[Workshop] Governance toolbox to improve our projects

[how]

THX workshop - organization

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• Forum thread: [Workshop] Governance toolbox to improve our projects

A tentative framework toolbox

Tentative de boîte à outils d’infrastructure

Dynamics

Dynamiques

Self-Organization through transindividualist dialogue and practice

Autonomie grâce au dialogue et à la pratique transindividualiste

Conversation enables self-reflexive, iterative, long term, historical and organic knowledge building.

we use the space/lab as smallest common denominator, that substitutes the feeling of belonging through sharing labels (race, class, gender) with the feeling of belonging through sharing a space.
This implies that the space/lab needs to constantly checks its relation to commonly acknowledged social “labels”, see below, constantly check liminal/boundary spaces

Solidarity as collective work - solidity of equivalences, presence of Core

La solidarité comme travail collectif - solidité des équivalences, présence du Noyau

Just wanted to mention it begins with your idea and my believe is:
As more “independent” your project is as more collective it becomes, so my wish:
Do not do clones of commercial products.
Question: Do you know places where OpenSource ideas and people come together to work on the same project? FOSDEM / CCC / MozFest / …

Independent is a term that needs to be clarified, the condition of not cloning commercial projects is essential, but also the transversality of working along different activists/non activists domains, the organizations cited above seem to comply quite easily with liberal model, I am not sure it is possible to change anything from there.

New people bring in questions and usually want to re-negotiate rules, this is why we regularly re-vise and re-negotiate what the collective work is about. If there are more activists in the chair, our program gravitates towards activist events, if there are more artists, we use artistic methods, if there are more tech-enthusiasts we do more open source stuff.

With intra-action and inseparation, considering “objects” becomes a matter of transitional way to practically exchange ideas, concepts, to enable a common use of the language; therefore the re-negotiation should keep into focus the actual singular individuation that the collective has been taking: forking^[1] might signal incompatibility – cf. Elinor Ostrom principles of managing commons.

Solidarity includes intra-action but goes beyond it it implies active research of invisibilised fights, I always have this flyer on my desk to remind me daily of this:

Do not feel disempowered when lifting up one’s eyes and understanding the structural intrication of causes, we are here together.
Solidarity also implies taking risks at the capacity that one can, engaging in a non condescending way with reality, cultivating a confidence in our collective agency and one’s own capacities.

Praxis of Care - framework defining Core coherency through times

Praxis du Soin - Infrastructure définissant la cohérence du Noyau dans le temps

For Funkwhale, we’ve been encoding our values and goals in two documents:

• our statutes as a high-level overview of our long-term aspirations, constraints, values and organization
• our roadmap: with short or medium term, project-related goals and priorities

Common time (accepting paradoxes) ::

Temps commun (accepter les paradoxes) ::

• Trying to bind common physical time to online preparation and documentaion.

• Associer le temps commun physique à une préparation en ligne et documentaire.
  ???
  Frequent virtual meetings e.g. W3C Social Community Group meetings

La caractéristique du temps commun est de nous sortir de la linéarité du temps commercial, un temps en paradoxes: un temps de production et sans enjeux, ensembles et non contraints, respectant et libres, communicant et concentrés.
Le temps commun n’est pas seulement le temps de rencontre physique, iI peut être un temps de rencontre synchrone ou asynchrone en ligne,
Le temps commun est inséparable de l’intra-action.
Le temps commun est ce sur quoi nous construisons, c’est là que nous nous nourrissons que nous comprenons la nature de nos liens.

Not leaving traces

Ne pas laisser de traces

Leaving traces and structured information as important material for other to take over the process.
Laisser des traces et de l’information structurée comme un matériel important pour que les autres puissent reprendre le processus.

Not leaving traces as a way toward inclusion of diverse, sometimes incompatible perspectives; as opposed to leaving traces as a way to delineate political position (cf. Jacques Rancière, Le partage du sensible)
Leaving traces as encouragement for difference to join copy reproduce, address and de-construct what seems incompatible.

taking the time to question processes and Core

Prendre le temps de questionner les processus et le Noyau

At Funkwhale, statutes and roadmap are updated on a regular basis, and this is encoded in our statutes:

• The statutes are updated on a yearly basis, through general assemblies of the collective
• The roadmap is updated on a quarterly basis to reflect the aspiration of the community

Governance vs. government: governance has a cybernetic connotation, government has an essentialist tone, in that it fixates a model and iterates from there… Government’s premise is ethics; governance premise is activity?

At Thx it feels that we are in the process of clarifying what is the core, by core I understand both a set of persons and a set of ideas.

self organization based on consent and care

Autonomie reposant sur le consentement et le soin

This implies having many entry points that are accessible from different sensitivities looking around taking a step forward when it feels necessary but also silence as a support or acknowlegement.

bond over empathy circles, praxis of collective help

Se relier dans des cercles d’empathie, praxis de l’aide mutuelle

Those circles are an ever existing human practice that has been chased along history, because it is the way people build agency. Those circles exist everywhere if you look for them, sometimes they are not easy to find at first, but once you got one you often can thread many, do not give up.

applied workshops, emphasis on group solidarity

ateliers pratiques, emphase sur la solidarité collective

To be done

constant checking of boundary issues

vérification constante des limites

For Funkwhale, we used a combination of:

• A code of conduct (based on the contributor covenant)
• A moderation comittee, responsible for enforcing the code of conduct

In SocialHub, we decided to postpone the use of a code of conduct, replacing it with a well-being team, explanations here:

• Community Well-Being - SocialHub Policy - SocialHub
• https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/adopting-a-code-of-conduct/100

We try to generate a safer space at Mz* Baltazar’s Lab.
By encouraging women*, non-binary and transfeminist participants it aims at generating a culture of fearless making. An exclusively environment that fosters creativity, activism and provocative thinking.

It might be nice to apply for grants to build things like

• a diversity fund to have somebody to create awareness in the countries we do not reach now
• a travel fund so that people from african, oceanian or asian countries could attend the US/EU-centric events
  Some ideas also in SocialHub and please add yours by clicking “Edit” :
  Community
  Projects

transindividualism dialogue between separation and gathering

dialogue transindividualiste entre séparation et réunification

Multilogue is sometimes used for conversations that are many to many, but dialogue is not bounded to 2 persons, it implies somehow a sited conversation, something that you can come back to. Does transindividual dialogue means dialogue that constructs our subjectivities how do we make it happen how is it different from common time.

acknowledging blockages together and sharing resources

reconnaître les blocages ensemble, partager les ressources

minimalist daily documentation to provide stigmergic packages

documentation quotidienne minimaliste de traces stigmergiques

in-betweens (resolving paradoxes) :: leave traces

L’Entre-Deux (résoudre les paradoxes) :: laisser des traces

emanations of selves on minimalist canevas

émanations de l’Être sur un canevas minimaliste

acknowledging activity of the individual AND the collective

reconnaître l’activité de l’individu ET du collectif

For Funkwhale, one of the approach we use here is to provide summaries of collective and individual work (when it’s relevant to the collective). This is done by:

• Publishing regular blog entries to reflect the activity of the community and dive deeper

• Having public or semi-public discussions on forums, chats

• validate and fixate decisions using community votes

• Publish regular updates on social network (Funkwhale (@funkwhale@fosstodon.org) - Fosstodon)
  e
  Relevant tools:

• Loomio: forum and voting tool

• discourse: forum for “civilized discussions”

• Matrix: decentralized chat system

• Delta Chat: decentralized chat system

using stigmergic packages to iterate new common time Core

utiliser les traces stigmergiques pour itérer sur le Noyau du temps commun

Note sur le temps commun

Au-delà d’un temps partagé, il s’agit d’un temps non-linéaire de rencontre, de synchronisation transindividuelle. Une différence avec un «temps partagé» serait qu’une recontre dans un bar, dans la rue, dans une conférence ou même le temps passé avec des co-voyageurs dans un train ne fait pas nécessairement communauté ; cependant le «temps commun», hors du temps linéaire, approfondit une relation commune, générant du collectif transindividuel.

Eventually, traces left for others to pick (“stigmergic packages”) activates internal resonance of the collective.

active documentation for tech solutions/issues, bibliography and glossary

documentation active pour problèmes et solutions technologiques, bibliographique et glossaire

• focus on the resolution of (concrete) problems rather than engaging in a solution space that already dismisses the unknown
• favor exemplarity – where the example has a value in itself to point at invariants, at some universal that can be discovered/understood from the singularity, not from some abstract idea.
• facilitate collective iterations over time
  • runbooks offer a good approach: they’re hands-on, based on concrete use-cases to apply a recipe; yet, runbooks can only share repetitive, automatable tasks, not so learning materials beyond basic actions.
  • Consolidate from conversation to wiki+comments to FAQ materials; always keep the conversation open so that revisitation can happen

collective engineering of Core yard sale

entretien collectif du vide-grenier

?

tech references for use in coordination and inclusion

référecences technologiques pour la coordination et l’inclusion

votes && constraints

votes && contraintes

Votes should be of last resort: rough consensus (“we rejects kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code”) and especially an open conversation enable agonist spaces to unfold the complexity (and paradoxes) of the collective.

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1. forking means a divergence; sometimes, the divergence is temporary, and later code is merged back into the original process. ↩︎