Sophie and I are starting a work group about written consent, as part of the tasks of team governance.
Initially the idea was to take small decisions directly online, but with a transparent and clear process.
We have found a tool doing just that; it is specifically designed for collaborative groups, and enhables them to follow a sociocratic process, but online.
We would like to explore this platform further because it could also help us beyond small issues. We are getting more numerous, and it will get more and more tricky to make decisions at plenaries within the time available. And this tool could also help for that; for example, it makes it possible, to elaborate proposals and edit them collaboratively, and, ultimately to take bigger decisions online as well.
We decided at our last governance meeting that we need to explore this option.
From what I understand, loomio is open source and can be integrated into another plarform⌠We would like to know whether it would be possible to integrate it into edgeryders??
Maybe we could have a little chat over zoom to clarify the question and our need?
Cheers!
We at Edgeryders have known the Loomio/Enspiral guys for a long time. Richard stayed at my house for a few days then he was travelling through Europe! So, aware of Loomio, and I think those are good people.
On the other hand, I have a loong experience of digital tools for decision making, from Liquid Feedback to pol.is to Decidim. They are very difficult to get buy-in for communities. Also, trying to combine Loomio with edgeryders.eu would impose too high a technological debt on Edgerydersâ sysadmin. I am afraid the combination of the two is a hard no.
Of course, if Loomio turns out to be really important for The Reef, we can always move out of Edgeryders, and build our own Loomio-compatible environment. That is one big investment though, not just of money but of time that we direly need to scout for sites, wrangle mortgages etc.
I would say the first thing to do is test. Try Loomio as a tool for team governance for a couple of months, then you will know more about it. And then, if it turns out that we need it, then we need it, and we will get it one way or another.
Thanks for the answers (and for making it a post, Iâm never sure where to do thingsâŚ)
What does this mean? Could you explain?
Thatâs indeed where we should start
Moving out of Edgeryders definitely not the preferred option for now.
But if it were to be our choice down the line, why would we need to build our own? Couldnât we just get it? Iâve seen there is a fee for non for profit organization that makes it quite accessible (200euros once).
It means this: in most organizations, people hate it whenever you introduce new tools, or even when you replace old tools with new ones. This is because people are set in their ways, that kind of work, maybe not perfectly but they work. Then you change them by fiat, saying ânope, no longer good enough to vote by leaving a comment on the forum saying how you vote. Now you need to go to www.newwaytovote.com, accept the cookies, create an account, confirm your email address, create a profile, open the âyour votesâ menu, click on the name of this particular vote and then you can vote. Ah, and now the notifications on voting come from a different website. Look, we even get a shiny chart showing how many people voted for which options!â. Most people see this as an unneeded complication and will resist. If you are the organizationâs CEO, you can still introduce the tool, but what you get is abandonment: people simply do not vote as much anymore.
Exception: deeply felt needs when people come to you and ask for something to solve a burning problem. Even better is they start doing something new, and they hit on a really needed tool, so everyone adopts already. But these example are really rare.
Because it is time consuming, and creates technological debt: now there is one more piece of software that someone will need to update, will occasionally break, so someone needs to create a ticket, etc. For example, behind the curtains I keep Nextcloud updates (super easy, but needs to be done). And things break, like OnlyOffice now, so someone has to open a ticket and convince the techs in Latvia to look into it.
To make things more complicated, if you try to integrate a piece of software (Loomio) into another one (Discourse) you need to keep track of all the dependencies: the software libraries and other components that enable the two softwares to work separately, and work together. What tends to happen is that the whole thing becomes brittle and unmanageable within two years. This phenomenon is known as âbitrotâ.
