these journalists to the Web Monetization Standard and create an incentive for them to begin to Web Monetize their digital assets; and
to celebrate the digital assets created as a part of two Web Monetization Microgrants that I was planning to create for the Indigenous Community and the Disability Community through my Ambassadorship project fund.

My Hopes for Future Galleries

These tipping galleries and parties created a great way to work with different communities, creating incentives and actionable steps, not only for those being introduced to the Web Monetization Standard to learn, but also to act on what they learn. With the parties themselves, they created a supportive atmosphere within the communities, encouraging the. communities to discover each other's work, and to celebrate and support one another.

I would love to see the possibility for the tipping galleries and parties to continue once we have new pathways for Web Monetization with tipping options. I'd encourage that we begin that with some of the entities that we were getting set to host tipping galleries and parties with, when Coil closed. Specifically I am thinking about:

Pipe Web Monetization
@sonarmuse
OE Global
TMAC

My hope is that the above entities will just be a start, as this is a great incentive to encourage people to Web Monetize their work in a timely fashion.

Setting Up Web Monetization Tipping Galleries and Parties

Logistically, in setting up these galleries, you need a way on whatever platform you host the gallery and / or party, to link to the Web Monetized assets, so that attendees are able to visit the digital asset directly in order to tip the digital asset. The links to the Web Monetized digital assets should open in a new tab, so as not to take the attendees out of the tipping gallery. Aesthetically, it is also pleasing to have an image associated with each asset in the gallery. With these galleries, while most people attended during the scheduled party, others did enjoy and benefit from the ability to peruse them at their leisure, on their own time.

Lessons Learned for Future Tipping Galleries and Parties

Some other things to keep in mind for future Web Monetization tipping galleries and parties, that we learned from our early galleries and parties:

1) Pick the tipping gallery / party venue to suit the host of the event and their community.

For MozFest, as their festival spaces included Slack, Spatial Chat, and Mozilla Hubs, it made sense to host the gallery and party in one of those spaces. Due to time constraints and people submitting Web Monetized assets right up until the start of the event, I focused on what was feasible within the time constraints, which was building the tipping gallery and party space in Spatial Chat. This worked well, and I was told by @gunnar that it helped inspire Gradual's Emergent Encounter Greenhouse and Garden at MozFest 2023. You'll see a snippet of the Emergent Encounter Greenhouse below. Gunnar and Philo created two most beautiful and whimsical spaces for Emergent Encounters, which has inspired to play and create further with Spatial Chat.

Had I had more time available to me before the second MozFest tipping gallery and party, I would have built that second gallery in Mozilla Hubs as things built on that platform exist outside of the time constraints of the festival, allowing people to peruse the gallery after the festival is done.

With more time, that is what inspired our Interledger community tipping gallery and party in the summer of 2022. This gallery was built Spatial, and is my favourite build to date.

For Black Web Fest, their needs were different, as they needed a closed, invite only space, as some of their films could not be publicly displayed due to rules pertaining to the film festival circuit. As such, we used Hopin, as that is the platform their festival community was familiar with and felt comfortable with.

2) An educational plan is needed to teach people how to Web Monetize their work and to teach people how to tip projects. Preferably this should include both asynchronous and synchronous learning options.

At MozFest, the asynchronous learning resources we shared, included:

Web Monetization Standard and Coil tipping tutorials in the MozFest Slack and in the Interledger Community Forem
an email from Coil on how to sign up for Coil and use the tipping function

Synchronously, we:

offered a variety of MozFest sessions on the Web Monetization Standard
hosted a Web Monetization Education Space in Spatial Chat with drop-in office hours
shared an overview on how to tip at the beginning of the tipping party

With our Interledger community already knowing how to Web Monetize their digital assets, for the Interledger Community Tipping Gallery and Party in the summer of 2022, we simply shared an Interledger Community Forem post and email with an invitation to the event. This was followed by a second email to attendees who RSVPed with instructions on upgrading to a Coil experimental tipping account and how to tip. I also shared how to tip in the event welcome and checked in individually with many of the guests to see if they needed help in navigating how to tip the Web Monetized assets on display.

For Black Web Fest, I drafted an email for @victoriac to send out to her community inviting them to participate in a Web Monetized Tipping Screening Party and explaining how to Web Monetize their films. With this, my calendar was shared and the filmmakers were invited to book an individual coaching session on Web Monetizing their films, if they so desired. These coaching sessions had the added benefit of filmmakers Ivan and April Mbakop taking a broader interest in Interledger and attending the ILF Summit.

Anyone who signed up to attend the screening party was sent an email with instructions on signing up for their Coil tipping account and how to tip the films at the event. We further reviewed how to tip the films in our welcome to the screening party.

3) It needs to be clear that the host of the event should invite their community to the tipping party, in addition to the Interledger community being invited to the event.

4) @mariabustillos wisely suggested that when hosting the event in a gallery that requires a higher bandwidth, that we also create a lower bandwidth catalogue of the Web Monetized assets being showcased in the gallery. This accompanying catalogue could be created in the Interledger Community Forem or via a Google doc.

5) If the event involves a sponsor, like Coil providing the tipping accounts, then the needs of the sponsor in reaching a broader audience should be considered.

For instance, rather than hosting a tipping party to reward your early, invite-only beta testers, think in terms of a launch event with a broader community. This way the beta testers will also see a greater reward from the event, in the form of a larger number of people tipping.

Closing Thoughts

In summary, I hope that once there are new pathways to tipping through Web Monetization, that we see more Web Monetization tipping galleries and parties. This acts as a great way to educate new groups on what the Web Monetization Standard is and creates incentives for them in Web Monetizing their digital assets in a timely fashion. In addition it helps to spotlight and reward current Web Monetized assets, and connect the community around celebrating each other's work. As these are singular events, it is also a form of incentive that does not make a platform feel they constantly need to be rewarding their user base (as Cinnamon, gFam, and mg.social have at times faced) or that attracts in a user base that are mainly there for the rewards (as happened with mg.social's user base, once monthly incentives were offered).

Your Thoughts and Ideas on Tipping Galleries and Parties?

If you have ideas on how tipping galleries and parties could be used in the future, I'd love it if you'd share your ideas in the comments below.

More to come on my Interim Report in Part 2. Thanks for reading!

~ Erica

Spotlighting Our Interledger Community on YouTube

Erica Hargreave — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:10:30 +0000

Hello Everyone!

I've been busy building a new YouTube Channel to spotlight the Interledger Community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC10ftGi2L05uiggZSCwSYww/featured

Slowly adding Interledger related videos that our community has created to the playlists. If you have an Interledger related video on YouTube that I haven't yet added to the playlists, please add a link to it in the comments below.

Also drop me a link to your YouTube Channel, so that Interledger can follow you on YouTube.

Thank you!

~ Erica

Editable Spreadsheet of Surveys Conducted by our Community

Erica Hargreave — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 01:37:02 +0000

Hello Everyone!

To help @nikorawrs out, I've created an editable spreadsheet of surveys that members of our community have been creating around the Web Monetization Standard, Creators Economy, ...etc.

Please feel free to utilise and add to and update this spreadsheet with the surveys that you've been creating.

[Image courtesy of Lukas Blazek, via UnSplash]