Product sync.

[cjoulain]

It was announced in the Convene Discord that during the next Testing session (11/13), there'd be a Product sync. The structure will be demo and Q and A.

The goal is to learn more about what features were worked on, what some pain points might be, and what's next. As someone who hasn't been as active this year, I'm trying to get up to speed on how Convene has grown. GitHub issues document releases and milestones but I wonder in what other ways we could learn about the motivations behind a product's evolution. Hopefully this helps with that. Frequency TBD.

[zspencer]

Thanks @cjoulain ! I hope we get to see you there and you bring your curious hat!

[cjoulain]

A summary of the 11/13 Product session:

Delivery company challenges

1. Small businesses use e-commerce solutions that take up 15-20% of cash flow (online ordering, plus additional fees for delivery)

2. Operating on a Net 30/Net 60 basis: a small business operates deliveries and sends out their vendor bills at the end of month (receives payment 30+ days later). The delivery company manages services for 45/60/90 days before they make a revenue.

Convene’s approach

• Create Marketplace where vendor has e-commerce tools; when orders are placed through this app, delivery fees go to the delivery company directly and product/service fees go to vendor directly

• What is the cost structure that is sustainable for Zinc and clients?

• Might want to hire someone (Zinc?) to do Community Support, high-touch relationship building, data maintenance, and who knows cooperatives

• Goal: in future, for tech costs to only be 1% of any small business. Many orgs spend 10 to 25% of their operating budget on products like Square, ToastTab (products more aligned with an extractive economy). Put more money into local orgs doing the work and not in marked-up service fees.

• For example, one guild is moving from Etsy because Etsy takes 15-35% (plus ad fees). This guild wants to contract with those with a high trust factor since many e-commerce companies are focused on getting a 10X to 100X return in investments.

• Delivery company feedback: Hope that what is being built in Convene Marketplace leaves room for verticals.

Demo

• Created menu for a vendor

• Added items to cart

• Checkout flow for an order is a WIP

Will there be a login? Is that burden on a merchant? Right now, it's on the delivery company or vendor. When a vendor updates a menu, the delivery company can ask someone (on Zinc side?) to do the update. Delivery company (in this example) has workforce development folks.

Sign in process requires email and then sends that email an OTP. Can be packaged as an app but not there yet. Could publish to the App Store in future. For initial build, done through (Desktop?) browser. As long as it's built in a mobile-friendly way.

Flow of app for different viewports: If vendor has app installed, it will open up their menu in the delivery company app. If not, it'll show them menu in their browser. Will give prompt to add app if that makes sense.

Having 1-2 Workforce Dev folks to perform data entry tasks and give feedback on what's working. Working on improving quality standards so with understanding this is in alpha mode.

Is this intended for one order/transaction at a time? Yes, intended for use for one order/transaction for one vendor at a time. There's a desire to cross-order and do multiple vendors in future and a switch to that is possible.

Does the delivery app company want (for order) two or three products with different customizations? Suggestion: Put in notes and will do best to respect customizations.

When an order comes in for a vendor in the delivery company app, it needs to be sent to them. What needs to happen to get two systems to speak to each other? Research required and knowing which vendors are most common (e.g. if 80% of current vendors use ToastTab). Some have API for integrating. Would rather integrate through their system (e.g. Square) and for that to happen, requires Point of Sale with decent API.

Next steps: Email or text confirmation for order?

Ordering platforms default to common gig economy platform like Uber Eats. One vendor has a pick up only vs. shipping option (with shipping option being Uber Eats). Example in Demo (Cafe Gabriela) was Square. Square has a well-established API. Shopify mentioned as something used frequently.

Is Convene associated with Open Oakland? Not in a while because of emphasis on open-source only work. If you're a worker-owned enterprise, you don't have to pay a licensing fee for Convene. Otherwise you do.

Other Questions

• Does this seem like an accurate definition for Net 30/60/90?

"When businesses refer to net terms, this usually refers to a period of 30 or 60 calendar days before the invoice amount is due."

Source: https://resolvepay.com/blog/post/net-terms/

• What are verticals? Is it the same as the definition here?

"A vertical market is a market encompassing a group of companies and customers that are all interconnected around a specific niche. Companies in a vertical market are attuned to that market’s specialized needs and generally do not serve a broader market."
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/verticalmarket.asp

• Are there two roles for use of the Convene marketplace? From the demo, it seemed like there was a login as a general vendor and also as someone with vendor management role (who can see manage products option)?

• Is Marketplace (and Convene in general) an example of B2B?

• What do you mean by Marketplace as a concept? Is it a way to make online purchases or is it something else?

• How do you determine which is a decent API? Guessing these systems have a per request made fee? Are these fees reasonable up to a certain threshold of users?

• What does the term workforce development mean? I understand it to be part of organizational policy towards hiring local workers and ensuring they have the proper training.

• What does building on Desktop but in a mobile-friendly way mean? How is that mapped out? For example, when I use a Desktop app on a mobile device, it's common for a smaller screen to be missing buttons (and not permit scrolling to that feature).

• What does the process for prioritizing Convene features look like?

• Does a monthly Product check in make sense or does quarterly seem more feasible?

[zspencer]

Thank you CJ! I really appreciate you taking the time to write this down and share it out!!!

[nirmalathapa]

Thanks CJ! I also have had similar question regarding the marketplace and thanks for writing it up here :)

[zspencer]

Does this seem like an accurate definition for Net 30/60/90?

"When businesses refer to net terms, this usually refers to a period of 30 or 60 calendar days before the invoice amount is due."

Yes! Exactly, cashflow is a really important part of any small business, especially one with payroll expenses! While organizations can sometimes get a line of credit from their local banking establishment using their invoices to smooth out cashflow, the interest is often quite high. Hence why both the Producer and the Distributor getting paid directly is a key component in Convene's Marketplace MVP

What are verticals? Is it the same as the definition here?

"A vertical market is a market encompassing a group of companies and customers that are all interconnected around a specific niche. Companies in a vertical market are attuned to that market’s specialized needs and generally do not serve a broader market."
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/verticalmarket.asp

Yep! Most vertical niches are poorly served by venture capitalist interests because there is insufficient demand to support the "Throw a hundred businesses at the problem and hope it works out" model. As a result, many verticals are poorly served by the current digital economic system. Montessori Schools are one of those verticals, as are local delivery companies.

Are there two roles for use of the Convene marketplace? From the demo, it seemed like there was a login as a general vendor and also as someone with vendor management role (who can see manage products option)?

At this time, there are not two distinct roles between vendor management or general vendor. All Members of the Marketplace's Space can manage the Products available on the Marketplace.

Is Marketplace (and Convene in general) an example of B2B?

I would say that the Marketplace is a feature of Convene that supports a Business-to-Business strategy for the Cooperative managing the Convene instance. Convene itself is not intended to be B2B; but it is the business and software model I'm most comfortable navigating and what appears to be the one that gets the most non-Zinc folks interested.

What do you mean by Marketplace as a concept? Is it a way to make online purchases or is it something else?

This is a great question, and I've used it to revise the primary Marketplace MVP Issue. I have now enumerated user stories for each Fauxsona (They're faux because we haven't done any user research). I can definitely imagine other user stories that elaborate on the different perspectives other kinds of buyers, sellers, and distributors may bring to the table. If you wind up doing any non-directed interviews with potential clients, I'd love to see your suggestions for other fauxsonas + user stories!

How do you determine which is a decent API? Guessing these systems have a per request made fee? Are these fees reasonable up to a certain threshold of users?

To me, a decent API means several things:

1. It provides reasonable, well-documented, reliable affordances for the use case we're seeking. For example, Square has APIs for Inventory. Toast has Menus.

2. It has an appropriate fee structure. Square + Toast + Stripe all expose APIs that supplement their core value proposition; and while they may or may not charge fees for particular API add-ons; the goal of the API is to better interoperate between their service and other services, and so they tend to be relatively low-cost (or free). Meanwhile, Plaid is only an API, so they need to make all of their revenue off API access fees. This may also be reasonable! In either case, Convene passes any API fees on to our Clients.

3. It is based on an Open Standard. As we and the community of open, federated technology standards grow I hope we'll have to do less and less interoperability with proprietary APIs. Unfortunately, there are not many open protocols for more specific use-cases just yet. But maybe we'll get to help drive them forward!

What does the term workforce development mean? I understand it to be part of organizational policy towards hiring local workers and ensuring they have the proper training.

Yep! There's also significant funding for jobs-training programs that hire entry-level software workers. It sounds like April has access to something like that for the agriculture industry as well. Generally a regional or topical coalition will engage in fund-raising to hire and train workers when labor is in short supply.

What does building on Desktop but in a mobile-friendly way mean? How is that mapped out? For example, when I use a Desktop app on a mobile device, it's common for a smaller screen to be missing buttons (and not permit scrolling to that feature).

Well, what this means practically is:

1. We try and design from a "Mobile First" perspective.
2. As we change Convene, we test workflows on smaller screens than the ones we are working on, and make sure it still seems like it's working well
3. We can package Spaces for deployment as iOS/Android apps using a WebView for now; and (potentially) native-specific implementations of Furniture.
4. As we get better resourced and more mature, I can imagine us layering in additional practices to ensure we are targeting entry-level mobile devices

What does the process for prioritizing Convene features look like?

Right now, I go through the 1.0 Andromeda Milestone and drag and drop issues and refine the todos/fauxsonas/etc. based upon my current understanding of what is most important from the folks I'm talking to regarding Client-Ownership. I would love to collaborate with Contributors interested in doing Client Development, Market Research, or User Research to help guide that process.

Does a monthly Product check in make sense or does quarterly seem more feasible?

I think 468 weeks is probably the right cadence, since we only get 2~4 hours of contribution a week. If we've got a lot to show, it may be great to do them more frequently! If we have less to show (for example, because holidays!) it may make sense to spread it out further.

What would it feel like if Contributors or Client-Owners called for a Product Check-In when they are feeling like it would benefit them? This one, for example, was called because both April and CJ wanted to see what we've been up to.

Hope this kinda answers all the questions! Happy to elaborate more or revise if you have clarifications about what kind of information you're looking for!

[cjoulain]

Thanks CJ! I also have had similar question regarding the marketplace and thanks for writing it up here :)

Thank you, Neer!

[zspencer]

My main takeaways from the Demo:

1. Marketplace still seems like the highest value thing we can do for local solidarity economy practitioners who are available to show up and provide guidance and feedback.
2. Right now, the logistical burden of updating stuff is likely safe for the local delivery/restaurants/grocer network
3. Building the Checkout Flow and splitting the payment between deliverer and producer is the highest value next step!