How do you make a #decision with a group of people? In some activist circles a #sociocracy method of "consent" decision making has become popular.
In a new post on Indoxicate I try to clear up some of the confusion around this idea, and I articulate a criticism that should (I think) be taken seriously by the movement.
The method, whatever it virtues, has little to do with #consent. By using the term nonetheless, groups run a risk of cultivating an abusive practice.
"Demokratie" - eine abstrakte Worthülse?
Ich glaube, dass demokratische Prozesse für viele Menschen "zu weit weg" stattfinden. Dass in Schulen, Institutionen, Arbeitsplätzen zu wenige gute Erfahrungen mit Partizipation, Selbstorganisation und gemeinsamen Entscheidungen machen.
#SOZIOKRATIE ist ein Modell, das dies ändern will. Sie ermöglicht effektive, agile Selbstorganisation in Teams und Organisationen. Demokratie zum Anfassen. Mitgestaltung zum Dran-Gewöhnen.
The Sociocracy 3.0 Canvases are included in Ultri's Canava now. https://www.ultri.com/canava
That allows easy customization of the canvas rows, columns, and instructions. It also makes viewing and entering the data easier than other canvases.
Finally! A sociocracy product! The first two of the S3 Canvas series are live. You can fill out the canvas for free, then download your data and import it later to edit.
The S3 Organization Canvas and S3 Delegation canvas have different styles, tell us which you like. https://www.ultri.com/canvas/
Pondering how democratic tools & rules are only as good as they can reflect a group's consensus.
The #benevolentdictator model in open systems, ie FOSS & now fedi instances, despite problems (centralisation, burnout), remains compelling. It could also be a Team with control (as with post-BDFL projects like CiviCRM) – the key is decision-makers have to reflect consensus. Because it's all open, they know the community can depart/fork with relatively low cost (unlike the Zuskian/techbro dictator).
None of this meant as an attack on [#sociocracy, which I think was designed as a consensus system when everyone is in a literal room together… & def not #mutualism which feels to me the closest political theory to reflect the fediverse. Things here are both common & owned in overlapping groups with some shared principles. I'm personally v interested in & grateful to learn from this exploration of digital democracy beyond Git's Issues+PRs (aka corp governance motions) & Merges/Forks (aka votes).]
Free and Open Source Content Circle is hosting an event next week and I'd like to invite you!
Exploring Self Governance in the Fediverse: A discussion about decision making among a federated ensemble
--> May 29th 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
We're a circle within @SociocracyForAll , so I'll be interested to find out how sociocracy can support you. There will also be time to chat about common governance models and tensions that arise.
For #FEP (Fediverse Enhancement Proposals) we think of specifying behavior as human-readable, tech-independent #Gherkin scripts. That can be a good approach. Same org has the #FediverseIdea repo.
Hi! Here is our introductory post! We are a small team working on open source tools to make sociocracy easier for others to adopt.
We started this project because we were interested in using sociocracy for our worker co-op but ran into hurdles figuring out how to manage our structure and meetings. So we thought "let's build what we need to make it easy for others too!"