Smartakartan Handbook

• Who we are and what we do
• What is Smartakartan?
• History
• Kollaborativ Ekonomi Sverige (KES)
• Our Team
• Welcome to the SK team
• Communication and working mode
• How to add an initiative
• How to cotribute code
• Volunteer onboarding
• Regular Meetings
• Decision making
• Beta version
• Picture Guidelines

Who we are and what we do

We are a mixed bunch of people who want a world in which we share and budget our resources. The mission is to bring together people and facilitate a sustainable lifestyle by increasing participation in the local sharing economy. We thrive for a sustainable and resilient society where people meet and cooperate.

We build the Swedish platform for sharing economy. Smartakartan is our flagship and is a map of community initiatives as well as the entry point to the platform. We are backed by the community association Kollaborativ Ekonomi Sverige. Besides others, it is a think tank that aspires after and explores solutions for tomorrow's community in an empirical way.

What is Smartakartan?

Smartakartan (SK) is the Swedish platform for sharing economy. It is KES' flagship and a map of community initiatives as well as the entrypoint to the platform. SK wants to make it easier for people to live more sustainably, by encouraging community, new meetings and access over ownership. We do this by showing initiatives and networks. On the map you can, among other things, find bike kitchens, swap groups, clothing swap days, free shops and digital platforms.We are backed by the community association Kollaborativ Ekonomi Sverige.

This is not the Yellow Pages or a list over businesses. SK is about people and communities that share. What we show on the map is highly curated and decided by our criterias that have been agreed between KES  and the participating regions.

History

2015

• Kollaborativ Ekonomi Göteborg became a official society and started to gather digital and local sharing economies in open map jams.
• A tech demo of Smarta Kartan was published as version 0.

2016

• Version 1.0 of Smartakartan (SK) was the result of a collaboration (idéburet offentligt partnerskap aka IOP) between the ideal society Kollaborativ Ekonomi Sverige (KES) (back then Kollaborativ Ekonomi Göteborg aka KEG) and The city of Gotheborg, administration for consumer- and  citizen service.
  

2017

• SK is nominated for the consumer price Blåslampan
• SK wins the Eurocities Award in the category “participation”

2018

• SK gets the opportunity to scale up through the national program Sharing Cities Sweden as a part of Sharing City Göteborg with funding by, besides others, Vinnova.

2019

• Version 2.0 is published and the code becomes Open Source
  
• Nominated for SKR's, DiGG's and others' innovation price “Lätt att sprida”
  
• Start of SK in Sjuhärad, Malmö and Karlstad
• Improved content by support from Business Region Göteborg
  
• SK is 2019's sustainable project in CIO Awards.

2020

• Smartakartan version 3.0 was launched in the spring of 2020 and has been funded by the City of Gothenburg and the national program Sharing Cities Sweden (SCS). SCS is part of the strategic innovation program Viable Cities, jointly funded by Vinnova, the Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten) and FORMAS. Business Region Göteborg has also funded sub-projects.
• Nominated for the Techarenan Challenge

2021

2022

• at some point Gävle and Stockholm joined
• Start of development of SK 4.0

2023

• Linköping joins
• First SK conference in Göteborg
• Version released as beta

2024

• Version 4.0 will be released for production

Kollaborativ Ekonomi Sverige (KES)

KES stands for Kollaborativ Ekonomi Sverige (Swedisch for Collaborative Economy Sweden) and is, besides others, a think tank that aspires after and explores solutions for tomorrow's community in an empirical way.

Smartakartan was born in this society is slowing growing out of it. Yet it still strongly shares ressources and people. Read more about the history in History.

Our Team

Contact details to all can be found in the Slack profile details.

Jonte.

• on board since 2016
• Co-founder.
• Best sales and networking person.
• With many ideas.
• So many roles in one person.

Laetitia.

• on board since 2023
• Keeps our focus.
• Business development
• Currently seeks for money and business models

Daniel.

• on board since 2022
• Currently a whole development team in one person. Rather by accident.
• Product keeps focus on the technical product SK.

Robin.

• on board since 2016
• Co-founder.
• Protector of our values.
• Provider of coffee and working space.

Veine.

• on board since 20??
• Innovative head of SK Stockholm which is run by local students

Issi.

• on board since 2023
• UX student from Stockholm

Tore.

• on board since 2023
• Team SK Linköping
• contributes some code sometimes

Drakryggen.

• An IT company that likes us.
• gifted some time to us in Summer '23
• had a Hackathon with them 10/2023
• Team
  • Johannes. Frontend
    
  • Tanja.
  • Madeleine. UX

Sena.

• on board since 2023
• Our social media specialist.

Mia Magnusson.

• Collaborator from KES.
• Specialist for volunteer initiatives.

Tord.

• on board winter '22/'23
• Temporary developer that started SK4 development.

Welcome to the SK team

This guide describes the onboarding from a volunteer side. For the SK perspective see Volunteer onboarding.

---

Hej and welcome to the SK team!

This guide will be your companion during the onboarding. We are a very organic team and many things might seem fuzzy. This handbook will guide you into through our djungle. Feel free to browse through the book to whatever interests you.

Here is your checklist for getting started at SK:

• You've already found this handbook, great! It's an alive book that is written and rewritten by all of us. Whenever you have a question and you think the answer should be written in the handbook, it's your initiative to put it in :)
• You will get access to our core tools, i.e.
  • Slack for async on-spot communication
  • editing access to the Smartakartan Handbook for persistent information
    
• Become KES member.
• Please add some contact details in your Slack profile, so that we can reach you.
• You will get to know Jonte, Laetitia and Daniel (→ Our Team)
  
• You will get a mentor/contact person assigned. Your mentor is there for you.
  
• Read about our communication. It contains many pointers to follow our distributed working style.
• We often meet Wednesday in the coworking space Llama Lloyd (short Llama:n). Join us :)
• Typically, we have standups Mondays and Thursdays 8:45 (last minute changes might be announced in #ke_om_smarta_kartan). Join us for increased immersion and team feeling.

Some notes about volunteering at SK:

• Our organic work lives from your and our all's experience, contribution and, first of all, agency. If you see that something could be improved or better tools be used: Improve things, reach out. Teach us.
  
• We strive for creating a great product of highest quality with stable progress. We'd love you to be clear and reliable in your commitments  and communication.
• In SK, volunteering can feel like working. While it is fun and allows us to be efficient, we have to remember that this is volunteer work. This is your spare time.
• If you're struggling or having mixed feelings about something, please reach out earlier than later to your mentor or your favorite member of our team!

Communication and working mode

About Communication

Communication, i.e. transported information, can happen via different channels with different properties. We differentiate between synchronous channels in which all communicating parties are interacting at the same time and asynchronous channels, in which communicating parties are not required to work on the communication at the very same moment. Examples for synchronous communication are personal meetings or (video-)calls while asynchronous communication is often text-based like mails, Slack, Issues or this Handbook.

Also do channels differ in their persistence: While personal meetings and calls only exist for this very moment, information in a Handbook can be easily found again. Text messages like Slack also tend to get old and are thus considered non-persistent.

— This page and the whole SK Handbook is highly inspired by the Gitlab Handbook about Communication.

How we communicate

Internal

Language

On-spot communication at SK happens in English or Swedish. If you're not fluent in Swedish, don't hesitate to ask for a conversation in English.

Persistent internal communication is always done in English.

The language of communication with externals depends

Remote working style

Smartakartan is a partly-remote initiative, mostly based and grown in Göteborg, Sweden. We mostly work independently syncing via Slack and have a bunch of regular meetings. 

Similar to other remote initiatives, we highly value asychronous communication.

Channels

We use different channels for different level of information shared and the sychronosity

Synchronous communication

• Llama:n i GBG
  • For meetings in real life, we mostly use the co-working space Llama Lloyd on Hisingen, Göteborg, Sweden. https://www.llamalloyd.se/coworkingspace/
• Jitsi
  • For online meeting, we typically use Jitsi. https://meet.jit.si/smartakartan
• Standups
  • Typically we have standup meetings Mondays and Thursdays 8:45 in Jitsi.
• Working Wednesdays
  • Often, we meet Wednesdays at Llama:n for co-working or meeting.

Asynchronous communication

• Slack
  • Slack is our main channel of short-lived communication. We use the namespace https://kollaborativekonomi.slack.com. This namespace is shared with many other topics in KES
    
  • The most relevant channels for SK are
    • #ke_om_smarta_kartan most general channel around SK
      
    • #ke_smarta_kartan_dev channel around the technical development of SK
    • #sk_ux channel for UX discussions
    • #ke_aktivamedlemmar general channel for the active KES team
    • #sk_ + some region. Channels for discussions specific to this client / region
• Handbook
  • You're reading the handbook right now. Yay! This is our Single Source of Truth containing all information of persisting relevance.
  • This is our all's document. Please fix any typo you find, clarify any confusion and update every piece of outdated information. Also don't hesitate to put in new content.
  • Our handbook is a very new piece of our communication strategy, but it'll be a vital and major part soon.
• Google Docs & Drive
  • Traditionally Google Docs is a tool that we use very often for collaboratively create document and store file. There are at least two drives I'm aware of and some more random docs.
  • Currently I don't know whether there is a good structure and dare to doubt this. This just documents the current state.
    
  • For the future I assume that a lot of persistent information (e.g. guides) will move into the handbook.
    • For documents or information that are created wrt. specific event, we'll see, whether we keep them in google docs and link them here or move some information into the handbook.
  • The drives and docs I'm aware of
    • KES Drive https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-JYAK6Z2JdkUGJqVU5qWExrZ28?resourcekey=0-mMEjhJCQcM7jNw1S0ecBpA
    • GDrive SK4 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15xD7PqmqnNJkf_RsjQqBVDT2auBkkfuN
    • Krav SK3 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MerETncgN8kq5oeXADo5M_3h4R3SN-02BW9_AoC-X7c/edit#heading=h.n8tpigfqj523
    • Drive of Chaos https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14ZR2LeJ2ii_a41APoXRLX6LhhhmUXYhP
• Gitlab Code
  • The repo where the code lives is https://gitlab.com/kollaborativ-ekonomi-sverige/smartakartan/
    
• Gitlab Issues
  • All communication around development of the software is done in issues in the repo https://gitlab.com/kollaborativ-ekonomi-sverige/smartakartan/issues.
• Trello
  • KES uses Trello for its workflow. Thus typically all SK tasks that are not related to coding are found in KES's Trello board https://trello.com/b/og5ER96p/kes-styrelsearbete
    
• Odoo
  • We're currently trying out an Odoo instance at odoo.smartakartan.se.
  • A lead gets promoted into an opportunity when:
    
    1. The partners have an intention to spend money
    2. We have internally decided our price tag to be proposed.
  • To sync Odoo and Google calendars, follow this tutorial, but use the following URI when asked for "Authorized redirect URIs": http://odoo.smartakartan.se/google_account/authentication.
    

 

External channels

• https://www.facebook.com/smartakartan.se
• https://www.facebook.com/groups/1485617481672115
• https://www.instagram.com/smartakartan.se/
• https://www.instagram.com/kollaborativekonomi/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/smartakartan/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/kollaborativ-ekonomi/

How to add an initiative

How to cotribute code

• We use Gitlab + Issues.
• Conventional Commits.
• Semantic versioning.
• Please send in MR, we'll peer review this.
• Good starting point: weekly announced Issues of the week and semi-weekly standups. -> [[Smartakartan Handbook/How we develop]]
• Integration Test
  • Zoom, Select, Go back

Volunteer onboarding

This guide describes the onboarding from the SK perspective. The guide for the volunteer is Welcome to the SK team.

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New volunteers need access to

• Slack
• editing access to the Handbook
• probably access to the Gitlab repo
• Present them in the #ke_aktivamedlemmar Slack channel.

The also should get a mentor / contact person.

The mentor has the responsibility to

• Reach out to the person proactively
• Be over-redundant in communication
• Send reminders
• Be welcoming to the person. e.g. presenting the person in #general
• Hand over agency. E.g. add something to the handbook. Write interesting message yourself.

Regular Meetings

This document describes the different types of meetings we have. For our general remote work mode checkout Communication and working mode.

Standups

We meet semiweekly on Mondays and Thursdays 9:10 in our Jitsi room https://meet.jit.si/smartakartan for quick standups. A log is kept at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FCrqONkAFjCOSDNcaeFSuzNmjv2noZzsizSfErYABzg.

Working Wednesdays

Often, we use Wednesdays to meet in person or co-work.

Styrelsemöte

This is the monthly/biweekly? meeting of the KES board for discussing the current affairs.

Styrgruppmöte

This is the semianually? meeting of SK's customers for discussing the future direction.

Årsmöte

This is the annual KES meeting with all members.

Decision making

Decision can be made on several different levels.

Operational day-to-day decisions can be taken by any volunteer and should be discussed in a small team (Wednesdays is a great occasion for this) and at least presented in the standup.

Bigger decisions need to be signed off by the KES board in a styrelsemöte.

Decision regarding what SK is needs to be discussed with the styrgrupp.

Decisions that touch KES' identity need to be taken in a annual meeting.

Beta version

Noteworthy changes:

• Reworked curation panel
• Real-time search

Picture Guidelines

• Take photos in landscape mode and that it can be cropped as a square.
• Always ask if it’s ok to take pictures. Tell the people photographed that they will be on the smart map. Ask for their names for GDPR purposes.
• The best photo is a photo of the place from outside with smiling volunteers in the door. Second best no smile, third best no volunteers. :)
• Don’t take pictures of kids faces, but it’s always good with anonymous kids in the pictures.