What is LocalFiber – Part 4

Choosing Our First Initiative

In ‘What is LocalFiber – Part 3‘ I described how we came up with a list of potential solutions from previously identified high-priority needs (‘What is LocalFiber – Part 2′). In this article, I will briefly describe how we choose our first community-based initiative.

The Decision Matrix

Once the solution brainstorming was complete I collated the list, grouping items under the themes education, processing, and marketing. This list was then turned into a modified weighted-decision matrix* styled survey using Google Forms. In our case the criteria for this matrix were:

• Personal Interest
• Ease of application
• Applicability to the community

These criteria were chosen to ensure that the final first-round initiative was something that the members of the LocalFiber community felt was interesting, do-able, and would impact the community.

The survey was then sent out to the LocalFiber communit and was open for approximately one month. A reminder was sent 2-weeks and 1-week before its closing. Approximately 1/3 of the community responded (a significant increase from the needs questionnaire)!

*A link to LocalFiber’s modified weighted decision matrix

Results from the Decision Matrix

The results were then tallied. I gave each criteria different weights. Being that this was our first initiative I wanted to be sure that each member had a personal interest in the final solution and therefore gave ‘personal interest’ the greatest weight (2.5). I also wanted to ensure that this initiative felt fairly ‘easy’ to tackle and therefore gave ‘ease of application’ the second greatest weight (2.0). Leaving ‘applicability to the community’ with a weight of 1.5. Once tallied, anything with an overall score greater than 30 made the ‘short-list’ to be voted on at the next meeting.

The Vote

LocalFiber’s Winter 2019 Quarterly Meeting was held on Saturday, February 9th. The meeting started off with guests from the HV Textile Project. After their presentation and subsequent discussion, we then broke for a quick lunch before diving into ‘LocalFiber Business’; which included voting for our first initiative.

Using Poll Everywhere the short list of potential initiatives was presented to the LocalFiber members present for a vote. (I chose to go with a ‘live’ vote this time as opposed to an email-based survey. This is because the folks who show up to the quarterly meetings are most likely going to be planning and implementing the initiative and it is important that they are invested in the initiative chosen.) Once everyone figured out how to vote, using Poll Everywhere* the votes were in and the first LocalFiber initiative “Creating Fiber-Related Classes for the Public” was chosen!

*There was a slight learning curve to using poll everywhere, but the consensus believed it was worth it, and made the vote more enjoyable.

Things We’d Do Differently

• In the future, we will likely choose more than one initiative (we went with 1 this time due to the number of other items on our collective plate, specifically preparing for the LocalFIber conference and organizing a steering committee).
• Give more detailed descriptions of possible solutions.
  • This is flexible and dependent upon how this first initiative progresses.

Links to this series ‘Identifying and Addressing Community Supply Chain Challenges’:

What is LocalFiber Part 1 – Creating Community-Based Solutions
What is LocalFiber Part 2 – Identifying Needs
What is LocalFiber Part 3 – Creating Community-Driven Solutions