Title
Lavender: Coordinating Digital Nomads for the Multi-Polar Future
Team member names
- Kenneth Bruskiewicz
- Wesley Finck
Short summary of your improvement idea
Digital Nomads struggle to build lasting connections due to travel. The Lavender protocol bridges the gap by synchronizing itineraries through recommendations based on shared travel experiences, fostering a supportive “flock” while respecting individual journeys.
What is the existing target protocol you are hoping to improve or enhance?
Digital Nomads rely on fragmented social media (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) for recommendations, lacking a central source of trusted travel experiences (cultural tours, co-working spaces, fellow nomads). This forces them to rebuild trust from scratch at each location, wasting time and effort.
What is the core idea or insight about potential improvement you want to pursue?
Existing platforms do not have a “shared memory” that lets nomads accumulate knowledge. The Lavender protocol leverages “travel journals” created by digital nomads to build a shared net of experiences, helping to reduce the effort and risk involved in planning travels to new locations.
Nomads benefit from collective knowledge and trust networks, making travel planning more efficient by providing insights on destinations, co-living spaces, and potential new acquaintances based on peer recommendations.
Lavender facilitates interactions within the nomad community, encouraging meetups among nomads in the same region and offering personalized recommendations for authentic experiences and connections based on trusted sources. It emphasizes privacy and safety, implementing technologies like differential privacy and federated learning to protect an individual’s location and preferences, while fostering community through the sharing of stories and adventures coordinated by Lavender.
What is your discovery methodology for investigating the current state of the target protocol? Eg: field observation, expert interviews, historical data analysis, failure event analysis
- Field studies. Direct immersion in nomadic communities to observe and understand their lifestyle, focusing on their use of digital platforms for travel and connections.
- Gap analysis. Evaluating current platforms used by nomads to identify shortcomings and areas for improvement, comparing them against the ideal support system for nomads.
- Community consultation. Engaging with digital nomads through interviews, forums, and surveys to gather insights into their needs and desires, ensuring the Lavender protocol is well-tailored to the community.
In what form will you prototype your improvement idea?
The prototype will consist of a mobile app and a dashboard. The mobile app illustrates the transactions that the Lavender protocol empowers between nomads – vouching for experiences and each other, and location syncing. The dashboard imagines the protocol at ecosystem maturity using maps, visuals and model controls. It is a sandbox for the “travel agent” system that sets up adventures based each other’s journals.
How will you field-test your improvement idea?
- Demo. The prototypes will be put in the hands of nomads throughout the protocol’s development.
- Work with indigenous network. Digital nomads bring capital to developing nations and local communities. Access to an indigenous community-building network in partnership with Professor Manuel Piña Baldoquin from the University of British Colombia for input on how Lavender could facilitate responsible cultural tourism that evades gentrification.
Who will be able to judge the quality of your output?
- Nomad network. Feedback from a group of thirty experienced nomads on the protocol’s functionality and community-building capabilities.
- Co-living spaces. Input from two co-living spaces and an architect like Marta Kluk on how the protocol fits within co-living ecosystems.
- Indigenous network. Evaluations from indigenous partnerships, including insights from experts like Professor Manuel Piña Baldoquin, on cultural sensitivity and impact.
How will you publish and evangelize your improvement idea?
- The federated learning implementation will be open-sourced. Candidate datasource implementations include P2P DHTs Ceramic or Holochain. Holochain has an emerging ecosystem of community and economic flow modelling based on the Value Flows framework.
- Case studies will be published as to illustrate how the protocol coordinates digital nomads and indigenous communities as a form of cultural transfer.
What is the success vision for your idea?
Lavender sets the foundation for an ecosystem that can go beyond nomads. As it grows, and as communities get involved, it becomes to find their “goodness of fit”. Additionally, the privacy-first model sets illustrates how smart cities could interact with their inhabitants: where opting into sharing is directly proportional to a return in direct impact on a community, and serendipitous human connection.
