The yunity heartbeat - what has each team done, what are they doing and what do they need help with.

Foodsaving Tool.

Visit on foodsaving.world

After a lot of research, trial & error and learning about the difficulties that come with timezones, daylight saving time and a hopefully globally distributed user base, Tilmann finally succeeded in implementing the recurring pick-up dates! That means, that people can now enter pick-ups that will repeat e.g. every week, like requested multiple times. Apart from that Lars Wolf put quite some effort in finalizing the multi view and making it mobile friendly, so now our users always see the store list and the overview map on the side on bigger screens. Look at these screenshots:

Apart from that various small changes were made, Andreas Langecker also is enthusiastically contributing again and a long and fruitful dev meeting was held on the 18th. Have a look at the outcomes here!

• We call for collaboration with foodsaving groups! Contact us on foodsaving@yunity.org!
• Automatic login after signup
  
• Design changes: favicon, initial loading progress bar, 
• Group location (e.g. city) can be set on a map
• Short how-to for markdown input
  
• Optimized number of server requests on group page
• Translation: Russian and Italian added
  
• Localization: dates are shown in the preferred format of the user
• New dev.foodsaving.world subdomain for faster development without degrading user experience on the main website
• Planning for upcoming features
  

Wupp(?)Haus Wurzen.

The timeframe for the big planning meetings are still unclear. The face-to-face discussions about the general orientation of yunity and the question why we are part of it will preferably take place before them, but won't start before March as it seems. The association for the housing project in Wurzen will hopefully be founded this week, registration may take some weeks. The buying contract is in the process of being made. So the earliest time to move in would be mid-March. But also keep in mind the processes around  - so maybe it's better to expect April to start, before we'll really be living in the Wurzen housing project.

fr4nk 0nf1r3 is working on getting the permaculture project started. After finding suitable land for setting up a greenhouse and some beds for growing edible plants in Wurzen, he is thinking about ways to build up humus to fertilize the soils again. Earthworms seem to be the best way to do this. Since he thinks that making such projects in a group is more fun, he got into PR a bit and visited some events in his hometown to talk about yunity. Between herbal tea and sports, he would like to do a lot of reading on plants and also technologies that give a certain benefit to ecosystems instead of harming them.

Foodsaving Worldwide.

Done

• Joachim Thome is pushing Unai from Bilbao to take all his courage and approach a store. This is the most important step to really get going. You can do it, Unai!
• Update: Unai did it! Congratulations!  Contacts to stores and local collaborators are being made, flyers are being prepared and the next online meetin is already in planning.
• Claudie from Rotterdam contacted us again, to collaborate further. Just last week they made huge progress, when a big supermarket agreed to daily pick-ups, a food bank got ready for weekly pick-ups and they even decided to make a whole room available for foodsharing purposes in the Antonius building, yeah!
• Claudie and Taras from Stockholm both posted in the foodsaving worldwide group on facebook, making it livlier and more interesting to other foodsaving and -sharing enthusiasts.
• Kristijan Miklobusec's article about the foodsharing brunch in Mainz, which is successfully held every week since two years already, points out the importance of community building, as well as providing the concrete example of how to achieve this.

Translation.

Done

• Fenja Jacobs translated and Matthias Larisch proofread the most recent post on the foodsharing devblog into German.
• As mentioned in the foodsaving worldwide section, Janina Abels and Former user (Deleted) translated Kristijan Miklobusec's article about the foodsharing brunch in Mainz. Have a look at it here.

Challenges/help needed

• Suddenly there are a lot of German to English translation tasks. Wanna help? Visit #translation on Slack!
• Setting up a software supporting translation work. (zanata is already in use, but not connected to the webpage. contact: Paul Free)

WuppHaus Bad Dürrenberg.

Done

• Material gets donated constantly.
• More and more people help out on a regular basis.
• The website gets updated regularly.
• The statistics of how many people are curently using the free wifi at the train station are now public.

In Progress

• Weekly meetings concerning specific topics are being implemented (e.g. construction, culture & events, why we share)
• Cooperations to directly save food from stores are being built. If successful, the foodsaving tool will be used to manage the pick-ups.

Challenges/help needed

• Electricity: How can we get it through sharing, even when Reik moves out of his flat? So far we only were shown solutions, which require exchange.
• How to handle conflicts between individuals?
• How to handle alcohol?
• More yuniteers who are willing to stay for a while are needed! Especially those who are interested in getting involved with the local community, putting in place the mentioned meetings/foodsaving structures, finding creative solutions of money-free-only sharing approaches and being an inspiring rock for the people of this town, that has not a lot of social infrastructure, let alone alternative variants of it.
  

About the heartbeat.

The heartbeat is a biweekly summary of what happens in yunity. It is meant to give an overview over our currents actions and topics.

When and how does it happen?

Every other weekend we collect information on a wiki page and publish it on Sunday or the following Monday as a wiki blog article.

Afterwards we add a nice abstract and share it on facebook.

How to contribute?

• You need to have a wiki account and editor rights. Ask us in #confluence on Slack if you need help with that.
• Talk to us in #heartbeat on Slack about the content, the layout or any other heartbeat related issues and ideas!

Other heartbeats

The yunity heartbeat - what has each team done, what are they doing and what do they need help with.

WuppHouse planning.

Since some people decided to use their private money to buy two houses in Wurzen, following the plan to turn them into a big WuppHaus, a big discussion started. Depending on who you ask, you will get different answeres as to what is the gist of the debate, how grave or serious it actually is and who stands on which side. Janina Abels wrote her observations down in this pretty long and probably not completely objective article and the longer statements of the people involved are accessible on this wiki page. Please read through them and form your own opinion, if you want, because every summary of the issue holds the risk of simplifications and the creation of clearly separated camps and categories, that don't appropriately reflect reality.

Just so much:

• the use of money in the name of yunity is more than controversial
• the questions 'What does yunity stand for?', 'Why are we with yunity?' and 'Where do we see its significance?' have been raised through this issue
• there has been some escalation, frustration, anger and sadness
• it was about time to tackle these questions, but we somehow avoided it before

WuppHaus Bad Dürrenberg.

Few yuniteers are left in Bad Dürrenberg, but that doesn't mean that nothing goes forward in the train station. The locals are as engaged as ever, and now get more and more integrated in yunity online communication as well, thanks to Paul Free setting up an open rocket.chat and making the peolpe using the badue channel switch to German. We still get supported with material and labor and just a few days ago a whole carpenter's workshop was offered to us, which just needs to be picked up! And design student Michaela Lautenschlager, who came by earlier in January to document our project for her studies now shared her pictures with us. The great image of Paul Free even made it to a gallery, thanks Michi! 

On the other hand the officials of the building supervision (Bauaufsicht) voiced severe concerns, which need to be addressed very soon for us to be able to stay in the train station. They simply cannot imagine - and thus not allow - that people can live in a building without central heating, intact windows in every single frame, electricity and waste water connection. Still, the woman we were in contact with seems to be generally in favor of a colorful initiative like ours to be located in Bad Dürrenberg, so we just need to meet their demands now and they won't try to put obstacles in our way.

Besides that, community engaging through a self-organized gaming day has happend. It was organized by John and Mandy. New and old faces came together to celebrate. It also created the opportunity for some philosophical conversations.  

Wupp(?)Haus Wurzen.

In the plannings for Wurzen money has played an important role, too. The official financial plan was compiled and the project presentation for the authorities got finalized. Also the question if it is okay to pursue paid work when living in the Wupp(?)Haus got raised and pondered i.a. by Douglas Webb, who pointed out the benefits and disadvantages of brights lines and fuzzy borders. Thanks to the efforts of Laurina more and more content of the Wurzen wiki space gets translated into English and Lara Earthling contributed professional building layout sketches. More thoughts on social architecture got collected, like ideas how to distinguish between residents and non-residents.

End of February a Wurzen-specific meet-up will start in Harzgerode, where people interested in pursuing this Wupp(?)Haus project will work on detailed plannings to then move in as quickly as possible, while still be prepared as well as possible.

Since the name is so controversial now, alternatives are being discussed in #wupphouse_wurzen on Slack. Come by and join in!

WuppDays #14 Barcelona

Over all these discussions and controversies the WuppDays in Barcelona lost quite a lot of their importance. Most of the time we have been 8 yuniteers at La Experimental and the daily life was filled with getting to know the super nice people populating this beautiful squat, helping in the house and in the garden, dumster diving (they call it 'recycling' here!), cooking, following individual projects and - of course - discussing the current topics important to yunity as a whole. It is also a nice and healing time of refuge from the German cold and seriousness, because with the geographic distance to Badue and Wurzen, the whole issue seemed less severe and segregating. We actually have a lot of fun dissing each other and still being completely sure of the fondness, respect and love we feel towards every other yuniteer around, even though our opinions on some things may differ.

The individual projects and activities pursued in Barcelona are the following:

Tilmann is coding the foodsaving tool and shows Janina Abels how it's done. Selina Camile shoots and cuts inspiring videos, like this one, that captures our stay at La Experimental. Adrean Liegel started writing his personal manifesto. Lara Earthling discovered that she wants to squat a house, pondered the general question if it is okay to have a dog and the specific one if it would fit in her life right now. Andreas Langecker and fritz holscher are jamming, fixing the recording studio of the house and bonding with the people here. Kaiser Mikato is preaching open source software and money free living.

For the last days three new people arrived, a more than welcome opportunity to actually hold a yunity meeting, that brings together everyone in a circle to talk about what yunity is and why we take part in it.

All in all these days do not feel very wuppy, but that's probably due to the winter, the controversies and the general relaxed manner of Spain... 

Onboarding.

Done

• Janina Abels changed the join the team page, as well as the autoresponder email, to make the publication of new signupper's applications to discourse optional and this possibility more clear in general.
• The welcoming messaging on Slack and discourse is reliably working, yay!

In Progress

• Laurina and Paul Free worked a lot on the new concept of an /wiki/spaces/ARCHIVE/pages/88626618, consisting of different emails sent out to sign-uppers depending on their interests and reactions.
  
  

Challenges/help needed

• part of the new onboarding process is shifting the workflow. Contact Paul Free if you're interested in this task.
  

Foodsaving Worldwide.

Done

• Another call with Unai from Bilbao was held by Joachim Thome.
• Niki contacted us to get support for starting foodsharing Maastricht.

Foodsaving Tool.

Visit on foodsaving.world

Done

• The design got reworked: It now has an earthy brown as primary color and a nice background picture on the landing page.
• New translations to Swedish, Spanish and Esperanto were added thanks to Fredrik, Former user (Deleted) and Carlos.

In Progress

• The recurring pick-up dates turned out to be pretty tricky and are thus still in the making.
• Navigation improvements are worked on by Lars Wolf and should be released soon.

Challenges/help needed

• Do you enjoy making websites look beautiful? Please contact us!

Translation.

In Progress

• Janina Abels and Former user (Deleted) started translating Kristijan Miklobusec's article about the foodsharing brunch in Mainz

Challenges/help needed

• Suddenly there are a lot of German to English translation tasks. Wanna help? Visit #translation on Slack!
• setting up a software supporting translation work. (zanata is already in use, but not connected to the webpage. contact: Paul Free)
  

MOVE and glocall.

Some yuniteers take part in organizing two events, which are about strengthening the grassroot sharing movement. Bot will happen around July.
Soon there will be the next meeting. If you're interested in joining, leave Paul Free a message.

audience outreach

• networking along the MOVE cycles
  
• Philip Engelbutzeder held a great presentation in Münster (will be soon on youtube)
  
• Rosina Klotz made some new videos and uploaded them here.
• Philip is establishing contact to officials in Vienna with the intention of initating a WuppHaus (mabye 2018)
• new newsletter tool is set up and ready to be used (ask Paul Free)
  

About the heartbeat.

The heartbeat is a biweekly summary of what happens in yunity. It is meant to give an overview over our currents actions and topics.

When and how does it happen?

Every other weekend we collect information on a wiki page and publish it on Sunday or the following Monday as a wiki blog article.

Afterwards we add a nice abstract and share it on facebook.

How to contribute?

• You need to have a wiki account and editor rights. Ask us in #confluence on Slack if you need help with that.
• Talk to us in #heartbeat on Slack about the content, the layout or any other heartbeat related issues and ideas!

Other heartbeats