A Mobile Application for every Community
Development of a Mobile Application specifically for Communities, Community Management and Engagement
There are so many new communities coming together around the world today. After 5 years of research and finally after building a community, as the founder, I thought a great way to share our learned knowledge and research would be to provide a single mobile application that rolled everything that any community would need to know, connect, manage and calculate to be self-sufficient, together with some specific community based functions that your community may choose to adopt or consider on your community journey.
For the Kirra community, as an established community, and for our community to thrive we needed a way of ensuring that our community members have access to all the things that they needed. Gates, vehicles, doors, money, common property, resources, machines, facilities, weather alerts, community news, voting, policy and other information quickly and easily.
So, we decided to build an all-encompassing Mobile Application for Kirra. A Community Mobile Application as a one-stop shop for all the things that a community member might need in one convenient place on their mobile device, tablet, or desktop. As communities go, we are a relatively wealthy community and have a start-up budget into the millions of dollars.
We are at cross-roads in our application development.
Do we continue to fund the Community App internally, and sell the resulting application to the world for a monthly fee forever, or do we get that same community to demonstrate their interest in this development and seek to crowd fund the project, so we can make it freely available for all to use, grow and get inspired by?
We considered that we can always continue to fund the development internally. Therefore, decided to reach out to the world and see if it was of interest and would those communities, or individuals with an interest in this space have an appetite for this development, to the point they would fund its development? There is a third option, of course, those who put up, will get the application, and all future updates for free, and everyone else can pay for it. After all, our community still needs to see a return on the investment that we have already put in.
There are 2 stages to the consumption of the application, they are "What might we need" as a new community. Things like infrastructure modelling and calculators, and the "What we have" and need to do and use to achieve an outcomes as a function of the ongoing operation of the community. Kirra operates on the permaculture principle of "Fair Share" (we have taken it a step further, and see a fair share in everything, even something as simple as your access to a workshop machine in our fab lab or maker space) and we see these additional functions as making sure that each member gets their fare share, or has an opportunity, means and method of swapping their fair share to someone else for something of value in other ways to that person.
The word "community" means different things to different people. We appreciate that! So much so, that a community in the Kirra sense is a group of likeminded individuals coming together for a common purpose. Which is pretty much the definition of community. However, we are also aware that a community may also be a group of people coming together periodically to do things. Like a Book Club or Man Cave style machine shop or Maker Space. With its rich feature set, all of these communities will find value in the Community Mobile Application too.
What A "Start-Up" Community may need to consider...
These are models and calculators together with other essential information, specifically, in the topics of:
Solar Power
In this model, the considerations include:
Consumption Models and Calculators and Efficiency Loss Calculators (driven as either what would x sustain or how much is needed to sustain x)
Consideration for Climate (Using your area's historical weather records) and geo-location
Panel Sizes and Requirements
Grid-Tied or Off-Grid
Inverters, Chargers and Hybrids
Battery Storage - Primary and Extended Inclement weather Storage.
Battery Chemistry: Pros and Cons, Costs, reliability and Usability.
Mixed Chemistry constraints and models.
Fossil Fuel Generators and Fall-Back Scenarios if grid tied (ATS).
Taking this to the next level, additional calculators and inclusions would be:
Wire Sizing
Optimal Wiring diagrams to suit the Inverters and Chargers, Consumption, Distribution and Distance between facilities
Interestingly many of these are not considered during a design phase, but they can play a large part in the final outcome, and in some cases determine success or failure.
Water
In this Model, the considerations would include:
Types of water, fresh, recycled, grey, black and non-potable pond, creek, lake, stream water and other water sources.
Consideration for climate (Using your area's historical weather records) and geo-location
Grid-Tied or Off-Grid
Water Storage Requirements to suit the people's needs.
Consumption Models (driven as either what would x sustain or how much is needed to sustain x)
Storage Models
Capture/Harvesting Models.
Fresh Potable filtering, storage, pumping and pipes.
Non-potable water for washing and bathing, storage, pumping and pipes.
Calculators for additional elements such as fire fighting
Filtration Sizing and requirements together with water quality considerations
Taking this to the next level, there will be:
hydrodynamic considerations for Pumps, pipe sizing, elevation and Head Heights etc. for optimal performance and operation of your equipment.
Cropping and Irrigation models and needs
Food Production
This is a very interesting topic. We will examine a number of growing techniques, together with outputs and experiences in different regional climates. Some of the learning from our first two models using Power and Water can also be incorporated, specifically when we are using heating mats, fans and sprinkler systems to adjust climate to suit your cropping.
Some of the calculators and models, will consider:
Climate (Using your area's historical weather records) and geo-location
Estimated length of season in your region including last frost date estimate.
Seed Saving Techniques and Generational records maintenance - allowing you to grow plants that are continually improving within your environment and will become better suited to your growing conditions with each generation. Recording essential details for seed saving such as Plant Type dates, notes about growing, and any Filia information for hybrids and potential hybrids.
Gardening Techniques, including
Square Foot Gardening, back to Eden, Bio-dynamic Gardening, Companion Planting, Container Gardening, Conventional Gardening, Core Gardening, Hugelkultur Gardening, Hydroponic Gardening, In-Ground Gardening, Keyhole Gardening, Lasagna Gardening, Mittlieder Method, No Dig Gardening, Organic Gardening, Permaculture, Straw Bale Gardening, Succession Planting, Raised Bed Gardening, Ruth Stout Gardening, and Vertical Gardening
Amount of space required (driven as either what would x sustain and how much is needed to sustain x)
Types of crops that can be grown in specific regions (General) and by your selected Gardening technique or multiple gardening techniques.
Lifecycles, such as duration to fruit or harvest for various plants and species.
Cropping calendar - when and what to sow and plant, including quantities and succession planting quantities and dates.
Quantities required to be planted
Planting Cycles
Herbs and other apothecary planting
Mycology and Mushrooms
Companion Planting and Complimentary Planting
Aspect consideration and Seasonal Considerations.
Food forest planting including succession based on tree life cycle or yield and what is planted where on a map of your food forest.
It is immediately obvious how these three models can make or break a community. It is also obvious how these three models all tie into one another to create systems.
Community Functions and Operations
There are other things that a "Start-Up" community needs to consider, rules of governance, dispute resolution, voting, access to resources and the like. So, beyond the things that a community needs to start are the things that a community needs to flourish. We call these community functions and obligations.
One of the reasons that Kirra has been so successful, is because we treat the community "as a business", and our members are "business owners". This allows each member to respect and appreciate the opinions of other owners. Most importantly, it means that our members treat the outside world with kit-gloves as they are our "customers". Without any ability to escape all the costs associated with living in the world today, every community needs a regular amount of money coming in to cover those costs and taxes. This means that money is an essential part of any process. Even something as simple as capturing rainwater from the sky, requires pipes, filters, and pumps to make it work, which all cost money to purchase and maintain.
The Community Mobile Application will allow a Community Member to perform the following functions:
Access Areas and buildings
controlled using their mobile device and door swipes.
Enable and disable electric fences to access gardens etc.
Use community vehicles and workshop machines
This includes booking the machine and operating it. This also includes the opportunity for a person who wants to go shopping to join in the next time a member goes into town. Allowing the cost of the vehicle to be apportioned to the members using the vehicle for that journey. Kirra vehicles are available for all members at a fixed $0.38 per kilometre. This includes, the vehicle, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration and any sundry items, such as wear and tear, tyres (tires). etc. If 3 people are using the car to go on a journey to the same place, it doesn't cost any more yet allows each member to achieve the outcome for less than 13 cents per kilometre.
Members may need to book time on a sought-after machine in any of our workshops.
Safety training and machine operation certification is built into the app, so a member can't book a machine they are not familiar with or skilled in operating.
Log "Effort in Kind" contributions and Community Support
Tap-On and Tap-Off - If your community has or expects its members to contribute an amount of time towards community upkeep, this is a great way of ensuring that everyone does their fair share. It also allows the community to know at a glance, what jobs or tasks have been done, and what is to be done. Milking the cow needs to happen every day, the last thing anybody wants is a suffering cow because Bill thought it was Mary's turn and Mary though it was Steve's turn.
Work Schedule - Your members know what needs to be done where, and when. And most importantly, who is responsible to achieve the outcome.
Access, Collect and Spend Community Credits
to and from the Members Community Credit Account. This is a cashless alternative option for communities. Kirra operates on this system specifically because the community provides interest free loans to members who are in financial need. It also allows a member to sell or barter their goods or services, without needing to worry about cash at the time. The cash is there when they need it, by simply transferring an equivalent amount into cash and spending it as they wish to.
Report Issues and Maintenance Schedules
A stitch in time - Save capital costs and preserve infrastructure by creating an easy way for members and other community users to report issues. Safety hazards, machine malfunctions or something as simple as a broken fence. This allows the community to address issues early and save on further damage by neglecting an issue and catching it early.
Assign regular maintenance schedules for machines, general property and community assets.
Voting and Transparency
Provide an easily accessible platform for voting on Resolutions, and at General and Special meetings.
Allow absent members to view the proceedings of a meeting and participate with questions during live streams of meetings.
Allow members to access the meeting minutes once a meeting has concluded.
System Monitoring and Management
Most of the Kirra community service provision for power and water are wi-fi enabled and monitored to ensure performance and that the utility is meeting community demand, when and where necessary. Our systems are highly integrated to ensure that when something fails, we know exactly where it is and when it failed allowing us to immediately respond.
This provides an opportunity for the community to stay on top of these systems, by managing and monitoring systems from within the Community Mobile Application with aggregated data on usage, demand, and where systems might fail or perform poorly due to under sizing or overload.
This helps glue our community together as we all get to see and celebrate something as simple as a new pump coming online, as all the members can see the new data streaming in on their device. This provides a huge sense of achievement and allows the community members to see progress in real time.
There are more basic needs that are fulfilled here too. Image a community member wanting to turn a light on or off in an amenities block, the Community Mobile application allows them to do this through integration with existing smart systems.
Access to the Community Rules
Members who know and understand the rules that they all live by can avoid conflict before it happens.
Access Regulatory and Governance Documents
Members know how they can spend community money, where they can spend it and what sort of things the community will pay for, as opposed to what isn't considered good value or a persuasive purchase. They also know who can spend money or create a debt on behalf of the community.
Suggest Meals and Supplies required in the Community
If you have a shared dining facility, as we do at Kirra. You may like to offer your community a menu or some sort of daily specials. We provide free meals to all community members who participate in our "Effort-in-Kind" program as part of our "Fair Share" community obligations.
Community Supporting Community
When a community member is helping another member out in doing something, it's great for everyone involved to know that their effort can be repaid. With so much going on and so many interactions, we created a system whereby each member can repay, sell or buy time helping another member to do some tasks specifically for the member not the community as a whole. From a member perspective it is cheaper and easier to repay a work debt than disposing of the work debt and both are cheaper than selling one. It also means that our members are co-operative and do the right thing to help each other out with equality or may choose to get penalised financially. Of course, we all want to do the right thing, but sometimes, life happens. For example, if I am going away for a holiday, I might ask another community member to feed and walk my two dogs. This is time that they can call on me to feed and walk their dogs or help them do something else. If I don't want to help them, I can pay someone to take on that "Help Time" for me, or I can pay the member that helped me the cost of getting assistance from somebody else, which they could then pay in Community Credits to any other member willing to assist. Each option is more expense than the prior option. Another option is for a member to offer Community Credits to assist with a project or some work that they need doing.
Events and Calendars
Knowing what members require which resources and facilities at a specific time allows all our members to work together to create the most practical use of resources without conflict. Members that run paid events with external participants, like the community as a whole, want to project the best possible image of the community to those guests and visitors. Knowing what community facilities are booked when and by whom allows the best community presentation to be achieved. It also allows us to focus our community effort on those guests and visitors without questioning a why there's a bunch of strangers in our community.
Accommodation booking and Guest management
We provide and encourage outside participation in our community. People can rent our tree house, or container bunker home, stop at one of our fully powered and watered caravan sites for a night, spiritual followers can stay at our hermitage without cost, but it still needs to be managed as we also feed that person during their stay. We encourage all our visitors and guests to be an active part of our community during their stay. To this extent, the Community Mobile App allows us to manage their stay, schedule for additional meals and ensure that the guests enjoy their stay, by knowing what events they can participate in, what work schedules they may wish to be involved with, and it allows our child carers to be aware that some guests may be dropping Johnny off for 3 hours today and 6 hours tomorrow.
Community Guest and Visitor Engagement
Providing your community visitors and guests with a totally immersive experience will only keep them coming back for more. Providing an automated and all-encompassing itinerary of activities, an easy way of booking, and an easy way of finding out what the community has to offer, and where things are located would also be a really helpful tool allowing people to get the maximum from any visit, long or short.
Providing interactive maps
Lists of facilities
Access to booking forms and schedules of displays, demonstrations and workshops all without needing to do anything but tap and swipe.
If your community rules apply to guests and visitors, then this is also a great way of getting those across.
This is also an opportunity to get feedback from your guests and visitors about their experience
and offer promotions to upcoming events.
