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Open Governance
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- Did you complete the Open Governance Course? (round two) Wed, 2010-12-15 00:32
- Did you complete the course? (What does that actually mean)? Thu, 2010-11-25 15:31
- Seminar 23 Oct - Benjamin Mako Hill Tue, 2010-11-16 14:03
- Week Three: Networks and Groups Wed, 2010-10-20 03:06
- Sharing Resources Mon, 2010-10-11 12:59
Week Three: Networks and Groups
Well folks, I thought I was having a senior moment when I couldn't find any disussion of the questions posed by Leigh as part of our work for this week. So, I trotted off and scoured people's blogs for related content and when I didn't find any, figured I should just bite the bullet and and kick things off.
As a reminder, the questions posed were as follows:
Week 3 - Groups and Networks
Guest facilitator: Leigh Blackall
In 2006 I recorded a video of Stephen Downes explaining his position on Groups vs Networks, and wrote a blog post around it. Please consider that video and blog post and join us in a 1 week forum conversation about it. Questions we might mull over could be:
- Is governance an appropriate framework for thinking about online projects?
- Will the desire to organise, centralise and ultimately govern, always be a need for people in an online future?
- Is the individualism implicit in networks too problematic for people with cultural, family or political backgrounds that value collective identities?
After, before or during the discussion event, please consider adopting a question stemming from this topic, and cover it in your blog with links and references to support perspectives. Multi media welcome of course. Share your work in the discussion forum and I'll aggregate it in a post of my own after the week.
Regards
Leigh
I see from his website that Leigh is a Permie, so chose to contrast my experience of learning about Permaculture and Nepal's organic Coffee industry - via a four month volunteer internship - with the ideas that Stephen Downes advances in his thinking about the differences between groups and networks.
You'll find the results here on my blog:
http://cjwardle.blogspot.com/2010/10/java-filled-dilemma-over-downes-view.html
Looking forward to your reaction and to having a discussion with more than just me in it - or as my 14 year-old British neice would say, "Init?".
Hey Chris: Thank you for pushing things along. Everyone seems to be a little slower than expected (including myself).
This week is special as Leigh has offered to read along and share his ideas and insights with us in the forum. To make it easier for Leigh to give feedback I'd like to propose that we:
* Post thoughts / blog posts / ideas by Thursday 14 October?
* Keep more of the discussion here on the forum, so that we can have more of a conversation than comments on the individual blogs?
I am hoping to take full advantage of having Leigh involved as I'd love to get his input on some of the questions I am struggling with.
Hi everyone, I'm standing by to read posts and summarise key points and discussion after 14 October. Don't be concerned if discussion doesn't appear evident. Trust that it is happening, in our heads, with our trusted contacts, now and for some time yet. If you're seeking typed discussion here and now, try writing in such a way that invites (pressures ;) a response, by paraphrasing, quoting, challenging, critiquing. Have fun.
Hi everyone, I really like the text and video. Below is my post:
http://eprodlab.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/groups-and-networks/
My post is up. I really chewed on these questions, and found myself getting distracted by the definitions (which I disagree with). I look forward to your thoughts and comments, and hope to get to Gustavo's and Chris' posts later in the week.
http://sharing-nicely.net/2010/10/networks-groups-communities-moving-pas...
Should we call it then? An end to this topic period? Its now the 19th of October, and we did set the 14th as the due day. Happy to wait a little longer if there is anyone still aiming to get a post in..
Hi Philipp and Gustavo,
I enjoyed reading your posts. Hope its not just a "Misery loves company" kind of thing, but in similar vein to both of you, I found myself disagreeing with Stephen Downes' way of defining groups and networks through an either/or premise.
Although the focus here is on online governance, I'd be grateful for some critique as to whether the cooperative agriculture example in my blog post was coming too far out of left field?
As I look at Philipp's dilemma about open governance in financial decision-making, it reminds me of the importance of concepts such as trust and accountability.
When I compare it to the traditional model of governance - which I'm sure that I really don't want to define, given our opposition to Downes' definitions - it seems like you are struggling with the classic governance/management dilemma.
I've had the chance to serve a Boards in a variety of ways:
* as the Community Liaison Officer for the Top End Division of General Practice in Darwin (small, local structure);
* as Regional Resource Mobilisation Officer for an INGO who drew its Regional Board from East Asia, South East Asia and Oceania;
* as CEO of Family Planning NT with my own Board (drawing representation from population centres 1,200 kilometres apart and spending a lot of effort on building/facilitating Board member skills and understanding); and
* in the same role, being an adviser to Family Planning Australia's national Board.
In all of these guises, trust and accountability were central. I suspect that in Philipp's dilemma, some of the accountability mechanisms may already be in the place if you are operating with donors' funds, but developing a strong set of guidelines will go a long way to giving P2PU community faith in how and on what, the money is spent.
The Board of a small NGO I work with in Pakistan (as Board member) is facing a similar issue, in developing the ability to trust their CEO - within clear guidelines - with the hiring/firing/spending decisions of the organisation, thus allowing the Board to keep its eye on the bigger picture (not that the CEO should lose sight of that either).
:-)
Gustavo, I was intrigued and delighted to see you make mention of "quality of life indicators" - a factor so often left out of our thinking and our achievement of something resembling a work/life balance.
Thanks again for giving me the chance to think out loud and looking forward to your comments.
Salaams from a cold, wet Oxford evening,
Chris.
Pardon my tardiness, I took on too much at once with P2PU, and had to take a break. I also have to admit that I have a hard time with this forum. The ideas presented are too scattered, and disorganized, and it's difficult to maintain interest.
I honestly don't think governance is an appropriate term for addressing online projects, but I suppose it also depends on the project. I suppose I'd need an example, so that things can be decided on a case by case basis. Projects where time is an issue will benefit more with fewer decision makers involved. However, if simply hashing out ideas and discussing possibilities is the goal, the more the merrier.
Isn't it human nature to want to collect and socialize? Personally, I learn best when I have groups of people to interact with, and bounce ideas off of. I suppose it's actively learning.
I don't really understand the last question. If people are organizing in networks, how is this individualism?
Hello SomethingElse,
You said: "I don't really understand the last question. If people are organizing in networks, how is this individualism?"
It is a commonly used description of the Internet, especially through its emerging narrative of late, that it was invented and developed largely on the values expressed by people on the West Coast USA, in and around San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. The key people express values of tolerance, individualism and personal freedom. Some call such values libertarianism, or "Counter Culture", and cite the 60s and 70s as the source of these values.
See the recent BBC documentary The Great Leveling? for such a narrative, or much better than that is the more independently produced documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet.
The question you said you don't really understand was:
"Is the individualism implicit in networks too problematic for people with cultural, family or political backgrounds that value collective identities?"
It is taken for granted in the question that we are talking about groups and networks online. So, if the Internet, and the Web throughout it, is a network - an online network, and it is built on a technology with implicit political and cultural values like individualism, how would this impact values in other cultures, societies and political structures who have not shared a counter cultural period? How would governance work online if those who seek it were not deeply self aware of the political and cultural prejudices of the technology?