GOAT 2024 Workshop Sessions

Workshops will run during Unconference Session time slots, but require preparation by the session creator. This may include getting feedback before the conference, confirming signups ahead of time (ie you’re bringing hardware to share), etc. Workshops can range from user testing, education, to any sort of co-working / co-hacking / co-creation sessions! It’s your conference, your workshop!

YOU are responsible for your workshop logistics, and this is the place to get buy-in and prepare, e.g. if you need to bring X number of items for Y workshop participants.

Please post here so we know you’re thinking of hosting one.

Remember, we’ll schedule the workshops during the “unconference” timeslots live at GOAT 2024.

For any other sessions, return to the Program FAQ and find your spot: GOAT 2024 Program – GOAT

3 Likes

GOAT 2024 - Kid Goat Rodeo Venture Studio

A highly collaborative program designed to sharpen our questions and co-create our community learning agenda for organizations interested in the emerging Community of Companies delivering scalable services to the ag sector

Day 1 (and/or 2) workshops - 60-90 minutes with 2-3 25 minute sessions.
Each session - 5 minute enterprise presentation, participants meet, sharpen questions and collaborate on defining important enquiries for the presenters and for each other.

Day 3, Salon

Small group discussion to distill the set of well-defined questions into a community learning agenda.

Outcomes:

Company Presenters - understand the core questions they need to answer

Workshop Participants - gain new relationships, new understanding, practice question sharpening techniques, experience mutualism in action and co-create a learning agenda

Pre-Goat Action Item:

If you want to present a company case study, reply below with 1-2 lines and we will be in touch with guidelines and availability.

2 Likes

GOAT Session: Building the Future, Together: Enterprise Utility Team Program Update and Open Dialogue

@gbathree @DancinColleaga @collin @davidthomas

Hello innovators! Join us for a program update and engaging discussion with the EnterpriseTeam (ExCUE). We’ll be sharing our progress, challenges, and vision for the future. This session is about what our plans, but it’s also about how others (you!) could get involved, so come ready to share your insights, contribute to the conversation, and help shape the next phase of our journey.

60-minutes
Speakers: Greg, Drew, David, Collin, Dan

  • Introduction and Recap of Dweb & The Utility Team
  • The Proposal
    • Intentions & Vision Pre & Post dWeb
    • Main areas and objectives
  • Milestones, Challenges, and Progress
    • The Journey
    • Current phase: Shared language
      • Value Alignment
      • Company of Companies Inventory
      • Innovation Accounting (IA)*
      • How you can participate*
    • Future phase: Trial & Iteration
      • Company of Companies Organizing
      • Pitch Session
      • Program Sandbox
  • Discussion
    • How does this feel?
    • What do you think of the plan?
    • Ideas to broaden our participation and viewpoints
  • Thank you + You’re invited
2 Likes

GOAT Session: Unlocking Innovation: A Dive into Innovation Accounting and the Company of Companies

@gbathree @serviopalacios @collin @davidthomas

Hey everyone, join us for a hands-on exploration of Innovation Accounting and its potential to accelerate our Company of Companies initiative! We’ll be sharing the “why” behind this methodology, diving into the program itself, and hearing firsthand from those already engaged in the process. Come discover how this approach can fuel our collective success, explore ways to get involved, and contribute to an open discussion about shaping the next phase of this exciting journey. Let’s unlock our potential for impactful innovation, together!

What is Innovation Accounting? Check out this doc.

60-min
Speakers: Drew, David, Greg, Collin, Servio

  • The Who, What, Why and WIIFU (‘what’s in it for us’)
  • Participants share their experiences
  • Options for engaging in the program and process
  • Next Phases ~ get involved!
  • Open Discussion
2 Likes

MetaGOAT Workshop: Co-create a GOATherding plan

:goat: :seedling: In this workshop session, we’ll put together a plan for how we want to community to manage itself. Think little “g” governance, but more importantly, think sustainable community organizing processes. We want to make it easier for people to have a voice, stake, and place in GOAT future planning :seedling: :goat:

In the past, a core group of 4-8 volunteer organizers have performed all GOAT functions, with volunteers solicited in the immediate run up to and during the event itself. While we have managed to host and maintain the GOAT community since 2018, this is not sustainable or inclusive. We seek to establish a governance plan drawing on strategies proposed during the GOAT 2022 conference and community member discussions since. Examples include: prosocial facilitation, cooperative-like structures, and network governance, as well as analogous community governance models, such as the GOSH community council model. The GOAT 2022 output on this topic included a community articulation of a shared vision and a continuation of our 2018 community mapping effort to understand the overlap, conflict, and alignment among the goals of individual GOAT members and their organizations.

This session targets the GOAT 2024 Proposal - Goal 1, as supported via a grant from the 11th Hour Project , a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation.

This will be a 60-min session to discuss, create, and plan next steps.

If you already know you’d like to participate, please let @sudokita know.

2 Likes

MetaGOAT Workshop: GOAT Community Stewardship
:goat: :parrot: In this workshop session, we’ll put together a plan for how we want to broaden participation in our community. Thinking deeply about how to decentralize GOAT events, engage in local community actions, and reach out across space and time to connect our diverse organizing efforts. :parrot: :goat:

Prior GOAT stewardship involved ad-hoc outreach and organizing efforts to support non-conference efforts, performed by a loose network of volunteers. These efforts require significant coordination and collaboration among GOAT volunteers, and we anticipate the need to develop a strategic plan for community stewardship to share the burden and joys of organizing and outreach. Some examples of community stewardship activities hosted by GOAT volunteers are listed below.

  • Monthly community calls to foster ongoing community discussion on member projects, mini-community events, and other topics related to open agtech, including, community review of this GOAT proposal and community organizer hiring strategy. Virtual movie nights, virtual social hours, and even in-person local meetups to foster community well-being and friendships.
  • Hackathons to lend our development expertise to value-aligned organizations including: Bionutrient Food Association to develop accessible, data driven, location specific tools; USDA Agricultural Research Service to develop open access to data and tools resulting from public agricultural research; and The Organic Center to develop equitable, open source technical infrastructure for organic agricultural practices.
  • A traveling conference booth to help the food and agricultural community learn more about open agricultural technologies, research efforts and opportunities for collaboration, educational materials and other informational resources and so on. This includes flyers and demonstrations of tools built, maintained, and used by GOAT community members. GOAT representatives also look to learn more about how to support and connect with a diverse set of agricultural communities.
  • An ad-hoc crew of GOAT infrastructure volunteers maintain our web presence including our website, forum, document storage, chatrooms, meeting rooms, and servers! These volunteers have provided emergency support when our servers face downtime, perform routine maintenance, and generally ensure that technical bugs are anticipated, caught, and handled.We seek to provide more structured ways for community members to take on tasks, share institutional knowledge, and more efficiently and effectively manage our infrastructure.

Missing from our community stewardship efforts, and often discussed during community events, is the lack of capacity for concerted outreach and engagement with underrepresented groups. Through a more deliberate approach to outreach, engagement, and community stewardship, we hope to bridge the gap and improve representation within GOAT, including from underrepresented and historically excluded communities. In his reflections on attending GOAT 2022, John Bliss, a Maine farmer aptly describes this issue: “GOAT faces an uphill battle in bridging the divide between the farmer and the developer. Trust, the baseline for all relationships, will have to be a primary focus if the open technology community and that of sustainable agriculture are to find solidarity into the future.” (The Main Organic Farmer & Gardner, 2023 )

This session targets the GOAT 2024 Proposal - Goal 2, as supported via a grant from the 11th Hour Project , a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation.

This will be a 60-min session to discuss, create, and plan next steps.

If you already know you’d like to participate, please let @sudokita know.

2 Likes

MetaGOAT Workshop: Collaborative GOAT Roadmap
:goat: :national_park: Building on the GOAT Orientation Session and related GOAT mapping work. we’ll put together a plan for how we co-create and collaborate on actual FUNDED WORK as part of our pending and future GOAT proposals. :national_park: :goat:

Much of the feedback from folks who have been involved in GOAT over the years is that they have found community and connection through participation in our events. People and their organizations have found allies, friends, and even collaborators resulting in large-scale funded projects. However, there has also been an overwhelming call for action, coordination, and mechanism to work together. Over the years there have been several proposals on how we can move to action via GOAT, from creating a cooperative to provide member services such as access to shared prior art advocates; to connecting our community with others who are already engaged in allied grass-roots actions. This additionally requires taking a more proactive role in bringing in missing voices in agtech conversations, from farmers and land stewards, to underserved minority groups, youth groups, program developers, and more. Taking inspiration from allied communities, we seek to develop a set of concrete actions to foster co-creation of trusted, people-centered, ecologically-oriented, and open technologies for resilient agriculture and food systems. Inspired by the notion of designing for the pluriverse (Arturo Escobar, 2018), we acknowledge that our community is not a monolith and our roadmap must make space for our members to converge on different actions. An initial GOAT roadmap and manifesto was drafted at the GOAT 2022 and revised in subsequent community calls.

This session targets the GOAT 2024 Proposal - Goal 3, as supported via a grant from the 11th Hour Project , a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation.

This will be a 60-min session to discuss, create, and plan next steps.

If you already know you’d like to participate, please let @sudokita know.

1 Like

Yes, Kita, I’d love to come to this one.

1 Like

Yes, I’d love to come to this one.

1 Like

Hi all,
I’d love to host a session where I present my preliminary results on a food forest design canvas for companion planting support to get feedback from the community on what needs improving.

I also want to show the sketch of a larger research proposal I am building around the topic of modelling nature as a stakeholder where I am looking for collaborators from various disciplines.
I will update this post in a couple of days with more details but wanted to put the idea out there for scheduling purposes.

Warm regards,
Birgit

2 Likes

Confidential Goat Session: Confidential IoT

Overview:
This workshop explores the intersection of confidential computing, IoT, and distributed agricultural systems. As agriculture increasingly relies on data-driven technologies—enabled by sensors, connected devices, and distributed edge systems—ensuring these solutions’ security, trust, and scalability is paramount. This session will address the challenges and opportunities associated with certifying IoT devices and maintaining trust across large-scale agricultural ecosystems while safeguarding sensitive data through confidential computing frameworks. We leverage our previous work on AgapeCert (please look at this video [https://youtu.be/KHIupI2ast0] before the meeting).

Key Topics:

  1. AgapeCert and Confidential Computing for IoT Security.
  2. Challenges in Scaling Certification and Trust.
  3. Distributed Systems in Agriculture.
  4. Use Cases and Emerging Trends.

60-min

Speaker: Servio Palacios

Agenda:

  • Data Sovereignty
  • AgapeCert
  • Confidential IoT
  • Confidential AI in Agriculture
  • Get Involved
  • Opportunities for collaboration, research proposals, and businesses
  • Open Discussion
1 Like
  • Feed Your Community with SNAP Online

  • Session description

    • Want to be able to accept SNAP/EBT payments for your CSA? Motivated to increase access to your food for all members of your community?
    • Attendees of this workshop will learn how Hearty Roots Community Farm, a SNAP Online Certified Farm, has used the program to feed more members of their community through both CSA and retail sales.
    • Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of the SNAP Online application process and how to begin their application.
  • Learning objectives

    • Learn about the history and context of this major innovation
    • Understand the process for farmers to apply and participate
    • How farmers can use SNAP Online to feed more of their community
3 Likes

Workshop: How to Make Technology Equitable?

Current agricultural technology overwhelmingly favors large, consolidated farms, which operate with significant budgets, extensive resources, and a scale that allows them to integrate costly, complex solutions. However, small-scale farmers—often operating on slim margins and with limited technical resources—are left behind by this development model.

To overcome this challenge, experts from the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) have developed a set of Principles for Appropriate Technology, a framework developed after years of on-the-ground experience from extension agents who’ve worked closely with small farmers to understand what truly supports their success. The principles were informed by sustained relationships, real-world feedback, and firsthand observations of what works (and doesn’t) in the field.

The principles of appropriate technology are part of a larger project: a needs assessment of appropriate technology for small-scale farmers, developed by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and UCANR.

This workshop will challenge developers to create technology that is equitable and accessible for small-scale farmers, particularly those with low technology literacy. We will guide attendees through a self-assessment on how well their technologies align with these principles and have a discussion of how to implement these principles in the technology development process.

Finally, we’ll invite participants to stop by our table during the Demo Bazaar to dive deeper through one-on-one interviews to help us inform our Needs Assessment in Appropriate Technology.

This will be a 60-min session and ideally will take place on Monday or Tuesday before the Demo Bazaar

2 Likes

Storytelling as a lens: How can we use stories to restore and revitalize? What are the ways that tools and technology matter and how do they reflect what makes this work important to us and to others. How can we use this gathering to remix, refresh and strengthen our interconnection?

5 Likes

:purple_heart::purple_heart::purple_heart:

I am enthusiastically on board with this notion.

1 Like

I’ll be at this one :slight_smile:

1 Like

GOAT 2024 - Connecting Farms & Markets
An Open-Source Data Integration for a Sustainable Food System
(Response to Pie Ranch Project Concept)

We will outline a plan to integrate the farm management system LiteFarm with the online marketplace Open Food Network (OFN). This integration aims to streamline the sharing of crucial data like product information, certifications, and regenerative agriculture scores across the food supply chain. By enabling seamless data exchange, the project seeks to empower farmers, improve transparency for buyers, and promote sustainable practices. The plan involves three phases: establishing interoperability, expanding features and demonstrating value, and growing the ecosystem through broader integration and community engagement. [insert statement about sustainable and scalable business model] The Catalyst for Open Software & Systems in Ag & Food (COSSAF) is proposed to orchestrate this project, leveraging its expertise and resources to ensure successful execution and maximize impact.

@samuejao

Community Governed Organizations Workshop Proposal 1 of 2 - Tuesday
@Richard ng @Dianna Zeegers @Madelynn Martinier @samuejao
60 minutes

Title: Cultivating Community: Exploring the Community Governed Organization (CGO) Model for a More Equitable and Sustainable Food System

Description: How can communities grow while staying connected to the core needs of members? How do you effectively assess and share resources across projects and communities? In other words, how can we scale without breaking or losing fidelity to the diversity of needs, places, and goals of a community?

Join this interactive salon to explore the potential of Community Governed Organizations (CGOs) to transform the agricultural landscape toward just and equitable futures. We’ll delve into the CGO model’s core principles, explore diverse entity structures, and discuss its potential to address challenges like land access, farmer livelihoods, and food security. Together we will explore how CGOs can leverage technology, community ownership, and innovative financial models to create a food system that is sustainable, equitable, and resilient for generations to come.

Community Governed Organizations Workshop Proposal 2 of 2 - Tuesday or Wednesday

Title: This is how we do it! - The Way of (and beyond) the DAO and CGO’s
@Richard Ng @Dianna Zeegers @Madelynn Martinier @samuejao @anna
90 Minutes

Amongst a full moon and shooting stars on Amah Mutsun land in Pescadero, CA. a conversation on Transformational Finance opened up a paradigm that allowed participants to look into the future and envision an equitable world where knowledge and resources flow efficiently to the regenerators of the land. Where reciprocity and trust nourish and grow economic opportunities. Where communities govern and lead participatory processes.

Do you want to try it?

Part 1: The Experience

Learning by doing has been the mantra for building decentralized structures and in this session, we will participate in a simulation of participatory resource allocation, and do so in a way that illuminates the importance of developing a value structure, community norms, and communication patterns. Not only will we go through an actual proposal and voting process, but we will also demonstrate how different voting structures impact the selection experience and outcomes.

Part 2: The Debrief

Upon completion of the simulation, the group will engage in a debriefing protocol to capture elements of the experience we think are critical. This will illuminate things to keep, things to change, things to eliminate, and things to add as we consider the technology tools and human practices that will result in more equitable and effective participatory processes.

Part 3: The Deep Dive

In the last third of this session, we will dig into version 1 of the toolkit that is under construction to capture and share a model for other CGOs. Our vision is that this model moves into a beta test phase in the spring of 2025 and can serve as a resource for others complete with recommended structures, technology tools, data dashboards, case studies, and so much more. We need your feedback to advance this tool and process toward that goal!

Confidential Goat Session: Confidential IoT (Summary)

Agenda (45-min Session, Summary)
(Previous session ended after the scheduled time)

  1. Introduction (5 min)
  • Welcome and Session Objectives
  1. Data Sovereignty (5 min)
  • Discussion on the importance of data sovereignty in agricultural IoT
  1. AgapeCert (5 min)
  • In-depth presentation on AgapeCert and its implications for IoT security
  1. Confidential IoT (10 min)
  • Leveraging AgapeCert to generate Certified Data at the edge.
  • Examination of confidential computing frameworks applied to IoT devices.
  1. Confidential AI in Agriculture (5 min)
  • Exploration of the role of AI in enhancing confidentiality and security in agriculture via AgapeCert.
  1. Get Involved (5 min)
  • Opportunities for collaboration, research proposals, and business partnerships
  1. Open Discussion (10 min)
  • We discussed how AgapeCert and Confidential IoT protect privacy and ownership. Agapecert (the building block of confidential IoT) leverages Confidential Computing and trusted software. You obtain the derivative of the private data without sharing the data (a certified claim about the data). The verifier can be a trusted service provider and can be public. The trust model can be defined according to the use case—the participants agree upon the algorithm that is going to run in the private data and what derivative will be shared; similarly, the technologies applied to the implementation can encompass a mix of well-defined and secure technologies such as Confidential Computing, Homomorphic Encryption, Multiparty Computation, verifiable computation, and more.,

Additional Resources