OHM Gathering will now be postponed to 2023, so that we have enough time to finish development of the WisdOHM app. In the meantime, we’re seeking thoughts and interest in helping organise one or more Tiny OHM events in the SE Qld region.
AN EVOLVING VISION
We held a cohmunity meeting and collectively decided to postpone the festival until version 1 of the app was ready (called the Minimal Viable Product, or MVP), for several reasons:
The core intention for OHM is to develop a dynamically evolving system (called WisdOHM) that can empower communities to capture, recognise and reward contributions to the collective mission, so that key contributors can be honoured for their efforts and respected as leaders in the community. In February of this year we received a whopping 223 applications to attend our first test case of this system — OHM Festival — and had just started the laborious task of processing all these applications when the site we had booked cancelled due to flooding and noise complaints. In retrospect, I think this was a blessing in disguise, as it allowed space for a new idea to evolve that would make the review process much more democratic, evidence-based, and accessible via a user-friendly app.
- so that everyone in the cohmunity could participate in the transparent review process
- to generate valuable data and user feedback
- so that after the event, anyone in the world could use the app to replicate their own OHM Festival, or download the open source code and help develop the next version
SPRING PLANS
At the time, we tentatively suggested Spring 2022 as the new date for OHM Festival. Unfortunately, things have taken longer than expected and the app is still some number of months away from being ready. Note that this is in no way a reflection of our OHMazing dev team, who are pouring love into the code to ensure it can scale to the wide range of disruptive use cases we imagine, but more a reflection of the experimental and dynamic nature of this project. Having said that, we would LOVE to hear from any web developers out there interested in helping develop our codebase (React & NodeJS) 🙏
OHM 2023
In recent months and weeks, I’ve wrestled with the idea of whether to postpone OHM or forge ahead with what we have. We do have a working prototype of the WisdOHM system (in Google Sheets), which we used successfully to select headline acts for Tiny OHM #1 (hooray!), but is also too laborious and clunky to make it accessible to the broader cohmunity. Because we want OHM to be for all (not just for those comfortable with using spreadsheets), we’ve decided to continue waiting for the app to be ready, rather than trying to rush through a non-replicable festival this Spring using an inaccessible and clunky prototype. This means that OHM will now need to be pushed back until sometime in 2023. We realise this may come as a disappointment to some of you, but appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate this uncharted and groundbreaking territory.
AN OVERDUE UPDATE
My apologies for any inconvenience the late timing of this notice may cause. We’ve talked extensively about postponing within the core team, on Slack and at cohmunity dinners, but in between all the other progress we’ve been making these past few months (e.g., cohmunity dinners, WisdOHM prototyping, Tiny OHM #1, ECC charity merge, Ohmniversal Basic Income, Long Way hOHM roadtrip) I’ve dropped the ball on keeping the broader cohmunity updated. Communications is certainly not my strength, nor my favourite way to contribute, so if anyone out there would like to help share the story of all the groundbreaking, disruptive, paradigm-shifting, deliciously OHM nommy things we’re getting up to, please get in touch!
TINY OHM #2?
Just because the 3-day festival is postponed, doesn’t mean we can’t connect in the meantime. One option I’ve floated on Slack is to host a series of Tiny OHMs, perhaps on a monthly cycle with the full moon (e.g., starting 11-13 November). These could be smaller events (~50 people) with relatively minimal planning, perhaps just booking a campsite and seeing what people choose to offer on the day. Alternatively, if there’s lots of interest and support we could plan a single day of offerings (on the Saturday) and use Sunday to process, integrate and pilot test our transparent review processes (WisdOHM).
Really, it’s up to you, dear cohmunity, and I’m excited to hear what you think.
In humble service,
Cooper, on behalf of the OHM Team
