How EdgeRyders has Changed

[noemi]

The Questions

I hadn’t forgotten this post, yet it is a very weakened position that of the accused, so bear with me. I’ve stated this before, where there isn’t trust chances are we won’t solve anything, but anyway… I still hope we can meet somewhere, at least halfway.

I don’t know if the Legals page (re-positioned in the main menu) answers some of your questions (1,2), or similarly the newly started discussion on content licensing (for 4). Or if you even acknowledge that. There’s no harm is pointing stuff out (the Legals, or many of the like pages, got lost in the various moving around of stuff on the site, you know how it is), just like there’s no harm in fixing it in good faith.

Over 2 years, next to no effort has been made to expand the board, or open out the governance structure - I think this is a major contributor to discontent on the part of those who view LBG as wielding too much power.

Lote3 session Hire yourself? to keep the doors open for anyone to bring in stuff they care about - including another company stewarding and helping grow the community - sharing costs, responsibility, resources and “power”, whatever you mean by that. Aside from that, the company is so small, what promises can we make if we don’t even know if it’s viable or not, yet? What stops others from proposing new governance structures, or improvements to this one? I don’t understand where the friction is.

What about the argument documenting transparency efforts? It seems to me that one is stronger than power “perceptions”.

Who defines the meaning of ‘community’ on EdgeRyders? (There has been a continuous shift between representing LBG and community. LBG directors consistently fail to represent the company viewpoint as unique and not necessarily the same as community)

We know already from past discussions that the effort to define “the community” in one unique way is futile (search for “governance” or Dante’s threads in particular where we clearly disagree).

“consistently fail to represent” is harsh, even for you since you’ve been around, we worked together and you bring this up now… I can only say, where I’m concerned, that if you point me to where I wrote something you disagreed with I will re-consider or change my formulation.

From someone building community, there is preference for an inclusive language pointing to what unites us- the story of we versus I or you in community building - as opposed to positioning ourselves through differentiation. Yes, the “we” is increasingly abused elsewhere for reasons we know, that doesn’t make Edgeryders guilty in its intentions, just because.

“EdgeRyders has increasingly begun to feel more and more like an agency primarily focused on financial interest - the core drive seems to be focused on generating revenue - projects that don’t appear fundable suffering at the expense of those that are. With things such as LOTE being seemingly discarded because they didn’t generate the necessary sales environment.”

I’m sorry if it feels like this to you personally. Focus on finding resources is not the same as generating revenue for the sake of revenue. Lote hasn’t been discarded, I completely disagree with the way you make it sound. Who ever stopped anyone from building Lote or why building it becomes a demand you make from ER LBG is beyond me… you know we did this together, you know it’s a community effort, you know that we are open to ever new formats, and you don’t know it’s not happening this year (on the contrary). What gives?

“The person who does the work calls the shots” as the primary modus operandi under which ER functions - this seems to have been repeatedly contradicted in recent months - with calls for consensus". Again, “repeatedly”? no idea what you mean, in all honesty. unMonastery related?

“In the past 6 months I have witnessed this clause be completely disregarded, as if it were never written - meaning that there is currently no mechanism in place that ensures protection of abuses of power; this is a problem. Was this ever written into the Articles of Association or have any legal standing?”

Legal standing? Hm, not that I know of, @ArthurD can confirm. The idea I think is that if we in ER LbG operational go cuckoo, the community will walk away, and there will be nowhere to move forward. The fact that people in the board disagree doesn’t mean someone is vicious. Asta and Vinay should be in a position to say if they viewed ER LbG operational as being abusive to the community. Let’s make an effort not to overlap personal issues (where’s there’s two sides to every story) with Edgeryders endangered.

[bembo_davies]

still in the confessional

Thanks Noemi;

I have been distraughtly following at a distance – it seems the kids will destroy Edgeryders, and we’ll all fall into glorious limbo.  This is criminal.  It is also pandemic.

I appreciate all attempts to heal things but I think we ignore a fundamental truth: human beings are not always at their best on-line.  Great, heartfelt effort gets poured into our work - little gets heard.  You will have spent so much more time sculpting your letter than any of us will spend in reading it.  At best, over-exposed minds will scan it for junctures where we can paste our already formulated opinion.

In the unMon I’ve accused us of ‘Living in Our Laptops’.  I am also guilty of this: believing somehow in the value of the pure word - however, this doesn’t carry.  Turning rational thought into text to be placed on the platform is not communication.  Until other people absorb and can champion the ideas, it will take ages to reach any congruent use of terminology.  In the meantime we flounder.

In the ER we should know this: the legendary ethos of Strasbourg was about meeting in the flesh to explore the tools of Social Cohesion.  The unMonastery was a response to this desire.  When we embrace the replacement of human interchange with documentation on a machine something is not completely thought through.

Apparently I don’t see the half of the growling and chest thumping as many things go on in the secret channel which only a select group of ER veterans can access.  This puts some of us at a disadvantage in trying to fathom what is going on.  That I should be excluded from the inner circle is a choice of the inner circle, but that which surfaces is symptomatic enough to document that all is not well.   

My working premise is always that people are doing their best at all possible times; any discord or conflict is then a symptom of real or imagined pain:   Ben’s petulance overshadows the principles he argues;  Nadia declares herself ‘not happy’ and keeps her head down.  An unConfessional was launched: half a dozen people stood forth as potential father/mother confessors: no one had anything on their conscience  –  My (perhaps ceremonial) entrance https://edgeryders.eu/en/comment/16579#comment-16579 was met with a request for more depth, https://edgeryders.eu/en/comment/16650#comment-16650 and then a mysterious silence… as if I had clumsily broken the very agent of our renewal.   David Ridge offered to engineer something, likely felt rebuffed and even tried from afar, ( though he surely knows enough not to offer even delicate diagnosis of other people’s interactions without spending hours of in the same room generating points of joyful understanding.)  So strident did some of your posts read that it was hard to believe they spoke with your voice.

I have been trying to make my contribution for over two years, it is only intermittently that anyone listens.  (both on the ER and in the unMon.)  My point of retreat after my post-LOTE entry  (Nearing the Edge) that sought to renew the Edge we choose to inhabit https://edgeryders.eu/en/lote4/nearing-the-edge  provoked nothing but a pat on the head,  (or maybe like so much on the platform it simply vanished beneath the sheer volume of multiple tracks,) has been to recycle most of my post-Matera writings into a 22 page document of my grumpiness — chastising and cajoling those horrid unMoaners to work more strategically.   http://discourse.unmonastery.org/t/the-unmon-wanderings-notes-for-historians/39

One option is to give up.  Some of us are not programmed to support this option.  Instead, I feel I have to put myself forward as a Guardian of the Edgeryder rank and file.

Demographically, I have felt that the grumpy elder anglo bloke quota was well covered by Arthur and Vinay.  If Vinay is no longer desirable for some reason, and if Arthur follows him in solidarity  - I should replace them given my long service and unique skillset.

When the question: Why I cherish the unMonastery? was posted, I had an impatient response.  It felt as toothless as all those group tweaking exercises.  Upon reflection, group tweaking is better than vacuum packing.  In internal discussions in the unMon deliberations some of the younger crowd of recent arrivals have dismissed ER as a foreign, non-comprehending irritant.  I have consistently countered this; putting myself forth as a dedicated Edgeryder.  This remains the case.

The Strasbourg gathering was major:  great brains, great ideas, relatively little flakiness.

I have not followed every detail of the ER evolution.  For me it has been enough that the core key of Social Cohesion Research - Early Warning Division embodied all that I have worked for for forty some years.  With projects such as : The Gods of Money, Institute for Non-toxic Propaganda, Future Protection Agency, Den Multinationale Scene and Society for the Promotion of Human Rites – not even pompous, silly names like Edgeryders and unMonastery could keep me away.  Working on Social Cohesion is why I care about Edgeryders.

We, the general membership, have never been informed about the divorce from Strasbourg.   I asked Nadia about it once; she gave the impression that it was a case of almost personal pique.   As you point out so well in your letter, we are here to do social cohesion, we cannot allow ourselves to lose control of our vision due to unresolved moments of pain.

Efforts to resolve such matters via the platform don’t bring out the best in each other.  Time chewing over the selection of emotionally charged words is less automatic when one isn’t in the same room and can more sensitively  and generously absorb the core of the concerns while filtering out the impingement of emotion.  Again: laptop posts don’t always invite to dialogue - one of our specialisms has to be superior communication and listening tools.

I took the ER pledge seriously and rigourously aligned my life to spend in practice 2 years in the Research Lab.  This has been a considerable investment, professionally, emotionally and economically.  I don’t want this investment to evaporate.   

[alberto]

Bembo: you are a star

Your writing has the bearing of classics; it bears ruminating, recombinating, re-re-reading… I can see a whole discipline branching out, the Davies Exegesis, with scholars arguing to death with each other, ponderous treaties being written and all that.

I was never an accomplished interpreter of your thinking. Let me see if I understand this comment correctly:

• You put yourself forward as a non-executive director of Edgeryders LBG.
• You bring to it a long-standing interest in social cohesion
• You see faults in the online mode of communication when wounded egos and potential conflicts are on the table. You have an idea for ameliorating this, or are working on one.

Is this correct? ER LBG execs have taken a vow of silence on the candidatures of non-execs, but I am recording a candidature that might get lost in the noise.

For the records: it is not true that Vinay has become undesirable; and I am not aware that Arthur resigned in solidarity. Arthur wrote a letter of resignation that did not mention Vinay at all. He also wrote he would post publicly announcing his resignation himself, so we can expect him to clarify his position. That’s all I know: I have emailed him, but he never replied, and I have not spoken to him since.