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

WuppHaus Bad Dürrenberg.

Even though the WuppDays in Badue are over for now and the weather still is freezing cold in eastern Germany, the progress can't be stopped in the very first WuppHaus!

Especially the PR part of the project is steaming ahead as more and more media coverage is effected: We now have an overview page that collects all the self-published videos on YouTube, which could use some subtitles, there has been a new article published in a local newspaper and we get requests from various people who'd like to document our try to live the change we want to see in the world in the form of film or photo. So there's always more to be expected! 

On top of that Sebastian Striegel, who is a member of the parliament of Sachsen-Anhalt for the green party (Landtagsabgeordneter der Grünen) came visiting the WuppHaus and expressed big interest in our way of living, our vision and mission and granted us his support. We still get more offers from people who'd like to help out with their skills, be it from befriended architects or a wood expert, who came by to assess the quality of the beams in the house and tell us how to handle our serpula lacrymans infestation. The German WuppHaus website gets more and more filled, we now also have sections on what we need and what we offer in the WuppHaus and we posted an informative article about the outcome of the first big WuppHaus plenum, in which yuniteers and local contributors gathered to talk about the future of the train station. Paul Free is already planning the next get-together with other local initiatives and collects info on who to invite and what to do. And as if that wasn't enough, we now even found the confidence to invite Taylor Swift, all her fans and the fans of My Little Pony to join us in the WuppHaus! Let's see where that leads... 

WuppHaus Wurzen.

As we already mentioned in the last heartbeat, we found another possible WuppHaus location! Also close to Leipzig, but this time on the other side of the city: In Wurzen, in the East.

Since the first visit on January 5th a lot has happened and the plannings are already pretty concrete! A whole new space on the wiki has been created to give room to all the new information and planning for this second WuppHaus project. This time the houses are actually in a state that can be best described as ready-to-move-in! But therefore this time they are not for free...

As the approach this time involves money to actually buy the houses, a lot more accounting and bureaucracy are to be handled. We already have a rough financial plan, as well as a pretty intense discussion about the question if money can even be shared like every other resource or not. Because not all yuniteers think, that buying a house is a good idea, even if it's meant to be gifted to the movement afterwards.

Still, the planning is in full swing! There have been already a lot of meetings on various concrete topics (see the  - mostly German - minutes here), like distribution of the imagined rooms based on the nicely drawn layout plans, ideas on how to deal with the omnipresent issue of money, how to handle conflicts and much more. Of course there are pictures, a short concept has been articulated in German and if you want to participate, you're invited to do so!

WuppDays Planning.

Done

• Bodhi Neiser and Philip Engelbutzeder visited the potential location for a big event in Berlin in summer. The working title used to be 'WuppDays XXL', but it is probably going to be renamed soon.
• Tilmann secured a location for WuppDays #14 in Barcelona, which are about to start! Are you in the area? You can still decide to come by! 

In Progress

• Barcelona WuppDays' official starting day is January 24th. News regarding the event are exchanged in #barcelona on Slack.
• Paul Free took over the organization of the big event in Berlin in summer and is looking for people to help him.
  

Challenges/help needed

• As stated above, the Berlin event is going to be huge! So help is needed at every corner: Planning, organizing, promoting, securing food, etc. etc. If you want to get involved, please contact Paul Free, join #wuppdays_xxl_berlin on Slack or simply write us an email.

Structure.

In Progress

• We reopened the discussion about our primary objective. Up until now we used the one we decided on via syscon in April 2016, but since yunity changed a lot since that time and nobody is actively working on developing "the yunity platform" right now, we saw it necessary to revise that decision - or at least talk about it anew. If you want to participate in the discussion join #primary_objective on Slack.
• Janina Abels started restructuring the confluence wiki, to make it more accessible and easier to use. The main work now is to review the existing content and to then move and redesign the pages accordingly. She'll try to keep the phase of confusion as short as possible, but if you don't find what you're looking for in the meantime, please use the search bar in the top right... 
  The new layout will contain separate spaces for the different big subtopics in yunity - like it already is the case e.g. for foodsaving worldwide, WuppHaus Badue and Culture - but stringently implemented and with uniform layout.
• The efforts to make use of Taiga are still ongoing and we are still working on finding out the best ways to benefit from the platform. There is, however, still quite some confusion and resistance from people to actually use it. Well, we'll keep trying...
• The onboarding process is still in the midst of being redesigned, but the talking about it alone already led to more motivation to take this seriously, so that e.g. Janina Abels started writing welcoming messages to the new people who join Slack again and Arno Döpper does the same on discourse.

Challenges/help needed

• We keep having issues with the use of our communication tools. While on the one hand people complain about e.g. our Slack being messy and hard to keep on top of, there are on the other hand often situations in which people work on very similar things without connecting, because they simply don't know that the other person is doing something related. There are so many different tools in use for different purposes now, that even the most involved yuniteers sometimes have trouble to keep the overview. More structure and clarity definitely is needed!

Foodsaving Worldwide.

Done

• Joachim Thome held already two online meetings with people from Bilbao, who are enthusiastic about starting a foodsaving initiative. More calls are to come.
• Kristijan Miklobusec shared a nice long guide about the importance of community building and the positive experiences of foodsharing Mainz, who hold a brunch for their members every week. It still needs to be translated and put onto the wiki, though.

In Progress

• The next foodsharing Poland coordination meeting is to be held in Torun over the first weekend of March, and 20 to 30 cities already declared their interest in starting foodsharing as well!
• We received an email from a Czech girl, who thinks about starting foodsharing in her home country. Since there are already people working against food waste in Czech Republic, our aim was to connect them with each other. Since she now joined our Slack, we hope to intensify the cooperation! 
• There has also been a Belge guy joining our endeavor to create a world of sharing. The scope of his NGO The Green Bean, which is located in Brussels, in fact is not only food, but rather every resource imaginable. Still, foodsharing is something they are definitely also interested in!

Network Health.

Done

• Lara Earthling started a section on the wiki and a Slack channel for her endeavor to create a community health network. It is meant to provide an alternative way of treating common diseases and small injuries in a natural way, all following the paradigm of sharing and the wish to create a healthy community.

In Progress

• Knowledge of wild herbs and their medical properties is collected here.
• The research on existing health care systems is going to be documented here.

Challenges/help needed

• Do you know anything about alternative methods of healing or how a health network following the values of sharing can be established? Please let us know! In case you don't know how to contact us, just write us a mail and we'll forward it to Lara Earthling. 

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