Working with us

How organisations work with Clansurf to set up a community-governed node: what Clansurf is paid for, what the locality owns, and where the engagement ends.

Working with us

We are paid to design a node and train the people who run it, and then to get out of the way. This page is the practical side of that. The reasoning behind any of it is in the paper.

Email research@clansurf.com

What we can be hired to do

The radios and the people who put them on roofs have to be paid for, so it is worth being straightforward about where that money comes from, and about what we are and are not handing over.

We do not sell hardware. The gateways, the radios and the computer are ordinary kit that the locality or whoever is funding it orders directly, and they own it outright from the moment it arrives. What we are paid for is knowing which kit to order, setting it up, designing the rules the node runs on, and staying on the ground until the node manager no longer needs us for anything.

What we are paid for, and where it stops
The four stages of an engagement and the point of handover Four stages run down the page: survey the locality, design the node, install the hardware, then enrol providers and train a node manager. A dashed line beneath them marks where ownership transfers. Below the line the community runs the node, and Clansurf is on call only if asked. What we are paid for, with a team on the ground Survey who already produces here, which band the country gives you, and where a gateway can sit Design the boundary, the categories, the record, and the rules for joining and leaving Specify which gateway and radios to order, how they are configured, and the log running on them Enrol and train providers on the record, and a node manager who can run it without us ownership transfers here The locality runs it we are on call if they ask, and the arrangement can end whenever they want
Figure 1: The shape of the work is deliberately front loaded. Everything above the line is something a locality cannot easily do for itself the first time, and everything below it is something it should never need us for again.

Who pays for that varies, and the case worth describing first is a payment company, because it settles something left open earlier. We have no wish to be the ones settling anybody’s payments, and a licensed company already does that for a living. What a company like that lacks, when it wants to put rails into a place, is any reliable idea of who genuinely produces there and any locality that is already organised enough to work with. That is what the record is. They keep the licence and the money, the providers keep their independence, and we stay out of the money entirely.

The four kinds of partner this is built to sit alongside.
Who we work with What they bring What the record gives them
A payments company the licence, the rails, settlement providers who verifiably exist, in a locality already organised
A government or municipality funding, standing, access real production figures in place of pitch decks, and a place that keeps working through a crisis
A development organisation grant and programme money delivery they can verify without sending an inspector
A cooperative or trade association members and local standing a record their own members hold, with no cut taken out of it

Some things stay off the table, because selling them would undo the argument: a percentage of what gets traded, the providers’ data at any price, exclusivity over a locality, and the relationship between a local value provider and a patron.

Once the node manager can run the node without us, we are finished, and everything that was set up belongs to the locality.

Get in touch

If your organisation is considering a node in a locality, write to research@clansurf.com. A short note is enough to start the conversation, and we reply within a week. It helps to include:

  • who you are, and which of the partners above you are closest to
  • the locality you have in mind, and who already produces there
  • how the work would be funded, and roughly when
Considering a node for a locality?

Tell us where, and who would fund it. We reply within a week.

research@clansurf.com
Back to top