Let’s share here some updates about the different projects in our global communities, and where we are on our roadmaps, so that people visiting this forum can have an overview of what’s happening around the OFN world.
This discussion is a wiki, so please if you want to update your local community status, do it directly in the text
Australia
V1 is officially launched since the end of June!!! Yeahhhh!
UK
Uk is in the pre-launching stage, still working on some adaptation, launch planned for september
South Africa
South Africa is still working on the API to connect OFN with The Kandu Data Management Platform (developed to train, monitor and manage subsistence and micro scale farmers in South Africa’s rural areas, in organic and sustainable agriculture).
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is in testing mode, and gathering a network around the project locally and planning the first bêta-test.
France
France has done the installation and is still in configuration mode!
Canada
We are newbies - building partners, friend-raising, and seeking funding to create an instance in the fall and do a ‘mini’ pilot to start to create ‘buzz’ here. Then we’ll seek funding for a more comprehensive process of localizing, branding and launching. We’re happy to build on all the work to date.
Great! Thanks @MyriamBoure for this.
In addition to updating here, it would be also nice if at least those spearheading each OFN initiative could briefly present themselves in the discussion "Who are we?"
Thanks for doing so @CynthiaReynolds and even longer then mine - I thought I was too detailed
I’m thinking it would be great to do some updates to these roadmaps? Also linking here to the great sharing from the UK on their successes: Sharing something of OFN’s successes in the UK
I’d like to put together a shared google doc that presents a snapshot of our collective impacts.
I have need for this to make an argument (for funding) that OFN meets identified food system needs, and is demonstrating great potential.
I was thinking of starting by pulling together all the metrics (ie: number of shops, shoppers…) from each active OFN instance - but maybe people have better information/data than that?
Second - it would be great to collect a few ‘testamonials’ - I think I’ll find some of them on the various instance platforms too - but they might not be in English.
the point is to make a document that demonstrates our fast growth to date, and potential.
Please link me to or remind me of any other docs or posts we have that I might draw on.
I’d be willing to update [this spreadsheet] on a quarterly basis. That way, over time, we can use it to track our instance and collective growth.I’ve taken the liberty of naming the first sheet in the file - ‘baseline’ fond created a second sheet for “April 2017” (our first quarter of 2017)
If you would find this useful - can you update your data in the April 2017 page?
Maybe each instance can designate a person to update this regularly (if we think this is useful)
@tschumilas I like the idea of gathering this data, I’m sure it would be useful. I had a look at the existing spreadsheet and thought the layout could be improved. I’ve created another sheet in the doc called Suggested New Layout, could you take a look and let me know what you think? I think we can have a single sheet that is updated quarterly, rather than a new sheet every quarter? If we can agree on a layout and what numbers we want to collect, we can then put clear instructions together for how an instance representative can extract the correct figures (we want to make sure the data is accurate).
Part 1 - Sales
I think for this metric it makes sense to track it all on the one sheet, rather than having a new sheet every quarter. This way we’ll be able to calculate total sales across all instances and put in into a common currency. This figure is either from the Sales report, or downloading OC Customer Totals reports and adding together.
Part 2 - Number of Users
Number of shops - Regarding the ‘Food Shops’ figure on the homepage, we find that the homepage counter can be misleading, because it captures anyone with a ‘shop’ profile, even if they haven’t actually started running order cycles yet. If we want to accurately report on the number of trading shops you need to look at Reports. Is this too much to ask of instances?
Food Producers- I think we should make this ‘number of profiles’ in general. The homepage counter is only counting producer profiles, not hub profiles. I see this data as a proxy for engagement. It shows how many people are aware of OFN and have made the effort to sign up. It’s also somewhat of a pipeline of future users, as people with profiles are also potential shopfront users. Getting an instance’s ‘number of profiles’ figure required downloading a report and filtering out anyone who’s set to ‘invisible’- too hard?
Customers and Orders - I’m happy that we use the homepage counter for this- easy! What if an instance has this feature switched off though?
Part 3 - Grants
Again rather than updating quarterly, maybe it makes more sense to just track total grants that instances have received, including value, donor and when it was given.
Part 4 - Contributors
How do we want to track this?
One option is to record how many contributors are involved with an instance at any one time (original spreadsheet). If we go with this option, it’s just a point in time indicator. E.g. the OFN community is X people large.
Another option is to record the names of new contributors on a list each quarter. Then we can get a cumulative contributors figure- e.g. since 2015 over 250 people have contributed to their local OFN instance.
Do we want to record the type of contribution? Volunteer vs staff etc?
Is there anything else we want to record? Such as fees paid to OFN by users? Hard to get the balance of rich data and asking for too much of people’s time…
Note also there was a discussion of creating a Super Admin dashboard which would make it quicker and easier to extract reporting figures- Dashboard Proposal
love this line of thinking @sstead - will look more closely at the other sheet as soon as i can. My reasoning behind doing a new sheet every quarter, was that I think it would be desirable to document our history and show our growth (and other) trends. The reason I started to think about this was a potential funder asked me to come back to them with “proof of market traction” - in my language I’d say they want to understand the needs/niches we fill and what opportunities lie ahead, and our capacity to address these. So however we do it, we want to demonstrate growth over time.
We do not use the homepage counter yet, as I find the numbers here misleading due to so many testers, but plan on turning it on as we gain momentum. In the meantime, in order to get the numbers for the report, I just went in and turned it on, gathered the figures and turned it off again… not a problem
I think I agree with all what @sstead said From my understanding @tschumilas Sally’s proposal is also what you need as she is tracking every Quarter figures, so you’ll get the figures for each quarter, but you’ll also have in one sight the totals.
About contributors I would rather find a way to see the evolution. We can keep track of names, or just “equivalent full time” maybe, and differ the volunteer and paid contribution. I guess we should include in “paid contribution” both the employees and freelancers paid for their contributions. I made an attempt to try to have different useful information that we all need for local and global use.
For grants I added some sums so that e have aggregated figures (I did it only in € but we should have different columns maybe in different currencies?)
For number of users, I think we need to manage to be somehow accurate and if it’s only every quarter, I think we can take the time to extract the relevant figures. For me both profiles (producers and hubs) and active shops make sense, and we should also count some invisible (in France some users want to stay invisible because they don’t want to be contacted, they have too much demand and don’t look for visibility… yes that exists!) but not the test one. So I guess every local instance can review the numbers to share some almost accurate figures. In the report there is the column “producer?” true/false so I guess we can retreat the data to tell how many producer profiles, and how many hub profiles (for a producer who sells either own or any they will be counted as hubs as well)
I think that make sens to report also quarterly in order to see the evolution… I propose an alternative way to present data then. For customers and orders, we can easily deduce the new ones added by a substraction from the homepage counter But if we don’t do it on the exact day, there is no way to get back the figures, I don’t see any relevant report…
I added a new section for “revenues” that funders will definitely be interested about to see how we manage to get self-sufficient.
I know it starts to be quite a lot of figures, but I don’t think it would take so much time if we have the good reports… (which is not sure) I have not deleted the general figures that I proposed to details quaterly. If you think we don’t need that much details for funders, I guess we can go back to simpler data, but I think the progression of number of producers, hubs trading through the platform, etc. are data that will be needed at some point… If we get the grant we applied for in France we will even need to go further (like average amount traded by a hub on the platform per month, etc.)
Statistics seems to be a whole project in itself, so @tschumilas if you want to take the lead on that’s awesome
I’m unsure about the Contributors field. It’s difficult to put a figure on people and full time equivalents. Many people here in Aus give time beyond what they’re paid, and this varies week to week. We also have interns come and go, and again, it’s hard to quantify their time input. I just wonder if it’s worth estimating and recording a number if it’s not very accurate? Is it an important figure to have?
Do you think if the figure is recorded some time within 2 weeks of the end of the quarter it’s ok? It’s just an indication. You can precisely measure how many orders were placed in a quarter by using the Order Cycle Customer Totals Report, but no, you can’t measure how many new customers there were in any report (only by getting a dev to look in the database).
I’ve rearranged the number of users by Instance, because it was difficult to navigate before.
Regarding "I have not deleted the general figures that I proposed to details quarterly. If you think we don’t need that much details for funders, I guess we can go back to simpler data, but I think the progression of number of producers, hubs trading through the platform, etc. are data that will be needed at some point… " Yes, Serenity agrees that it’s good to show ‘rate of growth’, so we should track some figures, like number of users, over time.
@serenity also said that user testimonials, media coverage and diversity of business models are also useful qualitative things to track. I’ve added fields to the spreadsheet. Even though it’s strange to record this in a spreadsheet, I think it’s good to have it all in one place? It means we only need to ask for information from everyone (all so busy) once a quarter, in the one document. But perhaps this should be somewhere else? It might get cluttered? Maybe a second sheet in the same doc?
Love the changes made to the spreadsheet @sstead and other comments really helpful here. I concur totally with @serenity re: testimonials, media coverage etc. These are all really useful in funding proposals, and in my experience most funders will ask us to track and report things like this.
I wonder if - over time - we aren’t better off with a folder on the drive vs the spreasheet alone - but for now I think putting this in the sheet is good. If it is a bit of a longer narrative - maybe we can just put the link to it in the spreadsheet.
@tschumilas and @MyriamBoure the only field I’m still uncertain about is the contributors field. I’m hesitant to put a number in there because I know it’ll just be a wild guess. The only data I’d feel confident gathering on this would be number of contributors e.g. writing down the names of all the people who have contributed (staff, volunteers, interns etc).
Once we’ve agreed on the format, it would be good to start prompting instances to start filling out the spreadsheet for the first quarter of 2017.
We have some fields for 2016 data, perhaps tell people that they can include these figures if they want, but the most important thing is to start gathering 2017 data from this point forward (except grants, we want to track all of these).
It isn’t likely a ‘wild’ guess - but yes, it is a ‘softer’ number than some of the others maybe. I think this ties to volunteer management processes - not like I need another thing to manage - but I’ve been trying to figure out a quick system of sorts for this. Not just counting volunteers, students, interns… but actually keep then looped into things, keeping them engaged, etc. One day maybe OFN-CAN will have a ‘volunteer volunteer manager’ who takes this on because it deserves that kind of attention. But for now, I’m just keeping a mail folder where I tuck in communications re: contributors, and then I’d have to go through those quarterly. Anyway - I think it is an important metric, eventhough we don’t have a system for it.
I like this - its a bit tedious - really be good if an instance had a designated person to volunteer to do it. It is a lot to go through the first time - grumble, grumble. I concur to ask people to start with 2017 data.
By the way - I never knew about pivot tables in excel - that is very very cool - thanks.
Hey @tschumilas, Sorry for the late reply, need to fix my notification settings. I know that here in Aus, Kirsten and Serenity and our devs put in countless hours outside their paid hours and I couldn’t really guess what that would be…Yes, i know what you mean about managing volunteers. Did you want to take the lead on prodding and reminding instances to fill this out each quarter? Are you attending the global hangouts? That might be a good place to introduce everyone to the spreadsheet and ask them to fill out their sections. What do you think?
I can put this onto the agenda for the June HO, and will remind super admis about it and try to get a group of instance leads doing this.
@CynthiaReynolds@MyriamBoure@NickWeir - can you suggest who would be the lead on the global data updates for your instance? And, is there a list of instance leads somewhere that I’m missing. I"m not sure I know them all.
Certainly @NickWeir - I’m just heading into the busiest week of my year with seedling sales and planting - can we schedule something first week of june?
From my understanding