Governing the library that secures the Internet
When the whole internet depends on your library, you can't make decisions behind closed doors anymore.
- Multi-stakeholder community input
- Transparent archive of every decision
- Delegate voting balances power fairly
- Reach beyond your developer community
An ecovillage replaces strata management with democracy
100 households in wine country — growing to 350 — ditched conventional strata management to govern themselves, and they're building the playbook as they go.
- Decisions across neighbourhood clusters
- Transparent community decision archive
- Equal say for all residents
- Self-governance replacing strata management
A restaurant where 500 founders decide how profits are spent
500 people each invested $1,000 in a restaurant that gives 80% of its profits to community projects — now they all have to agree on where the money goes.
- 500-founder votes without paper ballots
- Exported data for compliance auditing
- Community project funding decisions
- Filing cut from 10,000 to 100 pages
Governing an open-access scientific preprint platform
Scientific papers take years to publish and months to peer-review — so a global team of researchers built a way to share them immediately.
- Async global researcher discussions
- Votes and debates without calls
- Quick onboarding via discussion history
- Discussions, polls, votes in one tool
A makerspace ends meeting fatigue and gets back to making
Fifty makers share one workshop — but marathon monthly meetings were killing the energy they came there to use.
- Proposals shaped before meetings
- More time for creative projects
- Decision repository and archive
- Reduced meeting fatigue
A community lender powers grassroots renewable energy
A small lending society in Cornwall funds grassroots renewable energy projects — but reviewing each loan used to eat up entire meetings.
- Online loan assessment saves hours
- Transparent multi-stage involvement
- Assessment records for easy audit
- Timely community energy funding
Citizens organize across a country in crisis
In the middle of a political crisis, a distributed network of Venezuelan citizens needed new tools to organize — fast, safely, and from wherever they were.
- Distributed citizen network coordination
- Tools for activism and participation
- Decisions via polls and checks
- Effective distributed communication
Consultant creates safe spaces for voices that go unheard
A strategic planning consultant who spent 21 years in foster care now uses online collaboration to ensure every stakeholder is heard.
- Voice for the meeting-silent
- Engage on stakeholders' schedules
- Richer dialogue with attached materials
- Safe, inclusive stakeholder space
A climate action group prototypes ideas between meetings
A climate action group in a small New Zealand town couldn't wait a month between meetings to act on new ideas — so they started prototyping between sessions.
- Rapid prototyping between meetings
- Consensus without in-person meetings
- Every voice heard, meeting-free
- Faster idea-to-action cycle
A multi-stakeholder network runs a general meeting that never adjourns
A network of cooperative researchers across five countries can never all meet face to face — so they run a general meeting that never adjourns.
- Online governance with nested subgroups
- Continuous general meeting online
- Unheard voices participating effectively
- Cross-language research collaboration
A commons-oriented collective reinvents international publishing
A commons-oriented translation collective coordinates publishers in four countries to print the same book locally — without any of the restrictions of the traditional publishing world.
- Searchable archive replaces email
- International network coordinated centrally
- Archived licensing and budget decisions
- Full collaboration beyond decisions
A coworking space governed by its community
A coworking space in Lille discovered that engaging with disagreement — not just counting votes — unlocks better decisions and deeper shared understanding.
- Policy changes in minutes, not months
- Creative solutions surfaced through disagreement
- Commons governance without central authority
- Thoughtful decisions with time to reflect
200 artists, 12 buildings, 1 community: Gängeviertel collective
- Equal say for 200 people
- Pre-assembly discussion preparation
- Complex decisions resolved faster
- Organized discussion replaces email lists
How the P2P foundation does high-level coordination
A global network of open-source researchers could collaborate on wikis and blogs all day — but when it came to collective decisions, they kept going in circles.
- Clear, legitimate decisions faster
- Community-mandated delegation
- Discussion meets structured decisions
- Non-hierarchical without chaos
A co-living hotel run by its guests
A co-living hotel in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury uses collaborative decision-making to run a dynamic community of residents, guests, and neighbors.
- Community decisions without meetings
- Living archive of every decision
- Surfaced tensions, aligned incentives
- Online discussion improves offline collaboration
Scaling a shared vision across countries
An international collective moved from Facebook and email to real decision-making — and members who had gone quiet suddenly started contributing again.
- Real decisions between international summits
- Re-engaged inactive members
- Clear audit trail for every decision
- Onboarding via discussion history
