As you may have heard during the global gathering, Open Food France has handed over the “commercial” management of the Open Food software to a cooperative called CoopCircuits, and will focus on the production of open source tools and knowledge serving the efficiency and multiplication of short food supply chains.
With this in mind, we are going to start carrying out case studies of short food supply chains in France, the aim of which is to better understand the ecosystem, share good recipes, avoid mistakes - and make Open Food a key partner for project managers.
These case studies will take the form of - long - interviews with the managers of short food supply chains. We have written the accompanying facilitation guide, which is not intended to be strictly followed, but provides a framework for the discussions and will allow a certain homogeneity / comparability in case studies.
We were thinking that it might be interesting to have a common international framework/template for case studies, so that we could also relay inspiring cases from abroad.
What do you think about this idea? How do you find this guide? Maybe some of you have already worked on facilitation guides and could share them? Do you have any process ideas for sharing inspiring examples from one OFN community to another?
We would be very happy to discuss these topics with you, on this forum or via a call?
@NickWeir@lynne - Myriam has directly thought of you on these topics - but can you invite anyone who might be interested to this discussion?
Thanks a lot @Jen. This is all very interesting. We have already carried out several case studies in France : we will soon come back to you with a proposal for a structured output. We will then be able to think about a harmonized working method.
Hi folks - we did a project in OFN-CAN over the past 2 years where we ‘tech enabled’ online food networks in 4 different communities. We don’t call these ‘chains’ because we learned that a ‘chain’ (like a single food hub or something - quickly moves to networks using the OFN tools. (Indeed, I’d say that is the strength of the OFN platform). This is a brief report. It is redacted to remove some enterprise names and sales information at the request of the participants. One community asked not to be included in the report - so thats why this public version of the report only shares a summary of 3 communities. Each of these could be a longer more elaborate case study of course - and we are considering this. Here is our recent post on the project with the link to the full report https://about.openfoodnetwork.ca/tech-enabling-on-line-food-distribution/
Looks like there’s a lot of research gathering here across instances but not an effort to pool and synthesise from a global perspective. Or at least one that I can see yet.
Can someone let me know if this is happening in a particular place already or whether I can start that piece of work? The synthesis of region/country-based research into synthesized, global perspectives.
Thank you for your answers and sorry for not responding faster (I thought I would get a notification - but I had not activated the option).
In the coming year, we will be producing in France a large number of case studies and summary notes on various themes.
Maybe we could present you the first results of our research work via Zoom by the end of 2020 or early 2021. And this presentation could be followed by a working meeting where we could try to develop an internationally harmonized methodology for our research?
There is work thats been done to synthesize OFN-related research via the #research channel on slack. And there is an #research channel on this community where this could all go too (although we have not been very active there lately). @gen.shanahan has created an airtable for research on and about OFN, and I think a google drive too? Here is the convo from slack on that (I think - if I know how to do this right): https://openfoodnetwork.slack.com/archives/C9RLAHRF0/p1593177362060200
@tschumilas : thanks for the research channel : we will definitely post on this thread all the case studies we will do in France and will follow the discussions carefully. @gen.shanahan : thanks you for the work of OFN Australia. I’m just discovering Airtable - it will take me some time to understand how it works, but it looks very interesting Maybe we should also upload our work there?
Maybe if you do this @samuel.feller you will set an example we can all follow I think at OFN-Canada we have not been very responsible - and we have not been posting our work here. This is a good reminder to us. @dthomas@JessC Frankly - I forgot about the channel until seeing this post.
We’ll definitely take this opportunity to settle an example Our work will be in French, but perhaps we can translate summaries, so that you can follow our work and ask for details if certain things interest you?
I think at OFN-Canada we have not been very responsible - and we have not been posting our work here. This is a good reminder to us.