The Interledger Community 🌱: Philo van Kemenade

Gradual skill sharing at community scale — Grant Report #2

Philo van Kemenade — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 09:43:43 +0000

Project Update

Hello everyone!

It has been our aim to make it easy and fun for communities, companies and organizations to see what feels most alive and take action on shared interests. Our time as part of the Grant for the Web cohort has taught us many valuable lessons on how to achieve that goal as we empower members of the Web Monetization community with a safe and accessible space to learn with others as we grow into a healthy, social and connected ecosystem.

During the first months of the project, we’ve done important work to equip the current GftW cohort with tooling for peer2peer skill sharing. We launched a dedicated skill sharing space where community members share their how-how and learning intentions, from which matches with other members emerged. Since launch, we have released several improvements to the tool, more on that later.

This year’s MozFest provided a first opportunity to meet many members of the GftW community, and we built on that momentum during the Community Call we hosted in March. These encounters have been vital in getting to know the learning needs of the Web Monetization community.

We have learned that the community’s strongest motivations to come together and exchange are based around:

showcasing work and gaining new traction for your project
incentivization to boost open, fair, and inclusive standards and innovation related to web monetization
networking and or partnering with other cohort members

Our approach to learn from the behavior of members of this community has informed us about how to best serve the community and adjust our product design accordingly. We have been able to streamline user input by adding an important extension to the Gradual tooling in the form of a flexible database and authentication solution called Supabase.

Thanks to an extension and scope change to our project, we’ve also enabled Web Monetization on each of the designated skill sharing session pages on the GftW community hub. Furthermore, we built on what we learned about intrinsic motivations in the community and have invited facilitators of skill shares and community calls to add their payment pointer and monetize their work. We believe this will ultimately help the web monetization ecosystem to become more wide-spread and also help people outside the community to better understand the value of an inclusive and innovative design strategy.

Progress on objectives

Central to our goals as part of the GftW cohort, was to provide the community with a space for skill sharing, help facilitate exchanges between members, learn about the needs that people have and develop new features based on this information.

Based on community input from community members, the Gradual tooling has been extended in several ways (see the Key Activities section for details):

Streamlining of data input and storage, leveraging SupaBase
Web Monetization of individual session pages
UI Improvements to the way topics and skills are made visible
Ability to easily embed video recordings via Google Drive

While writing our original proposal we decided to also include in our timeline two types of engagement metrics: Number of sessions & community members reached. These were mostly meant to give our team ambitious goals to aim for during the cohort.

Number of sessions: Our original milestone of achieving 12 sessions within the 6 months has changed to 6 sessions:

And this does not even include some of the other community calls that have been hosted by and for the community - you can watch the recordings back on the dedicated session pages!

Number of community members reached: Our original milestone of at least half of current GftW cohort grantees having engaged with Gradual skill sharing app has changed to at least 17 members having engaged with it.

Though initially this seemed to us like a significant decrease in the quantity of engagement, we are very happy with the quality of the sessions that were hosted - in the calls we noticed true connections and it was great to see how many of you were keen on sharing your learnings and continuing momentum together! It was great when people told us that it wouldn’t have happened had the Gradual tooling not identified those similar interests.

However, it was still important to us to identify some of the circumstances that may have led to us needing to change the scope of our project. We came down to two important circumstantial reasons.

Different patterns of user behavior than expected based on previous experiments

Based on our previous use-cases and community skill sharing initiatives we set out with a set of expectations for specific types of engagement: regular calls with the community as a primary driver of interpersonal skill sharing offers and demands. Throughout the 6 months of the cohort we have seen a different type of commitment to either host or attend an informal “bottom-up” gathering despite the registered interest on the Gradual community page. This has meant that active ambassadorship throughout has not achieved the same results in the context of a remote community for a duration of 6 months as it had done within shorter, more event-based communities where regularly attending synchronous sessions has been more ingrained. This was significant for us to rethink our approach.

Technical needs and features turned out to different than originally expected

First, our original intention was to tap into the technical infrastructure already in place for the community which meant making use of the community.interledger.org forum as primary mode for community member interaction. We quickly learned that there was no direct messaging feature available for us to reach out to members which has been a necessity for us to realize our third step of the Gradual (map, match, meet) formula. Eventually we focussed on using the Interledger Slack - however this space also didn’t quite have the traction and engagement yet to continue on momentum for the community, despite the active ambassadorship on community channels and through DM’s sent.

Second, our intention to integrate Cinnamon as a platform for adding session recordings to Gradual’s session pages, shifted when we learned that the GftW team did not expect long term support of Cinnamon and the community relied on Google Drive for video hosting.

Key activities

Besides hosting six workshops in the Web Monetization community and showcasing the community call recordings on the community hub, we have been working on the further development of the Gradual tooling, based on feedback from the community.

Streamlining of data input and storage

A major extension of the Gradual tooling we worked on, is the way user input is gathered and stored, thanks to the integration of the flexible database solution Supabase. Previously, Gradual used Typeform for both gathering and storing user input data. While this has served us well so far, it was not flexible enough for our needs around providing more direct ways to add new input and visualize previously submitted data.

After researching alternative approaches, we’ve chosen to integrate SupaBase: an open source Firebase alternative offering Database and Authentication via easily configurable APIs in a way that neatly fits our lightweight Jamstack approach.

As we wrap up our project, we are proud to release an upgraded GftW community hub, featuring flexible data input that automatically offers existing topics to choose from and directly visualizes new input in the overviews on the main page!

As future work after this project, we will be releasing this new architecture to other Gradual instances and are looking forward to building on other Supabase features such as user authentication as well as extending the integration to also cover session content via a custom CMS.

Web Monetization of individual session pages

One of the great things we've learned is that having your online content web monetized can act as a stimulus for sharing it with others in the community and beyond. Additionally, the ability to publish content in a web monetized space can also motivate people to produce new content in the first place.

By implementing the option of adding a custom payment pointer on individual Gradual Session pages, we are enabling content creators to share their skills (e.g. in the form of a video/call recording or written post) and attract micro payments from their audience. This means that any previous community calls on the community hub, can now have a custom payment pointer allocated. Since asking you a month ago, many of you have since shared your payment pointers and are now receiving micro payments for previously held sessions!

Technically, adding payment pointer support has been relatively straightforward. We’ve added logic to our session pages that renders a web monetization meta tag depending on three possible scenarios:

A custom Payment Pointer is provided for the respective session page: render the web monetization meta tag with this custom payment pointer.
A default Payment Pointer is provided for the community instance: render the web monetization meta tag with this default payment pointer,
No Payment Pointer is provided: don’t render the web monetization meta tag.

Payment Pointers can be easily added to session pages via the Gradual CMS.

UI Improvements

Since launch we've released several new features to the GftW Gradual instance, including:

an improved list view of learning intentions, with search functionality and learners & sharers visualized
a way to filter the graph view of learning intentions by amount of connections
a more direct way to add a new skill or high-five an existing one

Ability to easily embed video recordings via Google Drive

While our original proposal was to build in support for the web-monetized Cinnamon as a video hosting provider, we learned in our initial conversations with GftW staff that long term support would not be guaranteed and that Google Drive is used to store and share video recordings. We added support for video embeds from Google Drive to display session recordings on their respective session pages, along with the ability to easily add these videos via the Gradual CMS.

Communications and marketing

As we said in our previous progress report, Our MozFest session Enhancing p2p learning with p2p payments served as both an exchange of ideas around the social learning ideas we’ve been exploring with Gradual, as well as an introduction to the ideas and tools behind Web Monetization.

Our primary focus during this cohort was to keep communal activity internally between past and present GftW members. Nearing the end of our project we have also come to realize the value of more direct routes for communication between community members, which has informed our product roadmap. In fact, with the focus on a flexible database and authentication integration during the final months of the cohort we have taken an important first step towards making the process of getting people to come together much simpler and quicker.

As the community hub is open to the public and session pages can now be web monetized we’d love to see this spread around in your own circles!

What’s next?

We are currently preparing for our next phase in our partnership with Mozilla for next year’s MozFest - we’d love to see you there! We’ve now been involved in the past three editions and it has been incredible to see how our involvement has evolved over the years.

We would also love to see the community hub continue to remain active within this community so new community calls and recorded skill shares can continue to be uploaded for your convenience.

What community support would benefit your project?

Sharing a presentation on your project over a zoom call, your own pre-recorded video or even just on a google doc? Or if you are inspired by any of the 15+ sessions on the community hub and see something you’d like to share or learn yourself? The community hub will remain open and you can continue to engage with it.

In the end, we believe we will continue to have a lot to learn from you!

Stay curious,

Philo and Gunnar

Gradual skill sharing at community scale — Grant Report #1

Philo van Kemenade — Wed, 18 May 2022 20:13:40 +0000

Project Update

Our project's goal is to empower members of the Web Monetization community with a safe and accessible space to learn with others as we grow into a healthy, social and connected ecosystem.

During the first months of the project, we've done important work to equip the current GftW cohort with tooling for peer2peer skill sharing. We've launched a dedicated GftW skill sharing space where members can share their learning intentions. Since launch we have released several improvements to the tool.

We've had the pleasure to engage with many community members, both at MozFest and at the GftW Community call we hosted in March. These encounters have been vital in getting to know the learning needs of the Web Monetization community, as well as in finding connections between members around their shared interests. This input has informed the direction of our next developments.

Progress on objectives

We've hosted two workshops around peer2peer learning in the Web Monetization community. The first was a session at Mozilla Festival early March and was titled Enhancing p2p learning with p2p payments. The second was the March GftW Community Call, where we gathered lots of input from community members and made meaningful connections based on shared interests (see the recording here).

These meetings with members of the Web Monetization community, are helping us to inform our product development going forward in several ways. Some insights helped us realize we've had to adjust the objectives as we framed them at the time of writing our proposal.:

We are no longer aiming to integrate Cinnamon as a way to host GftW session recordings, since we learned from conversation with the GftW community managers that this platform is not actively used by the community and isn't likely to be in the future.
While we were originally thinking of using the community forum for communication with learners and sharers, we learned that Forem doesn't support direct messaging. While we saw this as a slight setback initially, on second thought it has provided us with an interesting use case for adding additional features. This has informed our decision to start working on a database and authentication layer which will enable us to better serve the needs of the GftW community as well as others who don’t rely on direct messaging communication. More on this in the next section.

We are very happy with the skill sharing input we’ve gathered from community members so far. In total, 16 members have added 39 skills!

We originally aimed for the first few skill sharing sessions to have taken place by now. The lack of direct communication with community members has meant a bit of a delay and might mean we have to be more conservative with the final number of sessions we are aiming for. The good news is that as a community, we have identified a rich and promising set of shared interests and, with the help of the GftW team, we have started taking steps to get the first three sessions off the ground!

Key activities

Besides hosting two workshops in the Web Monetization community, we have been working on the further development of the Gradual tooling, based on what we’ve heard back from the community so far.

Since launch we've released several new features to the GftW Gradual instance, including:

an improved list view of learning intentions, with search functionality and learners & sharers visualized
a way to filter the graph view of learning intentions by amount of connections
a more direct way to add a new skill or high-five an existing one

Besides these improvements to the interface components, the use case of the GftW community mostly using the community forum for communication has made us feel the need to add a way to communicate more directly with users. To this end, we have started dedicating development time to a larger project with the goal to add a database and authentication solution to our technical infrastructure. We’ve chosen to integrate SupaBase: an open source Firebase alternative offering Database and Authentication via easily configurable APIs in a way that neatly fits our lightweight Jamstack approach.

In this new architecture, we are replacing our dependency on Typeform (which has served us very well so far) with our own custom forms and database for handling learn & share data more flexibly. In the scope of this grant project we aim to release a first version and at a later stage will be adding improvements as well as extending the integration to also cover session content via a custom CMS.

Communications

Our MozFest session Enhancing p2p learning with p2p payments served as both an exchange of ideas around the social learning ideas we’ve been exploring with Gradual, as well as an introduction to the ideas and tools behind Web Monetization.

What’s next?

We are keen to put the learn & share data we have gathered so far into action in the form of community skills sharing sessions. We have identified the three most promising topics, and will be reaching out to potential facilitators soon. Watch this space!

Meanwhile we are continuing our work on integrating the SupaBase database functionality and aim to have a first version released by the time we write our final report.

What community support would benefit your project?

Is there anything you'd like to learn? Perhaps something you are currently dealing with in your project? Or something you've wondered about for a while already?

As members of this community, we believe we have a lot to share with each other!

Please express your interests via:
https://gftw.gradu.al/

Enhancing p2p learning with p2p payments

Philo van Kemenade — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 22:11:17 +0000

Woohoo 🙌 My first MozFest 2022 session is a wrap 🎉

Together we looked at peer2peer learning and Web Monetization and brainstormed how the two can enhance each other.

We kicked off by introducing ourselves and each sharing something we'd enjoyed learning from another human being.

Next up I gave a quick introduction on peer2peer learning, based on our experiences testing Gradual with various communities. Everyone also shared things they could learn from their peers online.

The second part focused on peer2peer payments, which is where I introduced the basics of Web Monetization, based on my own learning from others in this community 🧡

We went over issues with current business models, the high level idea of WM, Web Monetization Providers, Web Monetization Wallets, streaming, tipping and the Interledger Protocol.

I was able to prepare this session, in a big part thanks to the many helpful resources that this community has been assembling over time. Have a wonder around the Miro board for more slides and references!

For the final part, we split up into groups to brainstorm different ways peer2peer learning could be enhanced with peer2peer payments. After some time working in smaller groups, people shared back to each other. Our discussion spanned many topics, including ideas for a kind of Universal Basic Income partly funded by Big Tech; questions on whether WM disincentivises dark practices like cookies, trackers & creepy recommendations; Micropayments for watching documentary films and ways to have enjoy how to videos without the ads.

Hosting this session has been really insightful. Preparing the story on WM actually helped me deepen my own understanding of the underlying principles (You learn more when you share 😉). Engaging in conversation with others who share my passion for learning was inspiring and I'm grateful for the variety of input. Big thanks to all the participants who joined!

If you have experience with or ideas about WM in an learning / educational context, I'd love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below or find me on the MozFest or Interledger Slack ✌️

My invitation to MozFest

Philo van Kemenade — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 17:17:33 +0000

Hi everyone!

The participatory festival ethos combined with the focus on Internet Health and Trustworthy AI make MozFest one of those rare events I keep on coming back to each year.

This year I am particularly excited, not least because of the many ways Web Monetization is getting a stage. I'd like to highlight a couple of ways you can get involved 🙌

How to enhance peer2peer learning with peer2peer payments?

On Monday 7 March 19.00-20.00 CET, I am hosting a workshop to explore ways to enhance peer2peer learning with peer2peer payments. I'd love to get your insights! 💡

Emergent Sessions

With our project Gradual - part of the current GftW cohort 🎉 - we are powering a brand new festival track for Emergent Sessions!

Sometimes you come up with a great idea for a session during the festival. Here's your chance to connect with others based on a spontaneous thought, a shared interest, a creative spark, a question or whatever else that inspires you! ⚡

This will be a great opportunity to learn with others and share your insights on Web Monetization and beyond 🌈

Check out what's alive at MozFest and express your own interests at:
https://mozfest.gradu.al/

From Arts & Culture to AI and back: how can we build a two-way street?

This session might be for you if you share my interest for the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Arts & Culture. 🎨

On Thursday 10 March 14:45 - 15:45 CET I am teaming up with Randi Cecchine, to ask question like:

What could a reciprocal relationship between Machine Learning and Cultural Heritage look like? How can those employing and applying AI technologies embrace the powerful perspectives offered by artists critiquing the status quo? What can machine learning engineers learn from the way museums, libraries and archives collect and maintain data?

The Grand Web Monetization Experiment

@ericahargreave has written an excellent introduction to the Grand Web Monetization Experiment and is doing an amazing job at collecting educational resources to help people get involved! 🤗
https://community.webmonetization.org/grantfortheweb/join-in-the-grand-mozfest-web-monetization-experiment-3jm5