RFF 2024 “Staff” and Focus Fund
UPDATE FEB 2024
I'd like to thank every single one of you that advocated on my behalf, advised, amplified signal, donated to the human, and shared what the project has meant to you.
The RFF community is overwhelmingly welcoming, uncompetitive, empathetic, and so down for a kind word.
The station infra remains funded through March. Thanks to everyone who embraced the pivot to the human, with less worry on a few basic needs, I'm hoping for the space to better define RFF processes, devolve tasks, contribute to better community organising tools and still grow community. I will at least have internet and one of my meds and a bit of fallback cushion for food to help be in the space to find ways to continue RFF.
I went too hard, not wanting to lose any project momentum and compiling of community energy.
I ask for your understanding as we work through better boundaries.
This may mean less availability and new initiatives, or having to push back or better clarify some of the many small things per artist or task that accumulate into big time as we've scaled.
Not overall less commitment, but smarter scope. Other than the single RFF account post last month, I will go back to not overtly asking for donations to the human. If you come across someone with the love or the means, continued time or material support offers will be very well received throughout the year.
The foundation is set, the ethos is strong, the community is growing. Let's get the balance better to sustain.
It was under incredible duress, with great consternation and only with the urging and support of wonderful RFF contributing artists that I eventually did pivot to a specific human donation ask. As in the original blog post I tried to make clear that the experiement went a bit too well making the project simply not viable as a “hobby”. There is so much more to do and it is already possible to be well over full-time volunteerism at present.
The options were: – shutdown immediately – let it degrade toward some other shutdown date – dump to some person(s) who had not really presented and expect them to continue full-time plus volunteerism. – drastically cut services, comms and response time across the board – pivot for some help to the human reluctantly materially and optimisitically also with time to attempt to make some space and community effort to sustain the community service
And the chicken and egg of no spoons or time to map out exact tasks to share, to not necessarily present or durable others, and be a full-time coordinator, have to pickup anything dropped and then do all the things as well was too daunting. Carrying on without serious reigning in on the amount of overall time and busy work shouldered to maintain current service levels was no longer and option.
Want to contriute some time collating information like release dates, help with artist onbaoarding and data maintainence follow up for future intiatives, mod some events' chat and more as we work towards some better containerisation of possible tasks to suppor the day to day care and feeding of the station and the continued building of multi directional community support?
The great thing about the project resonating and being a bit of a victim of its own success is YOU ARE ALL NOW HERE and the ripples we are all making out there continue to multiply!
It is amazing and an honour to have had any small part in being a conduit or rally point for any fraction of the comradery, collaboration and support flying in all directions out there around particularly art but also life in general.
Keep fueling creation and the joy in sharing and listening together.
Too many friends to tag but thank you for the insistence that this thing is worth doing and the human power is worth keeping from sinking.
The transmitter remains on as a beacon. For everyone that has felt community, felt heard, felt less alone or felt at home with RFF, thank you for sharing, thank you for being here.
Spread the word.
Stay awesome out there. Keep fedi weird. Keep uplifting each other. Support fedi artists. Art hard!
Kia kaha
-the hamster
END UPDATE FEB 2024